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milksnake-tea · 1 year ago

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━━ welcome, rover .

Waking up in a foreign world with no memories and hostile natives isn't what it's made out to be, especially when you have a sassy voice telling you to jump off a cliff.

self aware!wuthering waves au (kinda.)

contains: male!rover, elements of sagau, ooc!chixia, canon divergence, based off of beta wuwa

wc: 2.2k

a/n: i wrote this on the plane while having motion sickness so uh sorry if it's bad but i had a vision... this is based on the old version of wuwa btw !! where everyone was kinda hostile towards rover so that's why chixias more antagonistic bc i heard she was kinda mean in the og... rover might be ooc too bc honestly my experience w wuwa is... limited due to the lagging but i hope i did him decently enough !! if he doesn't have sass that's uhm. that's my bad. anyways self aware beams your wuwa

When Rover awoke on that new world, the first thing he'd seen was a heated glare.

Alright, maybe “glare” wasn't the right word. It was moreso wariness, or distrust. Narrowed eyes, hostile and defensive body language, and hands hovering above where he assumed was their weapons holster - it was obvious that to the locals, he was an unwelcomed guest.

He'd barely regained enough consciousness to comprehend the language - their words were twisted, alien, yet he could somehow still understand them - before he was barraged with an onslaught of interrogations: Who was he? Why was he here? What were his intentions? Why was he alone?

And of course, when faced with all of these questions, his recently wiped mind went blank - that tends to happen when you have amnesia. Unfortunately for him, that answer wasn't exactly satisfactory. It was painfully obvious from their expressions that no one believed him when he explained that he didn't remember anything, not even his own name.

The redhead was the most aggressive - Rover was sure she would've already started getting physical had her companion, a darker-haired woman dressed in blue, not kept her in line. While the others weren't exactly kind to him, they still remained civil… or at least, as civil as they were willing to be.

In the end, the third woman, this one with sharp eyes and presumably the medic of the group, managed to convince the other two that Rover was telling the truth after a brief examination. It was then, and only then that the interrogations stopped, and Rover could finally have some time to himself as the three women discussed what to do with him.

As the details of their conversation faded into the background (he heard a lot of fancy terms that he wasn't familiar with), Rover decided to take a look around.

He'd landed in the middle of a forest, which didn't strike him quite right - out of everything, the one thing he clearly remembered was being underwater. But as he surveyed his surroundings, only looming cliffs, thin trees and swaying grass greeted him.

He winced, his head throbbing suddenly. A stabbing sensation struck through his head like a bullet, and then there was warmth, spreading through his body like sunlight.

“..ey. Hey!”

Rover blinked. The redhead planted her hands on her hips, irritation evident from her scowl.

“We’ve decided what to do with you,” the woman in blue said softly, holding an arm in front of the redhead to calm her.

Rover tilted his head innocently, prompting her to continue.

“We'll take you to the city,” explained the medic. Her voice was just as frigid as her gaze. “There, the officials will examine and determine whether or not you're a threat.”

“I’m-” Rover started, but caught himself. “Okay.”

The medic nodded, then bent down on her knees. Noticing her outstretched hand, Rover realized she was offering to help him up.

He stumbled as she pulled him to his feet. His legs felt like jelly, pins and needles pricking at him as they slowly woke up. For a second, he'd thought he'd fall over.

But then the warmth came again, and this time, with a voice.

“Steady. Easy does it.”

Sudden strength surged into his legs, and he stabilized himself, the pins and needles fading away.

“There you go.”

He looked up as if expecting someone to be there, but predictably, all that met him was a vast blue sky.

“Are you looking for me?” He heard the voice laugh, a clear, bell-like sound. “Maybe do that later, you're making yourself look funny.”

With a start, he realized that the voice was right. The three women were giving him weird looks, and his hand was still intertwined with the medic’s.

Hastily, he yanked his hand away, a sheepish chuckle escaping him as he rubbed the back of his neck. The redhead scoffed.

“Yangyang, this guy’s got a screw loose or something…” she muttered to the woman dressed in blue. Yangyang sighed in agreement, turning on her heel and walking away.

“Bear with it for a bit, Chixia,” she replied. “We'll drop him off at the City Hall, and they'll take it from there.”

Chixia didn't look happy with that, but she relented nevertheless.

“Wow.”

Rover flinched as the voice spoke again, this time closer to his ear.

“They do not like you at all, do they?”

Obviously not, Rover thought incredulously, but can you blame them?

He'd noticed it a while ago - the three were clearly on edge. Something was going on on this planet, something bad. Having an unpredictable factor such as him probably wasn't helping.

“Good point.”

So you can hear my thoughts. Rover huffed as he pulled himself up a cliff, vines scratching at his arms. The route the locals had decided to take wasn't a kind one.

“Well, yeah. How else are we supposed to have our super-secret confidential shittalking sessions?”

Rover paused. What?

“Don't worry about it.”

No, what'd you say-

“I said don't worry about it. Now keep climbing, they're leaving you behind.”

Easy for you to say, Rover thought indignantly, but did as the voice said nevertheless. He quickly caught up to the group, the medic raising a brow as he fell into step beside her. Thankfully, she didn't say anything and only kept her gaze straight ahead.

“Hey, I'm not the one who's being marched to officials for an inspection. And I don't have a reputation I need to maintain.”

Rover hated to admit it, but the voice had a point.

What are you, anyway? He walked past a small pond filled with fish. His hands twitched with the urge to jump in and grab some, but his first impressions were already bad enough as is.

“I'm God, actually.”

Rover deadpanned, unimpressed.

“Jeez, tough crowd.” The voice shifted, moving from his right to his left ear. “But seriously though, I'm human, just like you.”

If you were, I'd be able to see you.

“Fair enough,” the voice mused. “But I really am human. I just… happened to wake up invisible and connected to you.”

Rover grunted as he vaulted over yet another cliff. Very convincing.

“Says you.” He could practically hear them rolling their eyes. “At least I remember what my name is.”

That one hurt more than Rover would've liked to admit.

“...Sorry.” Quieter now, almost meek. “That was out of line.��

Rover closed his eyes briefly, breathing in as subtly as he could before opening them again.

It's fine. You didn't say anything false.

“It was still insensitive.”

Rover sped up. It happens to the best of us.

The voice went quiet, leaving Rover to the slight howl of the wind and the sound of boots crunching against sand. But they hadn't left entirely, no - Rover could feel a presence to his left, subtle but impossible to ignore.

“So you don't remember your name, huh?” Chixia said suddenly.

“No,” Rover muttered.

“Guess that just means we'll have to give you one. Or I could just keep calling you ‘Weirdo’ in my head.”

Rover’s eye twitched. “Let's not.”

Chixia grinned back at him, but the smile didn't ease his nerves at all - on the contrary, it made them worse.

“Why not? I think it's pretty fitting.”

“Chixia,” Yangyang warned, which Rover was grateful for. Had he retaliated, things wouldn't have ended well for him.

Chixia shrugged, crossing her arms behind her head as she sauntered off.

“I must apologize for her.” Yangyang turned to him. To his surprise, she seemed genuine. “Chixia usually isn't that rude, it's just that, well…”

She trailed off, uncertain on how to continue. Rover shook his head.

“It's fine,” he assured. “I can tell that you're all anxious.”

Yangyang’s shoulders slumped. “Is it that obvious? But… yes, you're right. Life hasn't exactly been calm as of late, with Tacet Fields appearing left and right.”

“Tacet Fields?” Rover repeated, tilting his head.

“It's easier to demonstrate than to explain,” the medic cut in, stepping forward as the cliffs and trees opened up. Rover followed her gaze to a darkened field, corrupted by dark matter and with a star-shapped scar at the center.

Abyss-like creatures prowled the corrupted zone, covered in dark armor, scales, and/or fur. They spoke to one another in gargled gibberish with voices that sent chills down Rover's spine.

“Those are Tacet Discords,” Yangyang explained. “They’re born from the distorted frequencies that result from the Tacet Field.”

“Ew.”

Welcome back, Rover greeted, to which the voice didn't respond.

“They're ugly,” they commented instead, scrutinizing the Tacet Discords one by one. Rover silently agreed. “But there's a few pretty ones I can see, like that wolf.”

Rover stared at said wolf's sharp canines and ravenous glare. Pretty… isn't what I would call them, but suit yourself.

“There’s a whole swarm of them out there,” Chixia observed, breaking through their conversation. She stretched her arms as if preparing for battle. “Can't get to the city without getting through them first.”

“Hm…” Yangyang contemplated to herself, before looking up at Rover. “Say, uhm…”

She hesitated, not knowing what to call him.

“Rover.”

His mouth moved on its own as his voice mixed with the voice's. Yangyang blinked, startled.

“I… I thought you didn't remember your name.”

“I don't,” Rover spoke without meaning to, like a puppet on strings. “It just… came to mind.”

Yangyang didn't look convinced, but she let it go.

“Alright, then, Rover, do you know how to fight?”

The feeling of being puppeteered left him as the voice became separate once more.

“Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

What the hell was that?

Yangyang smiled. “Good, because we'll need to clear that Tacet Field before reaching the city.”

He nodded, understanding the implications. “I'll do my best to fight alongside you.”

“I don't know what that was,” the voice replied, and sure enough, they too sounded unsure. “I just did what the system told me to.”

The system? Rover questioned, but received no answer.

Rover heard a pistol click behind him as Chixia readied herself. “Don't try anything funny,.”

“I won't.” Operating on instinct, Rover drew a blade of his own. Chixia chuckled.

“We'll see about that.”

One by one, the group jumped off the cliff, deploying a glider so as to land safely below. Rover was the last to go. As his feet skidded at the edge of the cliff, sending pebbles flying down, unease swirled in his gut.

“Hey,” the voice said gently. “Don't worry. I'll help you out.”

What… Rover furrowed his brows, frustrated at how little he knew. What are you?

“Like I said, I'm just another person who ended up stranded here. I have a feeling we're going to be stuck together for a while, so I suggest you get used to me.”

Then, Rover sighed, at least give me a name. You said you remembered yours.

The voice paused.

“[Name],” it finally said, the name foreign to Rover's ears. “That's my name.”

“[Name],” he murmured, feeling it roll off his tongue. “We should get going, the others are waiting. You said you'd help me, right?”

“Yep. Just jump off the cliff and extend your left hand up to glide.”

Rover paused. Aren't these called intrusive thoughts?

“Just do it.”

Taking a deep breath, Rover looked down at the jump before him nervously. Closing his eyes and mentally praying to whatever god was listening that he wouldn't end up a black puddle on the forest floor, he lept.

Mechanical wings unfolded above him in a series of clicks and whirrs, a handle extending down for him to grab onto like his life depended on it. Peeking open his eyes, he let out a sigh of relief, feeling a small breeze brush against his face.

“See?” Although not obvious, relief bled into [Name]’s words as Rover landed safely on his feet. “You can trust me.”

A small smile slipped onto Rover's face, the first since he'd woken up.

“I guess I can.”

The glider folded in on itself, replaced by his blade as he joined the others.

“Took you long enough,” Chixia commented, but for the first time, it wasn't with ill intent.

“Sorry,” Rover replied. “But I'm here now.”

“Enough chitchat,” Yangyang called up ahead. “They've noticed us.”

Sure enough, the Tacet Discords were turning towards them, snarls twisting where he assumed their mouths were. The corruption worsened, dark energy forming in black smoke.

“Let's see what you're made of, Rover,” said Chixia, expertly spinning her pistols. Yangyang had already drawn her sword, and Baizhi, the medic, had summoned a pearly dragon-like creature to fight alongside her. [Name] didn't say anything, but he could feel their energy beginning to seep into his muscles, ready to aid him in battle.

Rover pointed his blade towards the Tacet Discords.

“Let's go.”

reblogs w comments are appreciated !!

tags: @sh0jun, @themoderatelyawesomeninja, @xphantasmagoriax, @rainswept, @lucensei

@akutasoda , @naraven , @scribs-dibs

#wuthering waves #wuthering waves x reader #wuwa #wuwa x reader #wuwa rover #wuwa rover x reader #wuthering waves rover #self aware au #self aware wuthering waves #self aware wuthering waves au #x reader #y/n #reader insert #archives 🏵️

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onbearfeet · 26 days ago

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In Which the Wizard School Books Are a Hammer

Okay. I'm gonna tell this story once, and only once, because I think it might help people who are struggling to finally, FINALLY boot J.K. Rowling from their lives.

I can't precisely say I sympathize, but I definitely know how you feel, because I have already had to do this dance with someone I guarantee you've never heard of. I've had all the feelings you've had. I had to find a way through all by myself, and now I'm going to help you so you have an easier time. Okay? Okay.

Content warning: discussion of child sexual abuse (mentioned but not described in detail).

So there's this writer. I refuse to speak or write his name these days, so we'll call him Evil Bob. ("Bob" is my default placeholder name, and this Bob is evil.) Evil Bob was a damn good writer and, frankly, an underappreciated one in his time. I picked up a few of his projects out of the bargain bin on impulse when I was about 12, and after that he was one of my names to conjure with. If Evil Bob had written it, I wanted to read it. He had a kind of perfect workman's style--he did a lot of things pretty well, and he did them in such a way that a bright 12-year-old could see how the trick was done. I learned a lot of basic writerly technique from Evil Bob--things about dialogue and pacing and how to convey character through action and lots of other stuff. Evil Bob unlocked something in my brain, and I really blossomed as a young writer by applying the lessons of his work.

Evil Bob's fiction started to fall off in popularity eventually, so he switched to nonfiction and wrote a damn good history book that won a lot of awards. I read it in college. The man could really interview, I tell you what.

I even got to interview Evil Bob myself, eventually. I was working for a small magazine that wanted to publish an article about a certain minority group's representation in a certain fiction genre, and Evil Bob had written one of the seminal works in that niche, so I tracked down his contact info, called him up, and we had a lovely hourlong chat. He was kind and gracious and funny and --

Yeah, this is where you learn why I named him Evil Bob.

A few years ago, people in Evil Bob's old fiction genre started circulating a list of, shall we say, disgraced writers in the field. Think of it like a MeToo list. The list got passed around every time a new name was added, and at a certain point, after a much more famous name had just been added to it, the list crossed my feed for the first time in a while. I dutifully scanned down it in case there was anyone on it I'd missed; after all, I attended conventions for this genre, and some of these fuckers were on the list for assaulting fans like me, so I wanted to know who to watch out for.

And there, in the middle of the list, was Evil Bob.

Weird, I thought. Evil Bob had seemed chill when I spoke to him, and usually, being 22 with big boobs (as I was when I interviewed him) brought out the perv in these guys if there was any perv to bring out. Well, maybe this was something else--maybe he used a slur on an old tape or something. I googled.

It was something else, all right.

As I sat there googling, Evil Bob was sitting in a federal prison a thousand miles away. He was there because, according to his Wikipedia page, he had been convicted of having so many CSA images on his hard drive that the judge in his case became physically ill. Honestly, I want to know where he got a hard drive that big in the year he was arrested, but I absolutely will not be asking him.

Evil Bob was EVIL. Fuck the carceral state, but also never let that particular dude near kids or a computer again.

So now I had a problem. I was going to stop buying Evil Bob's stuff, obviously--I would drop the man like a hot potato--but I couldn't so easily remove his influence on me. I'll never be 12 years old and digging through the quarter bin at the used bookshop again. There's no way to re-learn the foundations of my artform without Evil Bob. The bastard is part of me, whether I like it or not. He's left his fingerprints on my brain. And while I have negative interest in creating my own criminal hard drive, it's a little hard to shake the irrational guilt (especially since I had been raised in a high-control religious environment where any contact with sin could permanently stain one's soul, and Evil Bob's writing was part of how I escaped, and--you get the idea). I couldn't shed the stink of Evil Bob. I'd written that article. I was covered in the fuckin' ooze.

I'll spare you the six months of angst and self-flagellation. I've been to therapy since this happened. Here's what I eventually decided:

Evil Bob is like a hammer.

My dad gave me an old hammer when I moved out, along with some other miscellaneous hand tools in a paper bag. I bought a toolbox, I put the tools in it, and I use them when I need tools. My dad is an asshole who abused his children, but a hammer is a hammer. Scratch the previous owner's name off the handle, and you can build a pretty fine house with it.

What I learned from Evil Bob are the tools of a trade, and tools are not inherently evil. He taught me how to put sentences together--but I decide what my sentences say. He showed me how to convey character--but I choose what I'm conveying. He made me a writer--but I'm the one writing now.

So I still use Evil Bob's tools, with his name scoured off. I still teach some of those lessons, but he's the one source I don't cite. Oh, that dialogue hack? I picked it up in grad school, pinky swear. Here, let me share it with you for free, with no credit or compensation to the bastard who taught it to me.

I won't pretend Evil Bob wasn't an influence on my younger self, but you'll never hear me speak his legal name. I was one of the few people who really counted themselves fans of his work ... and he'll never get a whisper of a hint of that support from me again. I guarantee you won't be able to track him down from this post, and that's just the way I like it. There's a reason I haven't identified what genre he wrote in, or what his seminal fiction work was about, or whom he interviewed for that prizewinning book.

Damnatio memoriae, motherfucker. This is my hammer now, and it always has been.

So how do we give JKR the Evil Bob treatment?

Unfortunately, the Terf Queen has a larger media presence than Evil Bob ever did. One sad ex-Potterhead won't be able to erase her from culture. But there's a lot more than one of you, isn't there?

The thing is, cultural trends fade faster than you expect. Plenty of celebrities and famous artists of your parents' generation are nobodies now, and it's usually because their work spoke to your parents but not to you. I once witnessed my brother trying to read his sons a 1912 book about Spanish naval history as a bedtime story, and let me tell you, it did not go over well. Some art burns hot and bright and then it burns OUT.

The Potterheads are the parents now. Imagine how easy it would be to just ... stop talking about her. Stop buying the merch. Don't watch the new TV show or play the new game. Don't tell people you used to be a fan--not because you ought to be ashamed, but because you're not going to give her the satisfaction of saying her name. And when your kids ask about your tattoo, just tell them not to get blackout drunk in college.

Damnatio memoriae, motherfucker.

And if you feel the need to explain where you learned your kindness and courage, your unshakable loyalty to your friends (especially the trans ones), your hope in the face of overwhelming darkness ...

... why, that's your hammer. And it always has been.

#evil bob #jk rowling #fuck jkr #harry potter #dealing with grief #fuck evil bob even more than jkr #because christ that hard drive #damnatio memoriae

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moonstruckme · 9 months ago

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Hiiiiii mae 🥹 I have a prompt if you might be interested? First prompt not-anon, second request total 💃🏻

At work they play the radio and I heard in an interview that humans are born with only 2 natural fears: falling and loud sounds. Those fears are universal and the only things people are born fearing - every other fear is learned!

I couldn’t help but think of sweet Spencer explaining this when placating (or trying to placate) reader who is anxious/has a phobia/is feeling nervous! Hope it inspires something but no pressure xoxoxoxoxo love you long time

Hey babe, thanks for requesting!!

cw: public speaking anxiety, criminal case in court (case details not discussed)

Spencer Reid x fem!reader ♡ 573 words

You’re cold with sweat and trembling in your fingers when Spencer sits down next to you.

“Hi,” he says. He sounds nearly as nervous as he makes you. His voice, you’ve noticed, is as gentle as his disposition, unchanging regardless of who he’s speaking to. And you’ve heard plenty of Spencer Reid’s voice throughout this case.

You keep your arms stuck tight to your sides, wary of what you suspect to be atrociously large pit stains. “Hi.”

“Do you want some water?”

You take the bottle he holds out to you, not because you do want it but because you’re too nervous to contradict anyone about anything right now. You wonder if that makes you susceptible to suggestion. If so, that will probably not hold up very well in literal court.

If Spencer’s dissatisfied with the tiny sip you take from the water bottle, he doesn’t say so.

“You seem nervous,” he says, somehow both kind and matter-of-fact at once. “Is it because of the defense?”

You shake your head, though that’s not untrue. The defense attorney is only one of the myriad of people you’re going to be expected to speak in front of in a few minutes. Your heart is a squirrel in your chest, scampering wildly

“I don’t really like public speaking,” you say.

Spencer nods pensively. He’s good at this, at making you feel like he’s really absorbing what you have to say. You’ve wondered on occasion if it’s part of his training.

“You know, it’s interesting,” he says. “There are actually only two natural fears that humans are born with; falling and loud sounds. Everything else is learned, we pick it up somewhere.” Spencer sets his elbows on his legs, slouching so he can see your face. He’s so handsome it’s unbearable. “Where do you think your fear of public speaking came from?”

It has the makings of a personal question, but Spencer’s curiosity seems so pure it’s hard to hold it against him.

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. “It’s just always made me nervous.”

Spencer’s mouth purses. “It might have been so early or subtle that you don’t remember. For a lot of people it comes from feeling like they’re going to be judged.”

Your lip finds its way between your teeth without your permission, and when you look over Spencer’s gaze is knowing.

“Everyone is here to judge the accused,” he says gently, “not you. You’re important as a witness, and we’re lucky to have you here, but no one is going to care if you mess up. Their job is to pay attention to what you say, not how you say it. All you have to do is tell the truth.”

“Yeah.” You try to breathe in, but the air won’t settle in your lungs. “Yeah, okay.”

“There shouldn’t be any loud sounds or falling in there,” Spencer goes on. If he wasn’t such a professional, you’d almost think he was joking with you. “So nothing’s going to hurt you. You’ll be okay, okay?”

You glance at him again, and the profiler’s lips are curved in a small smile. You don’t know how he can do it, stay so good when he spends his whole day knee-deep in the minds of bad guys. But despite what he does for a living and all he’s certainly been through because of it, there’s a lightness about Spencer. It feels like peace.

“Yeah,” you say again. “Thanks.”

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thrumbolt · 2 years ago

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Top 5 most annoying Tamlin scene misinterpretations

1. ''There is no such thing as a high lady'' I hate this one, because it is always taken as some sort of proof that Tamlin is a raging misogynist who doesn't want an equal woman by his side or some similar type of nonsense. I don't know where this is coming from. Tamlin never wanted to be a high lord. He would probably welcome for someone to take over most of the work so he could just keep running through the woods. He also has absolutely no issues with taking advice from women in power (Ianthe? Hello??). His first reaction to the high lady question is literally this:

“Is everyone just going to call me ‘Tamlin’s wife’? Do I get a … title?” He lifted his head long enough to look at me. “Do you want a title?”

And let's not forget that Feyre's first reply is ''No, I don’t know if I can handle them calling me High Lady”. To which he then answers that she doesn't have to worry about that, since ''there is no such thing as a high lady'' because the magic choses the title and it keeps chosing males. Also this whole scene happens while he eats her out. Not that it's relevant or anything, just saying...

2. ''Tamlin killed Rhys' family'' No. Tamlin's dad killed Rhys' family. I have no idea how Tamlin doing it is ever the takeaway from that whole story. Let's just quote the actual scene:

“Tamlin’s father, brothers, and Tamlin himself set out into the Illyrian wilderness, having heard from Tamlin—from me—where my mother and sister would be, that I had plans to see them. I was supposed to be there. I wasn’t. And they slaughtered my mother and sister anyway.”

Yeah okay, Tamlin gave the information (supposedly) and was there (supposedly) sure, but it's highly unlikely that he was so willingly. Let's not forget that it's established that Tamlin was afraid of his father, that Tamlin's father is worse than Beron (who, I might remind you, tortures his sons) and that Tamlin was friends with Rhys at the time - which neither family approved of. Even Rhys doesn't actually believe Tamlin did anything besides being spineless:

''I didn’t care that Tamlin had been there, had allowed them to kill my mother and sister, that he’d come to kill me because he didn’t want to risk standing against them.''

In the end we don't know the details. Tamlin could've been tortured and tied up or whatever. Making him watch could've been a cruel form of punishment for being friends with Rhys. We don't really know until SJM graces us with Tamlin's side of the story.

3. ''It's really Tamlin's own fault that the spring court fell'' Alternatively also phrased as: 'Feyre just opened everyone's eyes to Tamlin's incompetence' and....honestly? This low key makes me question the reading comprehension of people.

Yes, Tamlin made a deal with Hybern, which was extremely risky, but the war was coming regardless (as we learn from Rhys in the first half of ACOMAF) and the spring court would be the main target because of its location next to the wall. Inviting Hybern into his lands in a trade is actually a pretty smart way to avoid a lot of death on Tamlin's part - plus he needed help to rescue Feyre and get her out of the deal she had with Rhysand (people forget that Tamlin didn't know Feyre didn't actually need rescuing from the guy that was abusing her in front of him in ACOTAR).

So yeah anyway, Feyre did several things to make the spring court fall: 1. She manipulated the solstice ceremony to make herself seem cauldron-blessed in the eyes of the people, 2. She made a sentry accuse Ianthe (who WAS doing sneaky shit) which essentially did nothing except putting Tamlin on the spot in front of Hybern, so he was kind of forced to throw the sentry under the bus. Good job Feyre, you got a poor sod whipped! But it also built resentment within the soldiers, which was her plan all along and 3. before leaving, she did this (let's just quote the whole thing):

''I had a people who had lost faith in their High Priestess. I had sentries who were beginning to rebel against their High Lord. And as a result of those things, I had Hybern royals doubting the strength of their allies here. I’d primed this court to fall. Not from outside forces—but its own internal warring. And I had to be clear of it before it happened. Before the last sliver of my plan fell into place. The party would return without me. And to maintain that illusion of strength, Tamlin and Ianthe would lie about it—where I’d gone. And perhaps a day or two after that, one of these sentries would reveal the news, a carefully sprung trap that I’d coiled into his mind like one of my snares. I’d fled for my life—after being nearly killed by the Hybern prince and princess. I’d planted images in his head of my brutalized body, the markings consistent with what Dagdan and Brannagh had already revealed to be their style. He’d describe them in detail—describe how he helped me get away before it was too late. How I ran for my life when Tamlin and Ianthe refused to intervene, to risk their alliance with Hybern. And when the sentry revealed the truth, no longer able to stomach keeping quiet when he saw how my sorry fate was concealed by Tamlin and Ianthe, just as Tamlin had sided with Ianthe the day he’d flogged that sentry …When he described what Hybern had done to me, their Cursebreaker, their newly anointed Cauldron-blessed, before I’d fled for my life … There would be no further alliance. For there would be no sentry or denizen of this court who would stand with Tamlin or Ianthe after this. After me.''

So, the sentries left Tamlin because of a lie. A fake story. Without sentries, Hybern decided to take over rather than just be guests and had a prime spot to attack the summer court in turn. Which is also why Tarquin is extremely pissed at Feyre - not Tamlin. So no, Tamlin wasn't a bad high lord. His only real mistake was ever trusting Feyre.

Sure, some argue that Feyre thought Tamlin genuinely sided with Hybern and might be a threat to the rest of Prythian, so taking him down would make sense for her even outside of petty revenge. But there's just one problem with that: Feyre is a mind reader. She could have just.....checked. lol

4. ''Tamlin didn't do anything Under the Mountain'' This one really gets my goat because it's not really true? Things Tamlin did to help Feyre: 1. He sent her away to the human realm. (People forget this, but he basically doomed his court to protect her ass - it's not his fault she came back!) 2. He made Lucien check up on her. (Yes Lucien was Feyre's friend but he still acted under Tamlin's orders!) 3. He ignored Feyre as to not rile Amarantha up even more (Come on, have you seen Amarantha? It totally makes sense) 4. He tries to get to Feyre, begging Amarantha to stop even as he is tied up, bleeding out from a stab wound to his chest that he can't heal because he has no powers - like what do you want him to do??? 4. He literally kills Amarantha the second he is able to

Also personal conspiracy detour: That music that Rhysand supposedly sent to Feyre was SO originally supposed to be Tamlin, you can't convince me otherwise. I will never not believe that this wasn't just a lazily done quick change when SJM rewrote book 1 and 2 to account for the boyfriend switcheroo. Attributing the music to Rhys makes absolutely zero sense. He's not a musical boy at all, come on! Music themes never come up with him again either! Meanwhile Tamlin played for Feyre before, is generally a musical guy COME ON! /conspiracy detour over

5. ''It's Tamlin's fault that Nesta and Elaine got turned to fae'' No. No it's not. He knew nothing about this. Ianthe did this on her own accord because Feyre told her where her sister's lived. Tamlin actually attacks (!) the King of Hybern over it (to no avail, but still).

Some people blame Tamlin for keeping Ianthe around afterwards, despite of what she did. Those people I want to refer to point number 3 in this list. Ianthe was working with Hybern. Tamlin tried to be buddies with Hybern for reasons. No, he can't just throw out Ianthe.

#thanks for coming to my tedtalk #tamlin #acotar #idk man i get that people hate him but literally everything he does gets interpreted in the most unfavorable way ever #or simply misquoted #and it's annoying ok #feel free to add to it or correct me #SORRY THIS GOT LONG I WENT OFF A LITTLE #pro tamlin #i guess

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lenalenouilleisblogging · 1 month ago

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2024 feminist movie retrospective ~ day 5

The second female-directed movie in this retrospective! I had no knowledge of the project before watching it, honestly i went to see this because I just really like Kate Winslet. So needless to say, I was very pleasantly surprised. No spoiler warning this time as it is a biopic. Dark content ahead.

Watched : October 19th in my city's main theater. The showing pretty packed.

Did I ever tell you gyns that history was my WORST subject at school? When I did my BAC (the big end of high school multi day exam in France) I got a 4 out of 20 (blaze it 🤪) in my history/geography exam. It was my WORST grade. I threw everything I had at the wall and wrote for about 20 minutes. I still had more than 3 hours to wait before I could leave the room, so I spent them delicately colouring the oceans in shades of blue on the world map of the geography exercise...

I got a lot better at history after school, but it's probably still the biggest hole in my personal knowledge. All that to say that I had no clue who Lee Miller was before watching this film. I cannot attest to this film's historical accuracy (tho I heard from more knowledgeable people that it's quite great on that front), only to its qualities as a piece of art.

This picture above is how the movie recreates the most famous legacy that Lee Miller left behind, a photo of herself bathing in Adolf Hitler's bathroom.

This woman was a model and photographer who became a war correspondent for British vogue during WW2. Her story is a story in the movie itself, because the narrative tool that the biopic uses is her son Anthony, who finds her old pictures in 1977 and reconstructs the story of Lee's career and life. The movie starts in the 30s in Europe, where she meets her british husband Roland. She moves to the UK with him and the two work in harmony with each other, happy. When things in Europe start to get really dicey, both try to do their part to help as much as possible from London. But Lee gets increasingly frustrated as her journal refuses to let her go to the continent in person to report. When she learns that french friends of hers (who are part of the resistance) have gone missing, it is the last straw. She uses her status as an USAmerican to power through the higher ups and goes to the continent with her assistant David. For two years, the two work amongst the desolation of war, culminating in the liberation of the camps, which they are the first to photograph. Miller was the only journalist on site when this happened, and her incredibly graphic pictures are still to this day some of the most detailed and precise images of the camps that we have.

I don't have much to say about the technical aspects of the film as it is pretty classic, very classic even. It doesn't set a new standard for war films OR biopics, but it does its job well. Director Ellen Kuras clearly knows her shit. If there's any criticism to make towards the movie, it's this. It's just competent and not groundbreaking, even tho it's about a woman's groundbreaking work. You might think that Lee Miller deserves better than a movie that does its job correctly. That they should have gone crazy with it. I understand the sentiment, i'm personally a bit on the fence. My personal philosophy is that we should judge movies by how well they do what they are trying to do. Not how well they do what we want to see or what brings in the most money. This is Kate Winslet's passion project that she's been trying to produce since 2015. She paid the last weeks of the team's work with her own money because of insufficient funds. The film was produced and directed by women and it was approved by Miller's son. All of these elements make the project very interesting to me, even if the cinematography isn't revolutionary. Also let's not kid ourselves. Movies aren't JUST for film festival goers. Most watchers wouldn't recognise revolutionary film-making if it kicked them in the groin.

To be fair, the pacing is not super great. (it's probably that film's biggest problem) I think a lot of fat during the first half could have been trimmed out in the editing room, but i found the second half so engaging that i can't be mad.

With all that being said, the movie has amazing moments. The 8min long sequence in the camps (undoubtedly the film's highlight) is not just harrowing because of its subject, it's very, very well made. First of all, i REALLY appreciate the film's soundtrack to know when to shut up. Nothing worse than an overbearing tear-jerker soundtrack to ruin a great scene. The lighting, framing, editing all come together with such intensity, you barely breathe through it. The cherry on top being the film's strongest element : the acting.

Kate Winslet is just fantastic during the whole film, and she sells even the least interesting parts. The cast had one big surprise tho, and that was her assistant David played by... ANDY SAMBERG??? When he first appeared on screen my mother and I looked at each other at the same time, both thinking "who the fuck made that decision?! What is HE doing here?". But fuck me i guess, his performance is so genuine, so intense, so powerful, and so out of nowhere considering the actor that we were gobsmacked. This guy is fucking GREAT. And as a jewish actor playing a jewish character, some of his lines made my throat tighten. You can tell he really cares. I hope to see him in more serious projects in the future.

As i explained at the beginning of this post, i went into this movie knowing nothing and expecting nothing. I was just aware that this was a war biopic. So i was really surprised to see just how much the film is about women and feminism.

It's a constant thread during the whole thing. Apart from David, all of the important and active characters are women. They constantly talk about their condition in a way that feels very reel and genuine, and the film highlights how important their sex is in their own personal stories. How they're treated, how they treat others. Sexual violence against women is never shown but is a constant theme.

When Lee and David arrive in a freshly liberated french town, Lee stops a soldier from assaulting a woman in an alley. What does the soldier say? "You think they'd be more grateful." When Lee explores the death camp, she finds a room full of women and girls, who have hid away with some bread distributed by the allied armies. When she sees how they recoil, she takes off her hat and takes her long hair out of her collar, and we see some of the tension in the room dissipate. One of the youngest girls remains stuck in a corner, and doesn't want to be approached. Lee takes a picture of her.

Towards the end of the film, when the higher ups at Vogue explains to her that they can't print her photographs, that the population is already traumatised enough and doesn't need to see these horrors, how people need to move on; this is what she thinks back on. She points to the picture of the girl, and asks "this beaten and raped girl, how is she gonna move on? Ever?" and breaks down into tears. Her last scene in the film (before it jumps back to her son in 1977) is her telling her female friend that she was raped by a family friend as a child, and that her mother, deeply ashamed, told her never to speak of it. So she didn't until that day.

This is the main message of the film. Women and girls are subjected to unbelievable things in times of war AND in times of peace. They're not safe with men they should be able to trust, they're not safe with their allies, they're not safe with the men who are supposed to save them. This is such a rare subject for a war movie, or indeed any movie, to tackle.

As a rape and CSA survivor who also happens to be a blackpilled radfem, i wasn't very surprised by that final "reveal". Much like with yesterday's film. I felt something like this coming. Not to say that it didn't touch me! On the contrary, i was in shambles at the end of the film.

Final rating : ANDYSAMBERG?!?!/10

Lee isn't the best film of the year. It's not even the best holocaust movie of the year. (see: day 2 of my retrospective) But it is, i think, the best feminist film of the year. On top of that, it has great music, great acting, it feels very authentic (THANK YOU for hiring french actors for the french parts), it's educative, and it made me learn about a modern hero i had never heard about. Long live Lee Miller.

This film gets the official Léna seal of approval. Here's a link to the trailer. (i might have gotten a few story details wrong, but i haven't seen this film since it came out, and it's 2h long and pretty dense. Sorry!)

#movie tag #review tag #film yapping tag #radblr #radical feminism #Lee 2023 #Ellen Kuras #Kate Winslet #Léna's originals and additions

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lordgeneralsix · 1 month ago

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i would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on isterik so if you wanted to ramble..... <3

you're probably gonna regret asking unless you actually enjoy hearing my incoherent thoughts but regardless I am holding your hands so tight rn thank you for asking<3

I have a lot of thoughts about them and I'll try to untangle some of them here .. I guess I'll just start w the obvious and say I feel like watering down isterik to "toxic bc Istvan groomed erik" is a pretty dismissive way to talk about such a raw and volatile display of love. people are once again doing what they did with hansry and trying to understand their relationship through a modern lens when it's not that simple, especially since we're missing a lot of information from two very unreliable narrators. I'm not saying istvan didn't foster an unhealthy relationship with erik by taking him in, caring for him like a father would, and being intimate as lovers - he absolutely did. i'm just honestly bored of the discussions around Problematic relationships starting and ending with "that's toxic" as if Bad People aren't capable of loving just as deeply as anyone else especially if their circumstances are a bit... unusual. I mean, why do people do anything? to live and love, right? and no im not saying it's all okay bc they love each other, it's still bad but both can coexist.

it's interesting that we hear different accounts from both on how they met - istvan found erik during a raid and took him in, but we don't know the details. we don't know what situation erik was in, why istvan was so drawn to him, or hell, if maybe erik killed his own parents instead and istvan is just saying that to protect him. this is the story we hear from istvan, but we get two different recountings from erik. one is in kcd1 where he tells henry point blank that istvan killed his parents and he's stronger than his parents ever were, but then in kcd2 he calls henry a liar about istvan killing his parents. this confused me when I first heard it bc I could've sworn he was aware, so I thought maybe it was a retcon. all well and good I guess, but I thought,, well what if it isn't? as far as I'm aware nothing else has been retconned, so why would this be?

so I try to think of it a different way, just to see if that would even work. maybe it might be a key inconsistency of erik's mental state, showing how he's still trying to grapple what the fuck happened that day. I mean, it's hard to recall all the details of a traumatic event, right? especially if it happens to you so young. maybe erik has no recollection of what really happened and trusts what istvan told him. or he knows and he just doesn't need to justify anything to anyone, especially not to henry. maybe in the first game, since istvan is still alive, he plays up the hardened bandit face and says "yeah, istvan killed my parents in cold blood - know that he doesn't fuck around", but after he dies, well, we've seen him. he's thrown into a rage that will eventually consume him. his entire reason for fighting is gone, and henry bringing up something he tried so hard to ignore... well, yeah, id be pissed too.

again... I'm just speculating. in the end it could just be a retcon and I'm going insane over such a minor detail, oh well. we just don't have enough information to make a conclusion, but I guess that's the point. it's like they both said, we don't understand their relationship and we never will.

moving on from that.... since you were so kind to ask I'm gonna throw in a bit of rare lore about myself to kinda connect why isterik is like the light of god to me - in my own writing I try to explore a wide variety of relationships and character behaviours, almost anything goes really because I do believe fiction should be a safe space for writers to explore concepts without it being reflective of them as people.. some of the best stories I've been lucky to experience have been generally pretty dark, unafraid to explore beyond the boundaries of what we're comfortable with,, because well, it's real. and why not. isterik reminds me of one relationship I have - similarly a relationship that can't easily be defined because of the parties' roles in society, the circumstances of their meeting, and of course as two men. so, my understanding of this relationship does stem from my own experience writing these kinds of relationships, which in turn stems from my observations of people around me.

and I do love that honestly. can't give warhorse enough credit for making their characters so believable. what fascinates me about isterik is that they very obviously love each other and treat each other as equals. its obvious that istvan isn't using erik. he doesn't try to hide how much he cares for him.. why would he beg for erik's life instead of his? istvan has been playing the theatrical villain this whole time, but the moment his right hand man is threatened, he breaks. i've briefly mentioned this before but its unnerving how he begs for erik's life. this game once again shows you how your enemies are just as capable of love and fear whether you like it or not, they're people too.

erik is more than some pawn. if istvan wanted to, he could easily replace him. but erik isn't disposable. istvan saw something familiar within erik and only he could drag it out - he built erik up and protected him the way he wished someone would've done for him after his parents were killed by the turks. he was alone and suffered god knows how long until he finally gained some semblance of control in his life, and then he taught erik to never let anyone take that control away... but who was the one who did that to him in the first place? is he talking to erik or himself? istvan himself has a lot of issues, but if you look past his mad rambling there really is some truth to it (a whole other thing to get into on my istvan analysis... somewhere in the future)

along w that i don't believe erik is entirely some helpless thing that doesn't understand what kind of situation he's in. the tragic thing is he was, but that boy is long dead and buried (and something I won't ever forget is how we see a glimpse of erik being normal through godwin's eyes... horse racing? really? that entire sequence was uncomfortable, erik is completely void of emotion, aside from rage of course, I honestly don't believe all of this was istvan's doing. something must've already been wrong with him, which could explain why istvan kept him and fed that hatred). at the same time, I don't believe erik is any worse than istvan, at least not when he's alive (like i found it interesting that when erik freed istvan, he begged him to flee when istvan wanted to kill henry.. idk how to explain, i feel like istvan was the reason he was even able to 'control' his anger. another thing i need to think on more).

istvan is clearly the one pulling the strings of everyone around him - the enabler - while erik is the muscle (no I'm not saying he's not smart but he's not capable of being manipulative like istvan, check their respective roles in society). he won't last long without istvan. his guiding light is gone. istvan and erik make each other stronger (better for them, worse for us), they fight for each other and for their place in the world - just like henry and hans do. they're really not so different, it's true. henry goes to great lengths to avenge his parents, believing it is the righteous thing to do, but so does erik. they were both horribly wronged and will fight to get that control back no matter the cost. they are products of war, extensions of their lords to be used and discarded. they're lucky if anyone cares about them at all in the end. and this is what istvan was trying to protect erik from and warn henry about. they're the same, but morality separates them in their ultimately selfish actions.

morality. that's the difference. hanush said this exactly in the first game - if i recall correctly, that their honour is what separates them from the common bandit. henry and hans believe in honour, it's what stops them from going too far even if they feel otherwise it in their hearts. henry especially can act on these darker thoughts - taking his revenge too far by taking his anger out on his allies and treating his enemies as subhuman... but isterik aren't caught up about imaginary concepts of mortality and honour, or especially in istvan's case, he doesn't fear god. they revel in their daily routine of pillaging and killing those they deem lesser, a threat. more importantly, they're doing it together (cute date ideas or whatever). anyone who threatens the other is in for a world of pain - I mean of course, no one would let their loved ones be threatened, but to the degree to which istvan and erik will go for each other is what most people would consider extreme. istvan was willing to let his hostages be violated just at the mere thought of erik being harmed, erik is hellbent on skinning henry and by extension hans.. and anyone who gets in his way.... which is why I do expect him to be in kcd3 if it happens, probably not as a major antagonist, but like how henry hunted istvan, erik will hunt henry. i don't see erik's story ending well, whatever he ends up doing to henry or even hans. his entire reason for living was taken from him, he'll burn the world and himself with it because that's the kind of person he is (which yk.... as a tragedy enjoyer.... evil emoji).

despite people thinking in terms of extremes with them, i do think they are capable of being normal with each other.. i mean, we've seen it. how tender istvan became when he said goodbye to erik. how erik was hesitant yet calm in his presence. so much left unsaid, we can't even begin to understand what was taken from erik that night. i wonder how long he stayed at istvan's grave after burying him, how often he went back to talk to him or just sit in silence. maybe he never went back at all. im normal about them. and i will be very normal about kcd3.

so anyway tl;dr I'm incredibly biased and I love when love is so so messy and passionate. they do not need a redemption arc or any kind of justification on Why This Relationship Is Ok Actually or why people who enjoy it are also bad people or whatever juvenile discourse people r having. they're unapologetically fucked up and I love them for it. they don't need to change people need to expand their minds and find enlightenment through isterik. or something

but who knows maybe I'm entirely wrong, this is just rambling off the top of my head bc its 2am now and I'm definitely missing a lot that would usually go in a more well thought out post but... I'll get around to that at some point lol. I would love to hear your thoughts as well or if anyone else feels like discussing this further . go crazy with my blessing

#if isterik has 0 fans im dead. they make me sick. i want what they have . i mean what. who said that #ask a simple question get an essay in return i am. so sorry. kinda. i rlly do appreciate the question tho thanks again<3 #hope I understood this question right if you wanted isterik headcanons or smth I need to have a few drinks first lmao #would love to share silly headcanons in general but I feel like people will throw rocks at me so I stay quiet on that .#kcd2 #kcd2 spoilers #istvan toth #isterik #ask six #six dissects #also i don't feel the need to say this but just in case someone sees this and gets the wrong idea... this applies to fiction only ok #we have fun here #no pearl clutching in my house

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homestuckreplay · 3 months ago

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take me down to the pesterlog city where jade’s text is green and john gets all petty

(page 1394-1406)

It’s pesterlog time!!!! In a 12 page spread (1391-1402) there are seven pesterlog pages representing five characters. I feel like I am a medieval peasant attending my first palace banquet. The rich offerings of character moments and variety of colors on display is blowing my gruel-fed brain.

The art also kicks ass this update! Tbh I am going to make a post about the art more generally as I’ve noticed some big changes recently (and some slow changes that are very apparent when jumping back) so for today I’ll just say: look at this super cool art of John exploring LOWAS on page 1395. He’s so clearly questing in a way that the sprite just can’t represent. I would get this framed for my wall.

I’m delighted to get a longer conversation with CG, who I’ve named Reggie. They’re actually fun and creative with their trolling techniques here, and knowing what they look like means I get to imagine this little grey kid grinding their fangs as they tap away on their keyboard furious at a comparatively sweet and clueless guy. They look like a goofy nerd whose bark is way worse than their bite.

‘IT WOULD MAKE ME SICK TO MY HUMAN STOMACH IF I HAD ONE OF YOUR HUMAN STOMACHS’ is VERY funny. Reggie feels similar to the Felt and Midnight Crew in being so over-the-top in their violence that it loops back around to being funny. And John’s reactions are good too – he’s not upset at the trolling like Jade is, he’s hilarious and willing to turn Reggie’s snark back on them. Their willingness to play off each other definitely increases the ‘enemies to lovers’ feeling of this Valentine’s Day conversation.

It is interesting that Rose accepted GA’s offer to be friends (p.1093), and now Reggie is telling John that they’re friends in the future (p.1394). So suddenly the trolls, who act and look textbook malicious at first, are trying to play nice. Are the trolls setting this up in order to double cross the kids in the future? Or are the trolls trying to incorporate the kids into their group and get them to follow some sort of dark trolling agenda? Or are they also just outcast alien kids who troll people because they’re lonely and want some attention? Hard to say when we have only heard from three of them.

There is something amazing about PM’s sword previously being used for vengeance (p.844, 870) and this time when she tries to do similar, she’s interrupted by WV who convinces her to use it to open cans and share food instead. WV may be from the dark kingdom but he feels like a peacemaker between the light and dark sides, refusing to fight against either PM or AR. I mean he is literally followed around by the light of serenity. And now he sits between PM and AR and shares his food and Tab and they all become friends, which honestly, is amazing mayoral work. Solving disputes in the town already. I really think he could build a town just like Spades Slick did.

This view of Dave’s city is cool too, I love the color of the sky! He straight up lies by saying ‘i always keep birds in here its sort of my thing’ (p.1400) and calling it sincere, considering his earlier bird-free room (p.312). He is on way too many layers of irony to decode (i.e. he just says whatever bullshit comes to mind that might be funny with no regard for whether it’s true or false). Which is soooo great for getting to know his character (also he should stop saying slurs).

However, I can see why Dave is annoyed by Rose here. Like he does kind of bring this all on himself by being so ironic all the time and talking about how ‘cool’ his brother apparently is, but, it’s gotta be hard when he’s been telling Rose about fighting his brother on the roof and she’s dismissing that he went through a lot to get the beta to save her, when Jade had it literally handed to her. Rose doesn’t know the details so I’m not mad at her, but it still can’t be easy for Dave to hear that dismissal from a friend.

I do feel like Rose and Jade have this alliance in seeing themselves as the two who know what’s going on, with the combined power of Jade’s visions and Rose’s perceived high intelligence. This whole update is very gender roles but this does evoke page 838, where Rose is far more aware of Jade’s powers and the type of information she has access to than John or Dave are.

Meanwhile in Dave and John land...

TG: i should probably text him soon TG: see whats up TG: because TG: i love him

Straight up adorable. Don’t even pretend to me that there’s a shred of irony in this. I love how close these guys are. This is sort of the first declaration of love in Homestuck unless you count John’s telling Liv Tyler on his Armageddon poster that he loves her (p.223).

We specifically don’t get to see Rose’s conversation with a troll (yet), but I think we can assume she’s talking to GA, probably the only troll she respects enough to prioritize over Dave. We also don’t see where in the Medium Rose is; John assumes that she’s also in the Land of Wind and Shade, but according to Rose, ‘It’s hard to say for certain. But I think I like it here.’ (p.1402). If the Medium has four planets in between the light and dark (p.703) (holy shit half the story ago) then it makes sense for the players to all start on different planets and have to find each other, so we could be getting ANOTHER super aesthetically cool land within the next few weeks. Or teased repeatedly until the end of the act, who knows.

The puppets (including a wizard puppet) clinging to the totem lathe on page 1403 is a very good gag. Also, ‘eggy loking thign’ (p.240) spotted here in the menu?? Implying a limited set of Sburb entry items?? Also 2,000 starting build grist for Jade to use compared to 20 for Rose, and a bunch more gizmos and gadgets available to deploy, including a disc with a piece of green grist (?) and two devices shaped like captchalogue/strife cards; a further tease of what’s to come.

Finally, I’m so glad Hussie agrees with me that there’s no fucking way Jade knows how to clean a house. Even if she has absorbed gender roles and sees cleaning as a woman’s activity (p.1405) she definitely was not taught to do that and designed some kind of robot to do it for her.

#homestuck #reaction #adiosToreador is definitely named Wayne #as for grimAuxiliatrix? definitely a Cool Name like Carson #chrono

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advantage-zweig · 3 months ago

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The world desperately needs more Artrick abo (And by the world I mean me) Alpha Patrick & Omega Art ofc 🙂‍↕️

omg i knowww! like i get why it weirds so many people out but it's just such a classic, you know? 🥰

anyway, i feel like i'll probably be answering quite a few abo asks in my time with this blog (not that i'm complaining), so i'm probably gonna start small that way i've got plenty of room to expand.

CW: very brief mention of an unpleasant sexual encounter, explicit topics but no smut this time (still mdni please)!

thanks for the ask! XOXO 💕

in this universe, most of the people that art and patrick encounter are surprised when they find out the two aren't already mates.

they just seem so in tune with each other, and they don't hesitate to do a lot of the things that a typical alpha/omega pair is "supposed" to do in a relationship.

for one, patrick seems to think it's his job to fight off any alpha that makes art even the slightest bit uncomfortable. . . and also a lot of the ones that don't.

it's not that he doesn't trust art to be alone with them, he's just heard so many horror stories about alphas at parties who pretend to be nice and he doesn't want to see his best friend get hurt.

but art is so pretty, and a lot of these guys have been after him for years, meaning patrick has to step in a lot. a bit too much, really. and since word travels fast at the academy, people have started calling him art's "guard dog," or his "chaperone" and saying hurtful shit like, "i don't get why you care so much, zveig. he's not even yours."

and when art starts sneaking out of their dorm junior year to escape his "chaperone's" chronic cock-blocking, he's unpleasantly surprised to find out that patrick was right. . . about everything.

he shuffles back to his room after only a week of his rebellious streak with bruises on his hips and this alpha's degrading words still ringing in his ears, and he finds patrick wide awake and waiting for him when he opens the door.

patrick looks upset at first, but when he sees art standing there with tears in his eyes and mumbling, "he didn't take care of me like you do," patrick doesn't hesitate to open his arms and pull art down into bed with him for the night.

after that, he takes his role as art's protecter even more seriously, if that's even possible.

he does still let him hook up with betas and occasionally other omegas, when the mood strikes. but still, he has to approve them first, and he usually has full control over the little details like when and where it happens.

art doesn't complain anymore. truthfully, he's grown to appreciate how patrick's always looking out for him. art would let him decide what clothes he puts on every morning if pat ever wanted to. the protectiveness is obviously just something alphas do for their omega best friends.

and so is shoving old t-shirts in the bottom of their backpacks so they have something to bury their face in when they get moved to the academy heat rooms.

you know, just normal friend things.

honestly, i don't think they realized they were basically already dating until the hotel room with tashi.

i feel like she probably clocked them in two seconds flat, and everything she did past that point was to have a little fun pulling their heads out of their asses.

i might have to make a whole seperate post on what happened that night if y'all are interested, but by the state of art's neck the next morning when they made it to the finals match, i'm pretty sure you can already guess.

this was just a little taste of all the ideas i've got swirling around in my brain for abo artrick, so if you want more of them, please don't hesitate to ask!

XOXO 😊💖

#artrick smut #art donaldson x patrick zweig #art donaldson #patrick zweig #artrick #artrick blurb #abo artrick #challengers fanfic #challengers #challengers smut #alpha patrick #omega art #tashi duncan #challengers 2024

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trashisstillhere · 8 days ago

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Meme with Serenity let’s goooo

Her current design vs her first old design

Yes, that is really, in fact, her first ever design lol.

Og:

Read here if ya wanna know a bit about Serenity’s design and creation history. If not, you can just skip! /lh /nf

- Serenity was first created in 2019/2020. Back then, she was actually my ninjasona (even though she didn’t really look anything close to me and most things about her was completely different from me but hey, nothing wrong with some fun, right?) and her ninja design looked closer to Randy’s but with a few different details and a jacket with a hood and everything.

- Her last name was Bells instead of Peterson and she was one of the past ninjas before Randy. I even gave her random siblings who I never drew because they weren’t even that important, no names, nothing. Just some shit I randomly threw in there. Her backstory was different from how it is now, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows at the end of it though….what do I mean? Well.. let’s just say, her ninja journey ended in tragedy.

Her old first ever design and ref!

(Yes, this really is it!! This was made in the app called sketch instead of ibis paint years ago! On a oldass tablet too instead of the iPad I have now!… How do I even still have this? Well.. I just found it while looking through some old shit in old chats on discord lolololol-)

(She was actually drawn on a laptop first in ms paint before on the old tablet, both devices that I don’t have anymore :’).. oh well, the old tablet was completely broken at that time anyway)

- btw, the whole wearing the jacket while having the suit on idea may or may have not been kinda inspired by the way Spider verse Miles did it but without the shorts and shoes. I thought it would be cool-

- later on, I made her just be an oc instead, along with a redesign later on and finally her own civilian/normal attire and form. Now she no longer was just one of the past ninjas or whatever, she was a ninja of her own in the same year as Randy! Along with her own villain and all that stuff!

Tho the redesign ofc wasn’t the current one she has now, it was a bit more different! Unfortunately I don’t really have like an actual picture of it buuut I went on to try finding one old drawing of her that could show it perfectly. (I used to have ALOT art of her but due to something in the past, I lost them all :’’)…)

I did find one that did soooo..here ya go! Along with the first old ass drawing of her normal form!

(The first one is from an old drawing in 2022, it’s supposed to be her in Chibiverse style. Yea you heard me-

The second one is another oldass image I got to find from old stuff on discord hehe-)

Ya see, her ninja design back then was…something. You can tell I still kept a few parts from it in the current design!..

Anyway where was I?.. oh right!

- Her redesigned ninja suit was a bit of a mess at one point as you can see here…and then her ninja suit turned to this, the same one she still has now. and then her normal form changed recently…and now she is the way she is today, all nice and better!

- I DO like the part of the first old ref where it says that she almost put a lot of kitty stickers on the Nomicon once, that is honestly cute, I might still keep that part as canon.. with her own Nomicon or/and also Randy’s? Idk…eheh.

- Serenity was my first ever Rc9gn ninja oc.. well exactly not really. When I say that, I don’t mean like she is the FIRST ever Rc9gn oc I have ever made in my entire life! Oh no!… My ACTUAL first ever rc9gn oc was a whole other girl made back when I was a kid and had first watched the show in my childhood… (I can talk about that said old first oc if anyone’s interested-)

What I actually mean by that is that Serenity is the first rc9gn ninja OC I have made AFTER not having one for so many years later on.. before Seth, Esther and the rest, SHE was the one ninja to be created first. She has gone through lots of changes since then and man, has she grown.

That’s the main reason why she means a lot to me. If it weren’t for her existence, none of my other ninja ocs would have ever existed.

My daughterrerrrrr /silly

If you read all of this then wow, damn. I don’t know what to say, I honestly didn’t think anyone would take their time to look through this-

#rc9gn #ninja show #rc9gn oc #art #drawing #doodles #meme #randy cunningham 9th grade ninja oc #randy cunningham 9th grade ninja

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boycarofchilladelphia · 2 months ago

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It's 🎵 Stupid Severance Theory Time🎵!

I've posted this as a comment a couple of times in various forms, but I might as well memorialize my hope in something more concrete and add some "extra" details for dramatic effect.

So Milchick tells us about the Grakuppan, right? And then when Mark talks about work-life balance, he turns mournfully towards the iceberg painting and stares at it. What if, instead of this being a somewhat heavy-handed attempt at getting us to understand Milchick as the iceberg with nearly unlimited depths, there's a more simple explanation? What if Milchick is from somewhere that has lots of icebergs and that painting reminds him of home? And what if that place were somewhere Nordic where the surrounding traditions of Scandinavian royalty would be easily accessible to him should he need to talk about them?

In that same episode, we see Milchick shorten Ms. Huang's fellowship ("I thought I had until the end of the quarter") and send her to the Gunnel Eagan Empathy Center in Svalbard.

One problem: this is the first time we've heard of Gunnel Eagan. It's a good female Swedish name, but Gunnel doesn't fit the pattern. Kier Eagan is a combo of two rather Irish names, and we know that Kier fought in the American Civil War, so his family likely was part of the 1845 and onward Irish immigration into the States. He eventually marries Imogen (some have theorized as part of a Grakuppan and she's a child bride under the influence of ether; that's super messed up and I don't doubt it) and thus starts the noble Eagan line with Myrtle and Ambrose, etc. And from then on, places in Kier, PE start to get named after Eagans. Pips is likely a reference to Phillip Eagan, Myrtle has a school for girls named for her, Mark lives in Baird Creek Manor, Irving lives in Leonora Lake, etc. Which makes sense; Kier was literally a company town that was built up around Lumon's founding hq; the Eagans are legend there.

But who is Gunnel? Nothing around Kier, PE is named for her. No, she's got an empathy center in Svalbard named for her, where they work on somewhat nebulous reforms. Which honestly doesn't sound very Lumon-like. So what if that's a ruse? What if Milchick knows that it's wrong to steal children from their homes and knows that he'll be removed from whatever project Cold Harbor is the end of, so he leverages his position to send Ms Huang to the only place he knows she'll be safe: his hometown, Svalbard. Maybe he made up the empathy center and that's why Gunnel isn't a part of the Eagan history. Maybe there's no way to return her to her parents, but Seth Milchick will be damned if he won't send her to his second best option: his own parents/family.

TL;DR: Milchick made up the Gunnel Eagan Empathy Center and sent Ms. Huang there to have a life with his family in Svalbard.

Yes I know it probably isn't true, and I know it's not entirely in line with Milchick's kind of moral deconstruction as he learns to stand up for himself, etc. Did you read the first sentence of this post?

But man, I want it to be true so bad.

#severance season 2 #severance #seth milchick #eustace huang #severance spoilers

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tafferling · 8 months ago

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Dying Light: The Beast Demo Impression

Imagine, if you will, a Taff who finds a life saving sort of affection in a game named Dying Light, followed by nearly ten years of dedication to one Kyle Crane. If you’d told that same Taff she’d get to go to Techland HQ after Crane’s return was announced in Dying Light: The Beast, she’d have called you silly.

And yet.

I had the privilege (the WHAT ON EARTH, how) to watch about forty minutes of Dying Light: The Beast today. It was prefaced by an in-person intro from Tymon Smektała (which was about the most heartfelt thing I’ve ever heard, genuinely), and shown to us on a big-ass screen.

During those forty-or-so-minutes I might have shuffled in and out of this here physical realm a few times.

The demo covered an early mission in the game. Here’s what happened:

We start in a small village and tightly forested woodland, a fading day around us. Crane is off to follow a lead, given by the new voice in our ear, named Olivia. The lead will take him to an industrial area. Eventually. But FIRST I get to feast on a gorgeous sunset, lots of smooth as heck parkour, and honestly when we ducked through a small apartment on the way, I wanted to say “Babe, pls stop I GOTTA TAKE PICTURES!”.

I don’t kid. Techland was not fibbing when they mentioned handcrafted; the attention to detail I was criminally denied the chance to rub my face all over has my hopes so far up, they’re tap dancing in the clouds. And then those very same hopes were given wings when two insanely talented artists walked us through how these environments have come together.

Seriously. I can’t wait to get absolutely nothing done in the game because I Must See All And Perceive All.

Anyhoo— back to the demo.

Night falls—as it so likes to do—and we’re warned about how the Volatiles and Freaks (at least I think I remember this right, I was often distracted by, you know, I mean, yeah) are difficult to avoid out here. All that dense woodland makes for shit sight lines and all. But Crane can be subtle and that means I will finally get to hide in the bushes with him come game release. Yay me!

One sec. Spacing out.

What was I saying?

Oh yeah. Stealth. Volatiles.

OKAY, LISTEN— the sound design in the night-time section of the game was sublime. The snuffing and clicking of the Volatiles. The snap of twigs. The rustle of leaves. Stealth is the jam I like to put on my various bread-adjacent baked goods and this was delicious.

And pretty. Crane’ll be craning (hehe) his head up a lot ‘cause those stars need gazing.

But it’s also a night full of creepy crawlers and so we head towards the nearest safe house, which, in good old Dying Light fashion, needs a bit of TLC. Secure. Remove Infected. Find a spare fuse. Mess with a Charger and his buddies (the handgun came out at that moment and while I do not approve of wasting bullets, I approve of the reload animations). And, finally, plug the newly acquired fuse in and Let There Be Light.

The layout of the safe zone and the tasks to complete brought me back to Harran. I loved the safe zones there; each had its unique look, unique vibe; and was just different enough in what you had to do to secure it to make them their own little experiences. I hope we’ll see this make a comeback.

(Yes, I have not yet mentioned much about Crane. Stick with me. I’ll get there.)

After a snooze (well deserved), we continue to the industrial area, where the demo shifts to showing off guns even more so than before. Honestly, I liked the Dying Light (1) guns. I liked Crane with a gun. He’d always struck me as the type of man who’d know about 500+ ways to kill his fellows; and firearm mastery would’ve been right at the top. So. Yeah. I do like their inclusion.

I also fucking know he’ll keep them holstered for the majority of my game time, because pssst, the bow is right here, darling. We’re using that, quit pouting.

(Hey, she’s still not talking about Crane, is she okay? you may ask. Ha. No.)

We fight our way through a bunch of the Baron’s men, which eventually leads to one of those idiots shooting out some sorta electrical box. There’s a bit of a ruckus over something escaping, a few angry roars thrown in from a distance, and as we decide to investigate we run into a— scientist type? At least I think I’m remembering this right.

And now I’ll talk about Crane.

Beware: loads of personal thoughts here; not based entirely on canon.

Kyle Crane might have once been a man who thought murder is still a big deal. Kyle Crane also might have once been a man who’d roll with the punches, always coming up swinging, but, you know. First he rolls. Then he swings.

Now? After whatever happened to him between the Following and his capture, leading to thirteen years of being experimented on in what I suspect’ll be a cage of sorts?

First of all, is murder still going to be a big deal? (No, henchmen don’t count; ludonarrative dissonance wants a word).

Yeah, he doesn’t straight up kill our new scientist friend. Just threatens him. Effectively. But there was a bit of disconnect in how Crane behaved leading up to the solution of the interrogation (him getting what he wanted) and what he eventually did. Namely punch the guy out, rather than kill him.

I expected our scientist friend to die. I was surprised when he didn’t.

And I expect Crane to no longer roll, but to swing first and not give the narrative the chance to get the first lick in.

All of which I’m deducting from how they’ve leaned heavily into giving him the voice of a man who’s been thoroughly wrung out by that very same narrative. His tone is dark. Clipped. Gone are the expletives; the colourful fucks; and how everyone’s an asshole because that’s just a mood and a half.

And honestly? I don’t know how I feel about it. Yet. Sure, I’m all for the pent up anger we hear whenever he swings a weapon, but—

I love Crane because he wasn’t the moody, broody post-apo dude. You know the Imma chew some nails for breakfast and then get all growly over my (insert trauma here). The Joels, basically (and I gotta hell to the no on him).

So, no, I don’t know how I feel about this yet. I’m approaching this with trepidation over how they might have removed what made Crane Crane; all in the pursuit of being darker and ‘more mature’, as it’s been said.

BUT— this was just forty minutes. That’s not much. And even if it ends up being true, I’ve still got, like, I dunno— at least another ten good writing years in me to bring that man back to the light.

. . .

You know what, I am beginning to warm up to this idea. Please. Carry on.

EDIT: Since I’ve originally written this, the new dev blog came out and through that (along with what I’ve heard on site) have made me a lot less anxious about Crane having gone the way of the Complete Grouch. And just as I’ve been getting ideas.

ANYWAY

Our scientist friend got punched out, though not before he’s given us intel in how there’s a Freak here—the thing that just escaped, I presume, I was too busy collecting all the marbles I kept dropping whenever Crane opened his damn mouth to be sure—and how we can lure it.

Next stop(s): get freaky science gas, hop into a truck, drive freaky science gas around the countryside, and then jam it into a freaky science apparatus!

(I have theories.)

But wait! Ambush! By more of the Baron’s men, no less. They, much like any other good collection of henchmen, have not learned from their rag-dolling buddies’s endless corpses and continue to think attacking Crane is a Good Idea.

Ah, well.

Then, finally, boss time! A Behemoth enters the arena (which is a junk yard, by the way) and it’s bringing with it a certain 10/10 Demolisher vibe paired with more freaky science. Someone’s obviously been tinkering on this gentle-boulder, leaving it with tubes attached to its body that give it this wonderful bioengineered look I’m so endlessly fond of.

We fight!

It’s not going so well.

Now I’m suspecting we’re seeing a method on how to build Crane’s fury up enough to unle—

No. I am not writing that. You can’t make me. You cannot make me say the line, I refuse. I’ll just use increasingly silly alternatives, how’s that?

We get run over one too many times and Crane finally pops the lid off his fury. This applies the same orange filter as the one we got whenever Aiden redlined his biomarker (during a scripted sequence) and allows Crane to literally pick up a concrete barrier and lob it at the Behemoth.

(You know, I bet that feels really good; delicious payback after getting car after car after car and fridge after fridge after fridge thrown at him before.)

Then he goes toe to toe with it, only to wrap up the fight by pulling the Behemoth’s head off its shoulders. Not cleanly, I’d like to add.

Soooo— what? We’ll be building fury in a number of different ways, then get unhinged and unlock the opportunity to finish with a flair? Cool cool. I’m in. Or so I’m thinking this’ll go. I genuinely do not know the ins and outs.

What I do know though is that I lost all my remaining marbles after the fight. The camera fucking zooms out and I get to see the whole Crane. And, look, you can’t expect me to go to this event and be perfectly reasonable about this; about seeing this man I’ve dedicated nearly a decade to and remain normal. If you do, why are you even reading this. HAVE YOU MET ME?!

I have no clue if this means we’ll get third-person cutscenes or if this is a cinematic choice done solely for the demo, but a Taff may dream. Right?

The cutscene ends with Crane extracting something from the Freak into a jet injector.

(Again, I have theories. Fury Power Progression? Fury Power Suppression?)

But anyway. Third-Person Cutscene. Taff is on the floor (not literally, but metaphysically) and the lights come on again and I SWEAR TO GOD, I will play this game at day one come hell and high water, and I am so, so, so unbelievably grateful to every single person ever involved in creating this franchise because you’re all a bunch of heroes to me.

:exhales:

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the weather. How did I manage to forget to mention the weather. We got so sopping wet in the rain. It reminded me of the heavy rainfall out in the countryside which I missed so terribly. Cannot wait to see how they've improved the weather system in this one.

From The Following:

#Dying Light #Dying Light: The Beast #CraneIsBack #Kyle Crane #taff goes to techlandhq

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andreabandrea · 1 year ago

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The AndreaBandrea UTY post

I need some place to put my Undertale Yellow (UTY for short) thoughts & criticism, and this is my blog, so I might as well put them here. If you don't want to see constructive criticism about Undertale Yellow, don't click below the readmore!

Pretty much everyone I talk to really likes this game, and honestly, I'm really sad that I don't like it more. I like some parts of it quite a bit! But I have mixed feelings about other parts-- I think the writing and characterization could have been a little more impactful than they were, and I’ll be discussing that here. I don’t want to just rag on this game without expressing suggestions and parts that I do like in more detail, so those will be covered as well.

I also want to add a disclaimer that I don't have negative feelings towards the development team or fans of this game in the slightest. I have nothing but respect for the creators of Undertale Yellow. This project was obviously a massive undertaking with a lot of love behind it, and I'm glad to see that it's found success and a community of people who do enjoy it.

The reason I’m writing this post is that, again, I liked parts of this game and wish I enjoyed it more. If I didn’t like it at all, I just wouldn’t engage with it at all anymore. I also haven’t really seen any other people expressing constructive criticism on the game’s writing, so it’s felt more important for me to express these thoughts, be heard, and see if others feel the same way.

The Good

I'll start off with the things I like. The art, the animation, and the music are all fantastic. I was very impressed by the battle backgrounds and the little touches, like the way Clover runs. Clover doing things like reaching for other’s hands, giving fistbumps, drawing their weapon, changing their expression at times-- they feel very dynamic and fun to play as.

The music is really catchy and fun. I love the iterations on the battle theme-- Snowdin’s battle theme having bells, for example.

I also had fun with most of the fights in the game! I liked the unique mechanics that came into play (e.g. the lasso in North Star's battle). I think that changing the way Clover attacks compared to Frisk feels organic and fun.

I also love the mail system. Ever since you could deliver and receive letters in Paper Mario 64, I’ve been hooked on mail as a storytelling system in video games. I think the letters you receive are interesting and clever, and it’s a great way to keep past characters relevant in lieu of a cell phone.

I’m going to be discussing criticism of the characters later, so I’m going to take a moment to talk a little about things I liked about them. I really like Martlet’s optimism and belief in humans. Starlo made me laugh quite a few times and the Feisty Five have a great dynamic with each other. A lot of the background characters in the game are fun-- I like the one who serves you at the Honeydew Resort. The fact that you can go back to these vendors later on and get four new topics to talk about is fantastic and makes the world feel a lot more alive.

The Slightly Less-Good (and more disclaimers)

The writing is where the game falls short for me-- and it’s sad for me, because the writing is the heart of Undertale. I don’t think that the writing is bad by any means! I like the characters and story well enough, but- again- I just wish that I liked them more. I’ll try to incorporate suggestions so this isn’t just a total downer post without anything backing it up.

I want to express something about the ‘suggestions’ that I’ll be offering after the criticism. I know that Undertale Yellow is now out, and the team isn’t going to go back and change it now, and that’s totally fine. I don’t want to make it sound as if the team should change Undertale Yellow just because I have some reservations about it. I’m just one fan out of many. In the very off chance that a member of the Undertale Yellow development team is reading this--

First of all, hi!

Second of all, I know that changing major parts of Undertale Yellow at this point is very unrealistic, and I wouldn’t want you to. If anything, I’m honored you’re reading my ramblings at all. I’d be touched if you’d be willing to take some of my words to heart as you move onto your next creative projects.

The reason I’m including suggestions, therefore, isn’t because I think that the team should or must make these changes, but because I don’t want to just sound excessively negative about this game without offering a little feedback.

I don’t presume that my criticism and suggestions are objectively correct or better than what the Undertale Yellow team created. This is my personal blog, and these are my personal rambly thoughts about Undertale Yellow. The reason I’m including so many disclaimers is because I’ve gotten into discourse before due to poorly thought-out posts about Undertale, and I hope to avoid that this time. I don’t want to just not post something on my own blog, though, because I’m afraid it could be misconstrued or possibly upset somebody. So, I’m trying to discuss this as carefully as I can.

As one final disclaimer, I'll say that I know that it was more likely than not that I'd be at least a little disappointed by Undertale Yellow. The original Undertale was a very important game for me, and very little could reach that standard. (I think this is one reason why Toby decided to do Deltarune, a sort of AU/spinoff rather than a full-on "Undertale 2", and I respect that decision.)

I also think that quite a bit of my criticism is subjective-- several of the characters didn't fully click with me and several of the jokes just didn't land for me, personally. More people than you might think just didn’t connect with the regular Undertale, either. I’ll be talking a little about my subjective opinion on characters, but I’ll try to explain why I feel the way I do rather than just say, “XYZ character sucks because they’re lame, moving on.”

With that said, the post. I’ll be addressing my criticisms from smallest to largest. To begin, I’ll recap the plot of UTY to better analyze aspects that I do and don’t quite like. Spoilers abound.

Undertale Yellow Plot Recap!!!!

The central story of UTY, to my memory and understanding, is as follows:

In the past, a fallen human being went on a rampage in Snowdin and hurt Kanako, the daughter of Chujin, a former royal scientist and monster who happens to be a boss monster. Dalv, an unrelated monster, was also hurt in this incident and sealed himself away in the Ruins in a self-imposed isolation. Chujin’s family (presumably him or Kanako, but not Ceroba, as she doesn’t recognize Dalv) felt bad about this and left him corn from Starlo’s farm as a gift. But, when Chujin died, the corn gifts stopped coming.

Stepping back a bit, after the incident, Chujin developed a deep hatred for humanity. He invented a security robot called Axis and told it to go kill the human. Axis did this (and we will return to this later). Chujin kept the soul (at least, for a time) to experiment on.

At some point in this, Axis failed to impress Asgore and Chujin was fired as the royal scientist. At some point as well, he began to teach Martlet how to build puzzles. Martlet got a job in the royal guard and Chujin disapproved because humans are very dangerous.

Due to experimenting on his own boss monster soul in an attempt to find a way to turn regular monsters into boss monsters so that monsterkind could potentially stand up to the threat of humanity, Chujin wound up very ill and then passed away. He left video tapes to his wife, Ceroba, asking her to finish his research. However, he asked her to leave Kanako out of this so she could live a normal life.

Ceroba agreed to finish this research, but Kanako found out about it and asked to be experimented on because she, like her father, has the power of a boss monster. Ceroba agreed to experiment on her, which injured Kanako and caused her to ‘fall down’. Ceroba sent the near-death Kanako to Dr. Alphys, the new royal scientist, who was collecting ‘fallen down’ monsters for her own experiments with determination.

Plot summary over. I’ll take a closer look at some of these aspects going forward.

UTY Plot Criticism

I don’t feel like this is a bad story, necessarily. With that said, it doesn’t feel quite as tied together as Undertale’s story does, and I think certain aspects don’t land.

First, I feel that the majority of the plot elements about Chujin & Kanako get dumped on you at the last minute. You might be thinking that the story about Chara & Asriel is also dumped on you at the last minute-- and to an extent, this is true. You do get a massive amount of information regarding their story near the end of the game, in the True Lab.

However, Chara & Asriel's story is a massive part of the narrative from the very beginning. You meet 'Asriel' (Flowey) in the very beginning of the game. Toriel is in the Ruins due to the fallout of Chara & Asriel's deaths. Asgore and the monsters are trying to kill Frisk and steal their soul because of this, and the royal guard has taken it up as their mission. Sans is aware of an anomaly that will end everything (implied to be the player), and he would have 'killed Frisk where they stand' had he not made a promise to Toriel. And so on.

I’ll be reviewing criticism of the game’s plot in sections themed around each major character. I will be discussing suggestions about each character in their respective section here, as I discuss things I didn’t quite like about each character, my suggestions are intrinsically tied to why I didn’t quite like them.

Dalv

The connections between characters and the Chujin & Kanako plot feel a bit tenuous to me. Similarly to Toriel, Dalv is in a self-imposed isolation in the Ruins due to a major incident in his past. He fears humans due to the attack he suffered in Snowdin, and he suffers loneliness after losing his friend (who left him corn). When he sees Clover, he wonders if this is “some sort of haunting” (implying he knows that the human who attacked him was killed).

In the pacifist route, Clover can prove to Dalv that not all humans are evil and Dalv can move out and learn how to trust people again. This becomes a recurring theme-- Clover, pure of heart, proving to monsters that humanity isn’t that bad after all.

However, Dalv then disappears from the story. His motivation is to basically be left alone, but once you prove to him that humanity isn’t so bad, his role in the story is essentially complete.

I feel that, by comparison, Toriel’s motivation is more active-- to protect humans who fall down from Asgore. It’s this motivation that drives her to return at the end of the true pacifist route and ultimately make the true ending of Undertale possible.

Dalv’s passiveness makes him a weaker character to me. Now that you’ve proven that you’re his friend and humanity isn’t so bad, I would have liked to have seen him take an active motivation to protect his friend or help them in some way. We don’t have to copy Undertale beat for beat and have him dramatically save Clover from Asgore or anything, but it would have been nice to see him vouch for Clover in some way at some point.

Now, for the final time, I know that UTY is released and major changes aren’t likely. Some of my suggestions are “I would have liked to see this, but this change would require redoing the entire game,” which I don’t think should or could be done at this stage. This is just daydreaming and- if I’m praising myself highly- potential considerations for the devs’ future works (and the works of any other creatives who are reading this).

With this proposed major change to Dalv’s character out of the way, I’ll suggest instead the most minimal possible change that I would like to see, so my suggestions don’t feel entirely like just daydreaming.

I really like how Dalv sends Clover a letter about his moving out to Snowdin. This is active of him in terms of motivation-- Clover is his friend and he wants to keep in touch with his friend. I’d be absolutely thrilled to see a little bit of extra dialogue for him in an update. After you go back to Snowdin and see him, I think the dialogue he already has is totally fine! But, I’d be really happy if he’d take initiative and tell Clover a little more about his experience with the past human, or invite them to rely on him, too.

Martlet

Martlet felt… a bit restrained in terms of her writing, to me. I think that one aspect of Undertale’s writing is that it’s not afraid to go over the top. Papyrus isn’t just silly, he wears a costume every day and cartoon eyes pop out of his head when he’s surprised. Undyne isn’t just determined, she aspires to be a badass anime heroine. I like Martlet just fine, but she never had a moment where she really stood out to me in this way.

Martlet’s defining traits are that she likes puzzles, she loves reading and abiding by the rules of the royal guard, and she believes in humanity and wants to help Clover. As I said before, I really like this optimism and belief. I’d like to see more of it.

Near the end of the true pacifist route, Martlet says that she was taught in the royal guard that humans are scary, but Clover proved to her that humans are kind. This felt very abrupt to me at the time-- we know that Chujin disapproved of her joining the royal guard due to his own trauma, but Martlet had no personal involvement in the last human’s violent actions.

Martlet doesn’t seem to have any reason to dislike humans more than any other monster. We learn in her diary that she essentially joined the royal guard out of a desire to help people and build puzzles, and also because she needed a job.

If she’s just supposed to be a representative of the average monster and their feelings toward humanity, and her growing to like Clover is meant to represent how all of monsterkind could grow to like humankind, that would be one thing-- but I think that she specifically is meant to represent a person who wholeheartedly believes that humans can be good and that humans and monsters can live in harmony. In the no mercy route, she repeatedly pleads to Clover to do better, that they don’t have to act this way, that she wants to help them. That’s not the response of the average monster, who fights Clover or tries to flee from them.

I believe the intention is that Chujin & Martlet represent either end of an ideology axis (no pun intended). Chujin believes all humans are evil no matter what, but Martlet believes that humans can choose to be good. But why does she choose to believe in humans other than a sense of personal optimism?

I would have liked to have seen some defining event that made Martlet choose to believe in the goodness of humanity. I would have liked to have her being kind and optimistic to a fault be more of a defining trait-- to have that go over the top in an Undertale-style way. A lot of her interactions with other characters just personally weren’t very memorable to me.

Martlet spends a lot of the game sidelined. She loses you in the Mines. She gets thrown in jail in the Wild East. She has to go back to Snowdin once you're freed. Yes, she's there for you in the true pacifist route, but she's otherwise pretty absent through the neutral/true pacifist routes.

I recognize that the main characters in Undertale can be absent after you leave their respective sections of the game. However, you're able to call Papyrus & Undyne as much as you want, and you get a major hang-out (or “date”) with each of them and Alphys which gives time to expand on their backstory and character arc. Martlet doesn't get that. We even get a little bit of time to hang out with Dalv after we become his friend, but Martlet shoves us on a boat and hurries us to the next area as soon as we beat her. And sure, we get to talk to her on the boat, but it’s just a bit of silly dialogue-- it doesn’t really expand on her character. It feels like a missed opportunity.

So, yes, my major suggestion on her would be to zoom in more on her belief in you and let her be a liiiiitle sillier and more over the top, and give more opportunity for Clover to hang out with her.

At this stage, however? In this proposed minor ‘dialogue update’, I’d be really excited to see a little something more from her. Maybe a letter? She does send you one, but only in the neutral route to tell you to meet her on top of the apartments. It would be a good opportunity to either let her be silly or explain a bit about when she came to want to believe in humans-- or both, ideally.

Starlo

I honestly have very little to say on Starlo. He seems to be the fan favorite, and I did find his section fun! Ultimately, though, he's just kind of… there? I mean, he's on the periphery of Ceroba's (and Chujin and Kanako’s) story because he's her childhood friend (and his family grew the corn that Chujin gives to Dalv), and yes, he later on reminds her that she can still choose to be a better person because he also almost killed Clover! However, every monster in the game almost killed Clover.

There’s nothing wrong with having a silly character who wears a costume and isn’t a major player in the plot. I feel like Starlo is similar to Papyrus in this way. But Papyrus isn’t just a goofball, he’s the monster in Undertale who believes unerringly in Frisk & the player’s ability to do better because he firmly believes that you can make anything happen if you just try. This belief helps elevate Papyrus from comic relief to an actual rounded character.

I don’t feel like Starlo has any sort of strong conviction like that. We do learn that he wants to bring hope to the Underground by roleplaying as a sheriff in the Wild East town, giving them a slice of (supposed) surface life. I think this is fine, but I’d like to see a bit more of it. In the no mercy route, he does bravely stand against you because he’s a sheriff and it’s his job to bring justice to murderers like Clover.

My expectation when I first met him, a fellow cowboy (gender-neutral), was that he’d have his own ideas about justice. I expected that he would clash with Clover about these ideals, and neither of them would be quite right or wrong-- and this would prove that justice can’t be measured mathematically, and one outcome can’t be applied to all situations.

But, he’s not at all bad the way he is. He has a lot of fans, after all. The minor change I’d suggest now that the game is out is that I’d be interested in learning why the cowboy aesthetic specifically appealed to him. Maybe a diary in his room explaining that Westerns are the epitome of ‘justice’ to him? I’d like to see a peek into the motivation that transformed an ordinary farm boy into someone who could bravely stand against a murderous human.

Ceroba

I’ll be honest. I want to like Ceroba, but I don’t.

I understand that there's an attempt to mirror Asgore in that the war against humanity, in general, has taken Ceroba's partner and her child from her-- and ultimately, Clover forgives her and helps her learn how to move on. It's about letting go, just like Undertale. I get that. But Ceroba’s story doesn't land for me, personally. In order to talk about Ceroba, I need to talk about her husband, Chujin, because Ceroba spends so much of the story acting out Chujin's will.

Whereas monsters in Undertale do attempt to kill Frisk and steal their soul, and Asgore has killed other children before, it's framed in a very 'video game' violence sort of way (again, Undertale has these meta elements). Ultimately, in the True Pacifist route, none of Frisk's deaths have stuck, and Asgore's actions- while reprehensible- allowed for Asriel to break the barrier once and for all.

Chujin, in the video tapes he leaves for Ceroba, implies that Axis’s murder of the human- presumably a child, like Clover and Frisk- was very violent and bloody. It feels a tiny step beyond the 'video game violence' aspect, for me. While it’s shown that Chujin regrets this, it still doesn’t change the way that this violence is expressed in the game.

Instead of giving the human’s soul right to Asgore to bring monsterkind closer to freedom, Chujin- who has already been fired by Asgore, I should add- chooses to keep the soul and experiment with it.

This is very selfish, even though he has good intentions. He’s told nobody else about his experiments with his soul at this point- not even his wife- and Asgore has told him to cease all activities as the royal scientist.

While monsters do want Frisk's soul for their own selfish reasons, they notably do not butcher them violently, succeed in this, and still try to get painted with the same quirky and fun brush that the other characters get.

After Chujin dies, he leaves detailed instructions for his wife to continue his work-- and although he says "don't involve Kanako", he leaves her all the tools she would need to experiment on Kanako, and notably, no other way to finish his work except to experiment on Kanako.

As I said, Kanako finds out about this and asks to be experimented on. And while she does give consent, she is a child. I cannot stress this enough-- she is a child who just lost her father and is still wracked by grief. Kanako is a child who cannot possibly know what she is consenting to.

Ceroba chooses to experiment on Kanako and more or less kills her. And then she chooses to send her 'fallen down' daughter to Alphys's experiment, despite the fact that Kanako presumably has some sort of trace of human soul/determination left in her-- which could have compromised Alphys's work as well.

Let's return to how I said that Ceroba is a mirror for Asgore. She's made so many mistakes and it's cost her her family and she can't stop now or it will all be for nothing. She's done horrible things, just like Asgore.

But the difference is that Asgore is the king of monsterkind. Asgore has no desire to kill human beings. He declared war on humanity in a fit of anger and grief, but the Underground had lost hope due to the loss of Chara & Asriel. Believing that Asgore could gather seven human souls and free them all brought hope back to the Underground.

His actions, while wrong, are selfless-- and much less explicitly violent and more 'cartoon violence'-like. Chujin & Ceroba have the well-being of monsterkind as their own pure intentions, but their actions are far more selfish and violent. Axis, Chujin’s creation, massacred a human being. Yet we're still expected to find them silly and fun and relatable-- it just feels unusual.

I’m not someone who hates nuance or morally gray characters. One reason I’m so sad that I don’t quite like Ceroba is that I love morally gray women. It’s just that we’re not allowed to really dislike Chujin or Ceroba for what they’ve done, and instead we’re supposed to see Ceroba- and Axis- as silly and relatable like the rest of the characters.

Immediately after Ceroba’s boss battle, instead of processing what just happened to a greater extent, Clover chooses to sacrifice their soul for monsterkind.

I understand that the intention is that Ceroba's grief and Chujin's desperation to protect monsters from humanity contributed to Clover's decision to sacrifice their soul. However, the idea is- to me- abrupt. Ultimately, too, Clover's decision is just as much about how much they love their friends (and how it's impossible for them to hide out in the Underground forever) as it is about Ceroba and her family.

Chara & Asriel’s deaths, Asgore’s war on humanity, the war of humans and monsters-- these elements impact every part of Frisk’s journey. But Chujin and Ceroba’s actions, while impactful on Martlet and Dalv to varying extents, are only part of Clover’s journey. And Chujin and Ceroba did awful things for this comparatively minor impact on the plot.

EDIT: Further analysis about how Ceroba doesn't have a lot of agency and spends a lot of the plot just acting out Chujin's will, as well as the inconsistency in her characterization (and feelings about sacrificing Clover and the well-being of Kanako), with input from @carlyraejepsans. Thank you!

I would have liked to have seen a bit more from Ceroba without any influence from Chujin- maybe an interaction explaining her relationship with Martlet and an additional conversation about Martlet’s nearly unwavering belief in humans vs Ceroba’s inherited grudge against humanity- but I don’t know where this would fit in. Adding more time for Clover to process Ceroba’s boss fight before sacrificing their soul might throw off the pacing.

In general, though, Ceroba's boss fight- while flashy and fun- ultimately feels pointless with how little she learns from it and how quickly she changes her stance on using Clover's soul for the benefit of monsterkind, and what will happen to monsters after they break the barrier. To quote @carlyraejepsans in the ask linked above:

In addition, it's like the writing didn't want to commit to her delusions and little character development. She feels that her daughter is alive and thinks she can save her—wait no that was a lie—wait it wasn't. The moment she's defeated she goes "Agh, what was I thinking!" out loud (which is already a questionable writing choice imo but i digress), and recognizes that sacrificing Clover for her plans is horrible... and then 5 seconds later Clover chooses to sacrifice themself to break the barrier and whoops nevermind she's suddenly the one getting the others onboard with the idea... wait. didn't she say she was making the serum because the humans would've only slaughtered them again if they broke the barrier? oh wait wasn't that also chujin again? whoops.

I would have felt better if there were more room to view Chujin and Ceroba in a critical light (and time to view Ceroba outside of just being a mom and wife). I can’t think of any ‘minor’ suggestion that wouldn’t require a lot of editing.

Axis…

And... okay. Let's talk about Axis real quick.

I want to give the dev team the benefit of the doubt, but I need to point out that this security robot's name is "Axis 014." If you don't know what I mean by pointing this out, I'll just say that both of these terms are nazi dog whistles and allow you to look up the specifics.

I recognize that, by this point, it’s too late to change his name. I’d at least be grateful if the team would acknowledge this and confirm that they aren’t nazis.

Axis’s name makes his actions far worse in retrospect. He, as a security robot wants to kill a child, but he isn't able to anymore because his programming has changed. So, as a legal loophole, he forces them to hold 'a weapon' (a trash can lid) so he can justifiably kill them. This is the same robot that brutalized and murdered a human being in the past at Chujin's behest.

It feels tone deaf and ultimately the one thing I’d just outright call bad about UTY. I don’t think it was intentionally done this way, but I don't like that we're supposed to find this nazi-aesthetic police brutality robot "quirky and relatable" like the Undertale cast. In the true pacifist ending, he falls in love with a robot made out of a trash can and his eyes turn into cartoon hearts and etc. It’s even more jarring than viewing Chujin & Ceroba in a fun/relatable way.

In the no mercy route, Axis will defend himself and claim that his programming forced him to kill the human and he didn't want to. This "just following orders" defense feels weak to me as well, personally. Axis clearly delights in harming humans, going out of his way to try to kill Clover. But also, Axis spends a significant amount of the game displaying a very similar amount of free will to the other characters. He’s not just a janitor robot that sweeps back and forth.

He’s a nearly sentient being-- and the fact that there are these nearly sentient robots makes Alphys’s accomplishment of creating “a robot with a soul” (at least, so she claims-- Mettaton is only the ghost in a machine) much less impactful to me, personally. Yes, Asgore thinks that Chujin failed in creating a sentient robot, and so it’s impressive that Alphys supposedly did it. But I don’t know why Asgore wouldn’t be more skeptical of Alphys’s accomplishment after Chujin failed more than eight times and set fire to his flowers.

I think that Axis is ultimately a missed opportunity to make a really villainous character. This concept that he disobeys his programming- used as sort of a parallel for law, as a security robot- to attack Clover could have been explored to further the ‘justice’ theme. He doesn’t write his programming (the laws), he just carries it out (violently enforces the laws).

The ‘minor’ suggestion I’d make, though, is to just acknowledge the name.

Undertale & Meta Elements

Now, we’ll be addressing my largest criticisms-- the omission of meta elements and the way Flowey is written.

Undertale Yellow never quite stopped feeling like a fan game to me. And it is, of course-- but I think that it feels as if it tries so hard to be Undertale (in the writing style, the humor, etc) that it fails to forge an identity of its own, and that holds it back from being just a fangame to a fangame that succeeds in expanding on the original creative work.

At the same time, although UTY tries to feel like Undertale, I don’t think it captures certain elements that make Undertale be Undertale.

Whereas Undertale was ultimately about video games as a medium and the normalization of violence in them, UTY doesn’t have this level of metatextual commentary. UTY does have a running theme of 'justice'-- and I don’t think this is bad! After all, if Undertale already said all there was to say about video games and violence, why retread that path? I respect that UTY knows its limits and simply focuses on justice as a concept instead.

At the same time, Undertale isn’t just an RPG about mercy-- it’s an RPG about RPGs. The fact that you can talk to and spare enemies isn’t just a quirk of the game, it’s what the game is about. This is one thing that makes Undertale great that UTY doesn’t focus on.

UTY doesn’t completely ignore these elements, of course. Flowey takes over resetting for you, and you do have three distinct paths based on whether or not you kill enemies-- the ‘true pacifist’ path, the ‘neutral’ path, and the ‘no mercy’ path (I will not be calling it the ‘genocide’ route, especially in light of recent world events). Through whether or not you choose to kill enemies, the theme of ‘justice’ is explored-- who is Clover seeking justice for? In the true pacifist route, Clover seeks justice for the monsters, while in the no mercy route, Clover seeks justice for the fallen humans before them.

However, Flowey taking over the mechanics of saving and resetting for you makes concept of ‘the player’ obsolete. I recognize that not everyone in the Undertale/Deltarune fandom quite enjoys the concept of 'the player' and the meta elements of these games due to the fact that there can be implications that playing Deltarune (as an example, which ups the meta elements quite a bit) can actively hurt Kris and make their world a worse place. However, Deltarune isn’t a complete work and we don’t know this for certain. Additionally, I feel as if at least acknowledging Toby's intentions are important to analyzing the work, no matter what one's personal feelings are about them.

The Importance of the Player

The presence of you, the player, is important in Undertale. Frisk is a subversion of the 'blank slate protagonist' trope. You think that you're able to name them and control them, but in the True Pacifist route, Frisk begins to act on their own (they walk slowly in some parts of the True Lab because they're presumably afraid, etc). In the end, you realize that Frisk is their own person with their own name, and you as the player have to let go-- when Frisk & the monsters go to the surface, Flowey (a mirror of the player themselves) urges you to let them go. Don't treat this as a game anymore-- don't replay and wring out any last drops of content you can. You enjoyed it, now move on.

But many players want to see the No Mercy route because it’s the last thing they haven’t done in the game, and they don’t want to let go. And that's where the role of you, the player, becomes undeniable in the game's story. What is the No Mercy route except playing a 'typical' RPG in the way it's meant to be played? You grind to become stronger, killing every enemy that stands in your way. And when you've killed all the monsters and become as strong as you can be, you've won.

Many players didn't do this because they hate the characters in Undertale and want to hurt them-- if they hate them, they likely just wouldn't play the game. Many players did it because they like the characters in Undertale, and wanted to see what would happen. They couldn't stop playing. And this is exactly what Sans means in his dialogue during his boss battle-- to paraphrase, "you think that because you can, that means you have to."

This is one of the ways that Flowey is a mirror of the player. Flowey didn't start killing out of malicious intent, but because he had become so bored and isolated that he just "had to see what happens".

Chara's role at the very end of the No Mercy route is to call you out directly for this. They tell you that their power was yours. Their words were very misconstrued by fans for a long time, and they themselves wound up as a scapegoat for the No Mercy route-- but ultimately, there's no reason for Chara or Frisk to kill every monster in the Underground. The only reason is because of you, personally. You want to see what would happen. You want to grind and play it like a typical RPG.

They call you out for this if you don't want to delete the game world at the end. Why go back to that world that you've already destroyed? Why play nice with the monsters that you just massacred because you can?

Why am I talking about this at such length? Because I believe that ‘the player’ and how they interact with the world of Undertale is important. Characters lampshade the UI and battle mechanics often-- Flowey talking about the world as a game and ‘saving’ and ‘loading’, Papyrus telling you to “press C to open the dating HUD”, Sans explaining ‘LV’ and ‘EXP’, and so on.

This is my personal opinion, and I recognize this is very nitpicky, but I feel that not acknowledging this or adding to these meta elements in some way makes UTY weaker for me.

Flowey’s Role in UTY

Flowey essentially saves and resets for you because he's bored, and he wants to use Clover as a tool to access Asgore’s five stored human souls. His role as a mirror for the player becomes him essentially just acting as a stand-in for the player. While this in itself can invite self-reflection, I think that the execution of his role is a little awkward.

We learn at the end of the neutral route that Flowey has already reset the timeline hundreds of times by the time we first start playing the game. According to him, Clover always ends up at a dead end (they choose to stay in the Underground for the rest of their life) or they die (and they can’t reset of their own power). Thus, Flowey chose to set Clover on an alternate path by sabotaging a lever in the Ruins, which made them fall into the Dark Ruins and meet Dalv.

Flowey then tries to kill Clover and absorb their soul because they, again, hit a dead end. Yet he gives up on it after a while because Clover won’t stop fighting back, and he thinks he can just reset and try again anyway.

At the end of the true pacifist route, Clover instead opts to sacrifice their soul willingly to Asgore & monsterkind. Flowey comments that he could just reset (and you still can, if you want to play again), but Clover “earned their rest” and he calls them a friend.

This progression from “Clover is a tool that Flowey is using to access the 5 human souls” to “Clover is a friend and Flowey willingly lets them die and stay dead” feels undeserved and underdeveloped to me.

"But, Andrea," you might say, "Flowey went from trying to kill Frisk as Omega/Photoshop Flowey to hugging Frisk as Asriel really quickly too!"

Yes, but in that short time, Frisk and Flowey/Asriel had a Whole Thing where Frisk 'saved' him like everyone else and he learned he needs to let go, too. It was a short time, but it was a poignant time. By contrast, Flowey is pretty much absent throughout most of UTY's true pacifist route. Sure, you could easily say that he just got bored of Clover and gave up-- but that, too, doesn’t feel quite right to me.

I really hate to say this, but I feel that Flowey’s writing in UTY cheapens the original Undertale for me, which is why this is one of my major criticisms of the game.

Flowey's entire character arc in Undertale is about how he was stuck with the same places and same people for an endless amount of resets. In my opinion, the limited amount of places and characters for him to interact with in Undertale only adds to how trapped he is (and the Underground being so small really strengthens the concept of "there's overpopulation and the monsters are running out of time to find a solution/earn their freedom" that we see in the game, but I digress).

So when something finally changes and he meets Frisk, it's deeply impactful to him. Finally, someone new to play with! Finally, potential for change! Even though Flowey admits that, even if Chara came back, there's a great chance that he couldn't really love them due to his lack of soul, just experiencing something new for the first time in ages is as close to love as he can possibly get. So Flowey:

Starts to believe that Frisk is Chara, this person he ‘loves’ or wants to love, or some manifestation of Chara.

Refuses to let Frisk go, even if that means- when Asriel has the power of seven human souls- just resetting the Undertale timeline over and over instead of going to the surface or doing anything else.

For Flowey to have gone through everything that he does in UTY- all these new places, all these new people, Clover included- weakens this, in my opinion. And sure, there's very heavily implied to be lots of places that Frisk doesn't explore and people they don't meet-- 99% of New Home and its residents, for instance. But Clover themselves is the real problem for me.

No matter how many times Flowey reset with Clover, I really struggle to believe that he would get bored of a human being that easily. He even said that Clover's actions and choices would sometimes change from reset to reset, and he only recently learned how dramatically he could alter their path by sabotaging that lever in the Ruins. Clover isn't a static being-- and even if they were, they're at least a new static being.

And although we learn in the neutral route that Flowey can't really absorb Clover's soul because they fight back too much, I can't believe that would stop Flowey so easily. What about at the end of the pacifist route, where Clover has given it up willingly and it's being transported in a little jar? Clover’s body is separated from the soul, now-- could Clover still fight back?

Or, what about if Flowey tried to kill them as soon as they entered the Ruins? Or, what if Flowey played nice the entire route and then at the end tried to convince Clover that if they sacrificed their soul, he would take it to Asgore for them? With access to full control of the timeline, I don't think Flowey would give up on this. We learn in Undertale how painful it is for him to be soulless and how desperate he is to access power so that things will change.

For Flowey to acknowledge Clover as a 'friend'- maybe even a true person, not just a compilation of dialogue- suggests character growth. It suggests remorse for his resets that he isn't capable of having and doesn't have until the events of Undertale. I just don't feel like it’s earned.

Flowey is, of course, an unreliable narrator.

At the end of the no mercy route of UTY, Flowey expresses that he never saw Clover as a friend-- he only enjoyed watching them die over and over again. It should be noted that this was said while under extreme duress (Clover is LV 20 by this point and has killed everyone save for Asgore), and this route isn’t canon in the way that the neutral and pacifist routes are.

With that said, if we agree that Flowey can’t feel love as a soulless being, then I could argue that this is about as much of a ‘friend’ as anyone could be. This is how he wanted to keep Frisk (“Chara”, in his mind) for eternity when he had the six human souls + the entirety of monsterkinds’ souls-- just watch them try over and over again, for eternity.

Why am I contradicting myself? Because, let’s suppose that Flowey doesn’t mean Clover is a ‘friend’ in the traditional sense- that they earned his respect and he cares for them in some way- but Clover is a new toy that he got bored with and gave up on. I feel like this, too, makes Undertale a little weaker.

If Flowey did have some type of positive regard for Clover, but was willing to let them go, then it feels- to me- like Frisk’s role in his story isn’t that significant. Frisk helped him learn how to let go and move on, but Flowey has already demonstrated being capable of this. The circumstances are different- if Flowey gives up at the end of Undertale’s true pacifist route, it’s over for real, whereas if he gives up at the end of UTY, he can just wait for another human to fall- but I feel like the core feeling is the same. Flowey, by the start of Undertale, doesn’t strike me as someone who’s capable of letting go.

So, how would I have changed this?

I recognize that- again- Undertale already made these points about video games and violence, and Flowey has his entire character arc in that game. For Flowey to have more of an arc in this game would potentially make this game no longer line up with canon Undertale or weaken Undertale further. And why retread old ground that Undertale already talked about?

I respect the decision to tell a self-contained story, but the meta commentary about video games in Undertale is so significant for me that I personally would have liked to see a bit more of it in Undertale Yellow. I also recognize how much of my criticism of Flowey’s writing in UTY is subjective. It feels unrealistic for me, his arc feels abrupt for me, it makes Undertale less poignant for me.

A lot of people love his inclusion in this game, and it’s very novel to see Flowey as a friend throughout most of UTY and hear his snarky commentary on demand rather than having him as an enemy who’s absent through most of the game, as he is in Undertale.

The Flowey Suggestions

First, I’ll be honest. I know this is not and has never been possible, but my easiest solution to the dilemma of Flowey’s lack of a character arc- and the lack of an ability to give him a character arc- would have been to just remove him from UTY.

I think that Flowey’s inclusion in the story of the yellow soul human and his role saving and loading could have been interesting. It goes against certain story elements implied in Undertale, and popular fan theories-- and I don’t mind that, if something meaningful is done with it. But, I feel as if Flowey’s relationship to Clover isn’t impactful enough to justify including him.

To clarify on ‘implied story elements’ and ‘popular fan theories’:

While I might be misremembering, I thought that it was implied in Undertale that Flowey came into being after Asgore had already collected six human souls, and that a significant amount of time had passed since the last human had fallen down.

I won’t go into it at length because this post is long enough and I, again, am not an Undertale expert. With that said, it’s also implied that all human souls are capable of saving/loading/resetting in the Underground. If you make Frisk tell Asgore that he killed them before, he just nods as if he’s used to it-- and he’s the one character who we know has killed humans before.

Now, how did Asgore successfully kill beings that can just reset the game whenever they die? Well, Sans faces the same dilemma in Undertale’s no mercy route. There’s no way that he can permanently defeat you, the player, who is a real being. Therefore, the way he ‘wins’ is by infuriating you enough with his difficult boss fight until you give up and stop playing Undertale (or, at least, reset and make better choices).

Think about all the times you’ve played a game, got stuck on a hard boss, and never played it again. While it’s not ‘canon’ to the story- giving up on your copy of Mario doesn’t mean Bowser really wins- functionally, giving up on a game means that the story ends for you. This is how I believe Asgore captured the six human souls, even if they were also capable of resetting like Frisk is-- he fought them until they gave up.

Humans all are said to have great amounts of ‘determination’, not just red soul bearers. We don’t even know what trait the red soul exemplifies. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s determination itself.

The bottom line is that I don’t think it would be unrealistic for Clover to be able to save/load/reset on their own, or for Flowey to not exist yet during the time they fell down.

But, I get it, Flowey was in UTY’s demo that has been out for seven years. He’s in the trailers. He couldn’t be removed at any part of development, and he sure as hell can’t be removed now.

My second suggestion would have been to zoom in on him, instead. While the prequel is about Clover, the yellow soul human, I would have liked to see it be about Flowey in a significant way. I kept hoping for Clover to have an opportunity to ask Flowey at some point, “why are you helping me, anyway?”.

This is my personal interpretation, but I’ve come to believe that Flowey thinks that the reason he’s stuck as a flower is that it’s a punishment. Because he, as Asriel, refused to fight back, he failed Chara, and now they’re dead. Now he’s stuck as a rinky-dink flower with no soul, he can’t love his former family, and he can’t stop playing this game.

In the no mercy route of Undertale, Flowey feels very much like he’s trying to appeal to Frisk- the person he believes is Chara- in a way like a younger sibling trying to impress an older sibling. He says he’s impressed by how you killed everyone. He helps solves puzzles so you won’t have to slow down. He brags to you about how he’s also a heartless killer.

Notably, he talks about his past. He tells ‘Chara’ that he was afraid to start killing, at first. He said he wouldn’t enjoy it, but he just had to know what would happen.

Then, Flowey laughs and says that you (Chara) know how liberating it is to be this way-- to kill people and shape their fates. He ‘recognizes’ Frisk as being actually Chara because of how they killed everyone in the Ruins.

But we have no indication that Chara was a violent or evil person in their life. I believe that Flowey is partially projecting and partially recognizes Chara because, in the last moments of their life, they were telling him to kill. He always knew that Chara hated humanity and wanted power to better the position of monsterkind. This is why Flowey brags about how he has a plan to get the human souls, and once they do so, they can go to the surface and “finish what [they] started.”

To Flowey, in my opinion, killing people isn’t just about seeing what happens. It’s about trying to understand and appease Chara and doing what he thinks he should have done all that time ago, as Asriel.

I bring this up because I think that I would have liked to have seen this be explored in Undertale Yellow. Flowey is still a very misunderstood character today due to being an unreliable narrator. I believe that a lot of Flowey misinterpretations are due to taking him at face value-- hearing him say that he’s an unfeeling, manipulative, patient killer and agreeing with him.

But Flowey contradicts himself at several points. He gives up his “catch these friendliness pellets” trick after you dodging just a few times. These aren’t the makings of a perfect manipulative killer, but an impatient child. That’s who Flowey is at his core-- a child.

I recognize that, again, if Flowey told all of his tragic backstory to Clover and they became true friends, this wouldn’t fit with canon Undertale and his actions in that game. Flowey and Asriel distance themselves from each other, and it wouldn’t make sense for Flowey to tell this to Clover-- especially if he just views them as a tool to use and play with.

I think, however, it wouldn’t have been impossible for Clover to have learned this information about Flowey in a way that could still be canon compliant with Undertale itself. Hypothetically, maybe the “hopes and dreams” statue in the UG Apartments near the Core could have sparked intrigue in Flowey.

Maybe analysis of Flowey could have come up during his neutral route boss fight-- after all, Clover appears to peek into the minds of Ceroba and Martlet during the true pacifist and no mercy run boss fights, respectively. We already get a little of this- Clover has to run through a hallway of flowers in Flowey’s boss fight, and we hear sad and scared dialogue that’s presumably from a past version of Flowey himself. However, it’s not necessarily new and doesn’t quite add to Flowey’s character in my personal opinion.

I feel that including Flowey’s story more in some way would justify having Flowey in the game, and knowing the history of Asriel & Chara could factor into Clover’s decision to give up their soul for the sake of monsterkind. Chara, too, sacrificed themselves willingly, after all.

I don’t have a ‘realistic suggestion’ that could be implemented with a dialogue update because these suggestions are so vast-- and, ultimately, very personal and subjective. I have very strong feelings about Flowey.

Meta Elements of Undertale

In Undertale, you’re asked when you should or shouldn’t fight. As a pacifist, you can get through the Ruins without killing anyone. Flowey will then ask you what you would do if you met a relentless killer. Would you betray your morals and fight? Or would you give up and let yourself die?

Undertale is the friendly RPG where nobody has to die. While you have to kill Asgore at least once to do the neutral route, and you do have to fight back against Omega/Photoshop Flowey to end his battle, the game ultimately posits that there never is a good time to fight. You don’t beat Omega Flowey by being stronger than him, you do it by appealing to the souls and allowing them to rebel. You don’t beat God of Hyperdeath Asriel Dreemurr by beating him up, you do it by saving your friends- him included. The game, again, is about an inversion of the necessity of violence in video games to me.

I would have been interested in seeing an exploration of when it is necessary to fight, and this could be done through the lens of ‘justice’. Would Clover fight if it brought them closer to justice (on a pacifist route)? Is it morally correct to kill one person if it saves thousands?

Sparing someone is always the correct option in Undertale. In that way, the true route is quite linear-- there’s one solution that works for everyone. What if there were situations in UTY in which there is no single correct option that works for everyone? What if Clover were placed in situations in which they had to act as arbiter and decide between two outcomes and what is right? It could have been like how they get forced to solve the trolley problem in the Wild East, but with consequences.

Adding to putting a ‘twist’ on the elements that Undertale introduces with its combat system-- what if sparing someone ultimately enabled them to keep hurting others? What if fighting to weaken someone was the correct solution for once? These inversions could have built on the meta elements of Undertale, and I think that it would make Clover’s decision to sacrifice themselves to bring justice to monsterkind more poignant to me.

Again, I have no ‘realistic’ suggestion for this in the full release of UTY. I think that the plot about justice alone isn’t bad, but I would have been happy to see it tie into the gameplay a little more.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I think that UTY tries too hard to be Undertale without iterating on the aspects that made Undertale memorable. The characters feel like they fail to pop or relate to the game’s story in meaningful ways, and to me, the main story isn’t executed as well as it could have been (and far darker than the main Undertale in ways that don’t feel as if they’re handled sensitively).

I will say, again, that this project is very impressive in scope, and I applaud the dev team for finishing it and releasing it. I recognize that a lot of my distaste is subjective, and creating another Undertale is a fool's errand considering the acclaim that Undertale got. I recognize one final time that my suggestions are just daydreaming, and this game has already found a lot of success-- which I think it deserves.

I tend to criticize a lot of media I like, which might sound contradictory to some, but it makes perfect sense to me. If I don’t like something, I won’t engage with it. I think that the original Undertale has its flaws, too. At the end of the day, I like UTY, but no media is perfect. This is how I think it could have been better, and I hope that I think other creatives who want to make Undertale fanworks (or any creative works, for that matter) will take these thoughts into consideration.

Thanks for reading.

#bandrea blabbers #long post #the uty post

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