#i dont think i even knew a whole lot about undertale when i made the old one?? so i dont know why i was animating that of all things

[poopystain]

short animation intended as a fun little remake of one i made a whole 5 years ago

old underneath cut

[ask-fgod]

Coming back from after he fell, Error was expecting a lot of things. He can't say he didn't expect this, but somehow it still makes him angrier than he's ever been.

hey guys... guess who just finished their one-shot instead of working on their other fic!!! it me. text under cut if you dont want to click on the link.

Error didn’t know what he was expecting when he landed back into his multiverse.

But it wasn’t this.

A figure resembling him stood over Ink, a hammer hovering above him. The only reason he hadn't struck yet was the fact that Dream was holding him back. None of them had realized his presence yet, minus…

Nightmare. Unlike the others, his gaze was solely focused on him. He wasn’t doing anything to stop the figure. 

That figure, though… Who…?

“E- Error…” Nightmare breaks him out of his thoughts, and with that, all attention is placed on him. Error holds his two children, Null and Void, closer, ready to defend them at any cost. 

He isn’t holding them close because of NIghtmare, of course, but he knows Dream and Ink would do everything in their power to take them away from him. Him being the “God of Destruction” and all, surely to them he can’t be safe.

But right now, he has to deal with the fact that all eyes are on him.

“Is that…” 

“WHAT THE SHIT???”

Dream loosens his grip, and the hammer bonks Ink on the skull, hard enough to make a crack drip ink from his skull.

“Owowowow… Yeesh Blue, did you have to hit me that hard?” Ink retorts.

Blue just hits him again in response.

“AGH! Error’s here now, so you can stop beating the absolute everything out of me! I’m gonna die if you keep this up!!!”

Blue shouts back. “Do you think that I care?! The whole point is to leave you dead!!! You made it to where I kind of have to kill you because little mister ink blot won’t stop overflowing this multiverse with his bullcrap!!!”

Oh…

Oh.

Error realizes what’s going on right at this moment. Who this person is, who their role is, it’s all obvious.

And it makes him very, very angry.

He knew Ink didn’t stop when he left. He knew that someone was forced to take his place because of that. But seeing it with his own eyes is something else.

In the millenia he has lived, never before has he been so fuming.

“Void, Null.” He tries to hide the anger in his voice, pointing at Nightmare. “Go to the goopy man over there. I have to do something real quick.”

‘But Roro…” Null shyly replies.

Error looks down at him, faking a smile on his face. “Don’t worry, He may seem scary, but he’s a really nice man. He’ll keep you safe, like I do.”

Both children run off to Nightmare, Null leading Void along the way. 

With that done, and the comfort that his kids will be in safe hands, he approaches Ink.

"You." He growls at Ink, inching closer by the second.

Ink looks from one side, to the other, and points at himself. "Me…?"

Error spreads his strings through the air, and tangles up him. In his surprise, Ink doesn't run away fast enough. "Yes, you! Do you have no respect for other people? Other life???"

"Y- Yeah! Of course I do! I create things, you're the one with no respect for others!!!" He shouts back.

"Then explain," Error gestures at Blueberror, "him!!!"

"I don't know what happened to him to make him that way! Honest!!!"

The strings tighten around Ink. "You must at least know that you are a part of the reason why that happened, shouldn't you? Or are you just going to lie about that too!!!"

"Error!!! Stop!" Dream shouts.

"Keep going!!!" Blue yells.

Error keeps going. "You didn't stop when I left, even though you knew that it'd doom this place! The only reason that this multiverse hasn't collapsed yet is because of Blue!!!"

Ink just stares at him like he's stupid. Like he's making stuff up. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"You have," Error shakes Ink in his grip, "every idea what I'm talking about! Just admit it!!!"

"I don't know what to admit to you, Roro! I dunno 'bout anything you're saying!"

"So who made him like that, then? He retorts. "What made it to where this place needed another thing like me???"

"Uh… Hm… Erm… I dunno! Maybe ya did somethin' to him! It'd make sense, since you always blame me for everything wrong that you do."

The world goes silent. Everyone, Dream, Nightmare, Blueberror, Void, Null, and Error… especially Error, just stare at Ink.

Error closes his eyes, and takes a breath in and out. 

Calm down. 

He isn't worth your time.

Calm down. 

How could he say that?

Calm down. 

Stop thinking about it.

Calm down. 

Why did he say that?

Calm down. 

He shouldn't snap.

Calm down.

But he's going to.

"Void, Null, look away. Plug your ears. Roro is about to do something he probably will regret later." Error commands.

Nightmare blocks both of the childrens' eyes, and the both of them put their hands over their ears. 

"Wh- Whatcha thinkin of doing, Error bud? I didn't say anything bad! I'm just- just layin' it to you straight! Roro c'mon!"

Error doesn't listen. It's like he doesn't even hear him. He slowly raises his hand, high up to the point of his face.

Blue and Nightmare watch. Dream stares in horror. 

And as Error balls his fist, the strings tighten around the other God, slowly cracking him apart. 

Bit by bit, til the tension is so high that the strings quickly tie up, breaking him into pieces. 

The ink from his body stains the ground, and for that moment, Ink is gone.

Error had just killed Ink.

And for him…

It was the first time ever.

[strelitzia-mystery1097]

Oh!

Okay here's my story!

I got really into Undertale around 2018. It was cool and I thought Matpat's Undertale theories made 100% sense (I still really like the left Brian right brain theory regardless of how true it is).

I think the first time I was exposed to an AU was Newscapepro (I haven't watched him in years so I don't remember if that was his name or not) and for the second season of his Minecraft Undertale series it took place in Underfell.

I... didn't really like it. I liked Flowey and thought that the concept was cool. But seeing these silly characters be mean was a bit much for my naive and sensitive past self. Newscapepro's season 3 was full of UTMV stuff and I was SSSSOOOO confused. Not to mention that a lot of videos that were canon happened in between and I was watching hide n seek Idahotale or something to try and figure out who this evil Frisk was or that evil goop was, or how we went from bizarro Undertale to THE MULTIVERSE. I think after all of that, only Underfell and Underswap stuck out in my head as I just moved on.

I figured it all out a little while later that these were AUs but at this point I was kind of put off. (I also knew that Sans was the most popular AU character too cuz there was like a council of Sanses in that season 3.)

(I also saw Glitchtale at this time and that also got complicated and weird. Not to mention all the drama that I didn't even know about at that time. I think I stopped after Frisk was gone. I dont really want to talk about that series for obvious reasons so lets move on.)

But even though I never got into the AUs, I held a lot of love for Undertale and would still watch a lot of Undertale content and for Deltarune when that came out.

Cut to the end of 2022/the start of 2023. I had a pretty bad year (highschool, still undiagnosed depression, etc) and I spent Christmas with tonsillitis.

Then on my feed, I see Underverse 0.7 part 1. I realised this was probably an AU thing and I was not very interested. But the thumbnail looked really cool and I noticed how many views it had. I had nothing else to do so I clicked on the channel and found the playlist of season 1.

Apart from Underfell and Underswap, I did not reconise any of these AUs.

...This turned out to be the best experience I had with anything fandom ever!

I know people say that you can't watch Underverse without knowing the AUs but I strongly disagree. I was in the shoes of Classic Sans as things went crazy. Who was this paint vomiting Sans? Who's this X kid? Why is the animation so good? Why is the music awesome? And why is the story one of the best multiverse stories I have ever seen?!

I watched season 1 of Underverse and I was craving more. So I immediately went onto season 2. And after that I watched XTale (and that actually really helped me understand things and I rewatched the whole series again with that context) before finally reading the XTale and 21 years comic.

And thanks to Underverse I finally tried AUs again and I actually really enjoyed it. Underverse will always be my favourite but still!

I was changed by Jakei's work. I mean in the present day I have written fanfiction for the UTMV and I love the XTale characters (especially Cross lol) so much.

Because of Jakei I overcame my bias and gave the UTMV a fair shot. It's now one of my favourite things ever!

So I only wish good things happen for Jakei and whatever she does with her life. No matter how this ends, I will never regret watching Underverse.

[frigidfries]

how about chara for the ask game!!

chara. chara chara chara

favorite thing about them:

so. you see one of my FAVORITE tropes in media is that the narrator was a character all along. partially because- especially when i was younger- i would pay super close attention to narration and choices and diction in a game to glean anything like a canon personality to a silent protagonist. and the narrator being a person in the story itself was basically a 'you were right to pay attention! it is that deep!' to me. and my fondness for this predates undertale!

i know narrachara isnt canon-canon, but... man! if it is, then chara is easily one of the most complex characters in undertale by the fact they have the most "screentime"(?) to work with!

it means they're funny and bitingly sarcastic when they want to be, it means they have opinions on anime debates, that they like plants and fun facts, they're impatient, they have a deep sense of right and wrong, they think a heroine who can save the underground is the coolest thing ever, they know some DEEP CUT old video game references, they like obscure japanese novels about tea and kitchens and loss...

its just so cool to me that a character that barely exists in the narrative- only known through second hand stories and footage, even less than we know about asriel- is revealed to be the narrative. and so many emotional beats get to hit so much harder. its just... a nice idea, you know? that we get to meet something like the real them at all.

least favorite thing about them:

ah hmmm. hm. i have reached the point of "they obviously have some pretty severe issues i don't think were helped by the unknowing, well-intentioned pressure of their loved ones and the entire underground as one of the two only 'hopes' of an entire group of people, and they did and can do some really jacked up things, but also think about them as a catholic 12 year old and everything makes sense."

tldr; i love chara discussions but i think we can all move past totally black or white reads of them because that doesn't fit in at all with the themes and style of toby's writing. utdr simply doesn't have pure evil or perfect good

favorite line:

brotp:

sighs. sighs. i talked about them and asriel in his post but. augh. they were so important to each other. making edgy ocs- chara remembered the name of every single attack. they gagged over their parents PDA together. they... man. man. objectively not great for each other, but i think they desperately needed each other in their lives.

frisk and chara are also. just! man!!!! they get impatient over repeated checking but its impossible for me to not read so much of it as... painfully fond. it's you! you won! hey, you're not made of money. that's called a 'water sausage'. ...there's a lot there, i think.

otp/notp:

same digs with asriel i dont ship them with anyone, really!

random headcanon:

they knew dr. gaster when they were both alive/whole and they liked that he treated them as a Peer. An Intellectual Equal. (read: dr. gaster did actually treat them like a child he just did it in a way that made chara feel respected lol)

golden flowers are weeds. they choke out any garden they're in and are incredibly tenacious. chara likes them so much because have spent hours wistfully relating to them while looking out of their original city's library windows

fell in 2012 and has all the baggage and trappings of being a 11-12 y/o closeted nonbinary kid who was too online in 2012

songs i associate with them:

some excerpts from the playlist i made for them when i was 16

The Scary Jokes - Catabolic Seed

My Chemical Romance - The End

Rilo Kiley - The Execution of All Things

..... Panic! At the Disco - The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is The Press Coverage

favorite image:

of course, offical and my own LMAO

[furiosity-wills-the-cat]

Chara, the fourth Blook cousin:

A crack theory that accidentally become way more serious than it should have because it somehow, despite my best efforts, ended up making sense

Brought to you by my idiot conspiracy brain (affectionate) and by encouragement from my Tumblr followers

Under the cut for the sake of your dashes and sanity

Ok here we go my very elaborate accidental theory, because in order to answer the complex questions simply you must first make simple things more complex or something

First, you need to know that Chara became a Blook cousin by adoption.

All of the Blooks are adopted.

Ghosts are not born into families, they make their own.

Got it? Great, because we’re about to start running

so first, im gonna make surprisingly uncommon claim in this fandom, and I am going to say that undertale ghosts are all dead

I’m taking the tiny details we know about ghosts and sprinting with them to new places

Ghosts also do not have souls I decided

Undertale souls do not work the same as souls in traditional mythology

So every ghost is soulless Unless and Until they become corporeal

Evidence: Monster souls cant exist without bodies, and ghosts are monsters, therefore ghosts cannot have souls without bodies

Further evidence: Asriel doesnt steal blooky’s soul, blooky is unkillable, we have no concrete evidence that blooky has a soul

What about mettaton? He only has a soul after he has completely committed to being corporeal and to a specific body.

Also maddy and mettaton are both only killable while corporeal

Im also connecting the dots we have about souls in a new creative way so let me live for a second

Additionally, i am going to claim that there are a lot more ghosts than just the blooks, some evidence given below

Theres like actual scientific knowlege of ghosts in the undertale verse which seems unlikely if theres literally only three or four

The underground is so much bigger than you think, theres that giant forest in snowdin, a large town in the ruins, the huge city of new home, who knows how much space in the large open areas of waterfall etc. Its really really big okay

Also based off evidence of blooky, we can conclude that ghosts can turn invisible whenever they want to and/or haunt objects to hide

So I personally think that ghosts are, generally speaking, extremely reclusive

And the blooks are just a special exception, a beautiful family, amazing for them

So anyway im going with typical ghost lore for now, for the sake of ease, so im gonna say ghosts generally come from monsters who are particularly restless or unsatisfied when they die

HOWEVER i dont think they remember being monsters or anything before being a ghost. They just kinda fizzle into existance with a fully formed personality and immortality while being unkillable and feeling vaguely uneasy

ALSO i personally think that chara was a ghost for a long time before they became a blook by adoption

Based on game lore, i think ghosts can possess any inanimate object and just kinda wear it? But it takes a lot of strong emotion to become corporeal

And chara is the super weird exception because they were a human not a monster.

They dont have a soul (i headcanon that their soul got destroyed when asriel died)

And they KNOW this, which is a huge part of why they kinda just... give up

Because they lost their ability to fulfill prophecy

Also, without a soul, they lost their ability to reset, so for the first time since falling underground, theyre subject to the relentless march of time

But theyre still weirdly strong and powerful and more emotional

ALSO they DO still remember being a human but they catch on pretty quickly that other ghosts dont have memories and because chara is stupid they just lie to fit in

Theyre too tired to explain themself, they just want to be alone and feel awful

Now back to ghost lore

Emotions are a lot harder for ghosts??? I decided

And they dont know why,, they tend to blame it on the soul thing

But realistically its actually more of the immortality thing making actions not have consequences and/or or not having a body so they cant have a sense of touch or have physical effects of emotion

They all know that ghosts just tend to be way more floaty and bored and numb

And thats part of why the blooks are so special

Maddy’s rage and Mettaton’s yearning and Napstablook’s misery are like... not great all of the time...

but theyre also way way more emotion than most ghosts have,,, they are just a family supporting each other, being as functional as they can,, just an emo(tional) ghost family

most ghosts barely do anything except like stare at walls but the blooks have their snail farm and that helps them have purpose and it is good

And they hold each other accountable and it is nice

So anyway chara just chills and is in a depression coma for a few decades before the blooks find them and are like “our child/baby cousin”

and they raise them for a cool minute

They are all very protective of the new baby emo blook

And chara doesnt get therapy but at the very least they once again have a family, and they decide they want to try to become corporeal eventually just like mtt and maddy

So anyway chara starts hanging out in the ruins a lot more and they finally tell the blooks theyre leaving to go become corporeal in the ruins

This is actually because they are trying to hang out with toriel

because they miss their mom ;;

but chara’s not gonna admit that to anyone, especially not to themself

And because theyre still repressing their emotions constantly and pretending to be fine, they cant become corporeal

And they hang out in the ruins for a long time because they feel guilty lying to everyone about everything

They still feel like its their fault that all the monsters are stuck underground, because they were SUPPOSED to save everyone and they COULDNT and it HURTS

But again, they are doing too much repression to use this guilt to become corporeal,

so instead they just kinda hide and watch toriel from a distance and cry

Blooky visits them the most, thats why blooky is chilling in the ruins so much at the start of the game

Theyre just there to visit their shy baby cousin ;;

Ofc they wont tell frisk about this because chara wants space and privacy and blooky respects that

but maddy and mtt also visit them a lot

Oh also when mtt and maddy start dissapearing, blookys mental health plummets as their family and support system starts to dissolve

Blooky was actually doing extremely well (for a ghost) for a long time, i headcanon,

but theyre doing the worst theyve been in a long long time during the game, because of family issues

So anyway, chara dissapears when frisk shows up, and maddy assumes this is becaude frisk hurt their fragile feelings

Maddy spends hours desperately searching the ruins for chara and cant find them and assumes that they had their heart crushed and went to hide and disappear in a depression coma for another few decades, and thats part of why maddy is so furious with frisk

Like,, to be clear, maddy is still jumping to conclusions and throwing blame around with no proof, but also, its a logical conclusion to come to

And mettaton has already disappeared too and been gone for a while, too, by this point, so it hurts even worse

But anyway, what actually happened to chara is that;

Because chara is a human ghost, not a monster ghost, normal ghost rules dont apply to them

And they can possess living things too they find out

Maybe they knew it a long time ago, maybe its a new discovery, but for whatever reason they end up possessing frisk and theyre like “what the heck”

And frisk still has most of the control

But now chara is like,,, “this is my chance, im a human again, gotta save the world for real,,,”

and they cant explain this to anyone without revealing their past

so they just chill in frisk’s mind while being super crypic and trying to figure out how it works

Pacifist route, this is pretty much exactly what happens

They manage to help frisk save the day

And in my headcanon, the no mercy route is started by frisk who is scared when faced by monsters attacking them

And then chara, who was aready hiding in a semidepression coma for a while, immediately transitions to a panicked “gotta protect this body, gotta protect my chance to be human, i died and threw away my chance to save everyone the first time, i CANNOT lose this chance again”

And so the combination of both frisk and chara is the genocide run

Because frisk kills in self defense, and whenever frisk hesitates, chara jumps in

Also theres leftover feelings from the whole asriel incident

Because again, ghosts come from monsters who died unsatisfied

And chara’s main source of unsatisfaction is how they were trying to get asriel to kill people before he died and then he didnt

So thats a strong strong feeling ruling them

So anyway by the time they both realize how bad its become they figure its too late and also the amount of LOVE has made them numb

And thats when chara who, despite everything, still has idiot hero complex and thinks they need to save the world

So, while panicking, they step in at the very end, and erase the timeline and delete everything

And also to clarify

They DONT HAVE this power at any other point in the game

Because, guess why

They become corporeal

Just like maddy, the no mercy route is the only thing that gives them strong enough emotion to spontaneously become corporeal

So they become corporeal and as soon as they have a soul again and can reset again, they just erase everything

Ok back to fluff

Post pacifist route, they are still a non corporeal ghost

They can still float around and look just like the other blooks

And it takes them a while to open up about things, but they do end up moving back in with blooky so that blooky isnt completely alone

And also they do way better with a family

Also they can float through the mountain and talk to flowey down below and bring him news

And now that they know about him, they can bond with him and explain that they dont have a soul either but that doesnt mean theyre worthless

Oh ALSO

The other dead humans dont have ghosts

BECAUSE

ghosts only come from restless dead MONSTERS

and chara is the weird special exception

Because they were a monster when they died

They became a ghost and asriel didnt because they were way more restless and stressed than asriel was when both of them died

Like sure, asriel felt awful, but chara was the one who was way more like “this is my fault, i CANT die now, the world NEEDS me”

So anyway

charablook the emo tween ghost and asriel flowey the eldrich goat daisy are siblings once more and they hang out and eventually they are okay and have a family again

Thank you for reading, this has been my thoughts on a crack theory that accidentally went too far

This isnt even everything, maybe i’ll make a part two eventually, but i promised to have this post out like two days ago, so i wanted to post SOMTHING

Anyway leave your thoughts if youd like

Im not looking for people to disprove it, i already know its crazy, i dont think it was intentional by the game writers, but i do think its a fun concept

thats the fun of it, so if anyone wants to run with it im all for it lol

Thanks again! Have a nice day!

[stemmmm]

@kamil-a I love heart guy!!!! that level of analysis is doing a LOT for me in terms of gameplay, ludonarrative, etc..

I think a lot of the ludonarrative issues I have are just because of my genre-savvyness and because it's not a finished game. I like susie a lot more now that I have a better understanding of her character and her role on the story. I would probably like ralsei more if I knew what the hell his damage was. However similarly, I like lancer a lot LESS now that i realize he's just a small bit role that really has no ability to come back. all of the darkner or whatever theyre called characters are just bit roles. and it feels... bad.

in undertale every battle was a puzzle to figure out how to appease these people and you felt like you learned something about them. largely, that's still the case because the battles are still puzzles but because i know everything is just there to impede my progress and can often actually be avoided by the nature of stuff being dodgeable in the open world, they feel even more like a waste of my time and energy. A big place where that is no longer what's up is in boss battles. In undertale, unless you couldn't figure out what the intended way to escape the battle was, the battle would consist of the boss giving you their whole story and then... it's done, you win. not so in deltarune! there you're stuck doing whatever until the mercy ticker wears down and the boss just gives stock dialogue for the majority of the time. Maybe for people super proficient at the game this isn't such an issue, but whatever secret stuff that undertale had that made me love the bullet hell mechanic got changed here and i can't play it for shit.

continuing on the topic of enemies, there's now the recruitment system that you have to get a whole annoying tutorial for at the beginning of chapter 2 (maybe it was in ch1 but i dont remember. that was a long time ago now. more on that later lol). just in case i wasn't already disinterested enough in all the enemies, i'm even less interested now because they've been flattened down into little tokens. this is possibly the point, as all of it is meant to be a discussion about game mechanics as we know them. regardless, it doesn't feel like i'm having fun to try and go around to collect them.

onto the gameplay mechanics themselves! in honesty, part of the issue may be that i'm trying to play it like undertale rather than play with the mechanics i'm given, but its also hard as hell to play with the mechanics im given because all i want is to get out of the battles as soon as fucking possible. while they've improved a ton from the last game because characters other than kris can ACT, it still remains the case that the system is way too bloated and overcomplicated to function naturally. I theorize this is also. The Point. turn-based RPGs are often ridiculously bloated like this. the difference there is that in say, your typical final fantasy, all you're trying to do is Attack and you're trying to do it the best possible with the resources at hand. Your strategy is to choose between a regular hit, whether you can perhaps summon something, or if its better to spend your MP on smaller but still powerful spells, or even healing. seeing as im not killing anything when i play these games, all i'm trying to do here is spare the enemy and there's kinda only one way to do that because the ACT menu kinda only gives you one option anyways. the objective is less a puzzle a lot of the time and more to just survive the somehow way harder bullet hell sections. its very fucking flat.

the worst part of it, in my opinion, is that this all comes after years of not playing the last part of the game. maybe a lot of these things wouldn't be quite so bad if i was playing the whole thing at once in sequence. that would be a ridiculously long, boring time though because 80% of these games are just fluff without substance (at least undertale's fluff consistently gave you lore tidbits or character stuff. here all you get is the queen--whom i love--saying a joke about potassium). this game should not be coming to us in 7 parts. or at the very minimum, they should not be as long as they are to play through! i think the delivery time on the story is actively hurting it, and I think it's only going to get worse as this slowly slides along at a snails pace.

but! who knows. a whole lot of people like all of this a whole lot more than me. maybe I just don't like playing it because I don't like any of the characters. I like them all a lot more now that we're focusing more on the original folks than the old undertale rewrites, but even then I mostly just like them for the way people make jokes about them.

in short... i find the mechanics ill-fitted to their purpose and the handling of the game clumsy. I can fully believe that a lot of this is toby's actual intention as he's making a criticism of this kind of stuff, but I think it's also very easy to fall into the very problems that you criticize. I think there's a chance it might get better, but I think it's a whole lot more likely that all of it gets worse with time. because 7 6+ hour long games... are gonna take a long ass time to make.

to anyone who actually read this far, i salute you! and i hope this made any sense because i've kinda just been rambling on half-sleep because i woke up at 3 am

[bananonbinary]

oh fuck its a deltarune liveblog post!!!

just gonna put it all in one shot so i dont get spoiled while writing

- aaaaaaa the save file said ‘kris’ again and i didnt realize and just clicked through and now im an ASSHOLE :( sorry kris. i gotta save tho, i will definitely get u killed otherwise.

- hm. interesting that you can’t dick around much on the way to the classroom; i’d have to check but i think in chapter one there was always someone else present to railroad you. does this mean kris is exerting more control?

- god i love this light world->dark world animation, VERY saturday morning cartoon

- ooh Lore(tm)

- oh right, im very bad at bullet hell

- oh....the town is named after my savefile....Don’t Like That. feels like i robbed kris again.

- “you could wear whatever you want” “all sorts of keepsakes could be put here” hmmm feeling some Things about kris’ empty room. also the half-finished look of these rooms feels Important.

- SUSIE MY BELOVED

- the town having no music is creepy as hell

- Sure.

- JESUS the werewires are cool

- i am Suspicious about what these fountains are, and if it’s really a good idea to seal them

- god i love these kids

- also hey! kris posed this time!

- i am very into these rhythm challenges

- people keep commenting on kris having zero inflection. “being possessed 99% of the time” is looking more and more likely.

- “always been annoying how much your hair smells like apples” is this...flirting???

- it means tity

- i don’t have tons to say about the plot cause its like...yep thats standard magical quest shit

- god susie and ralsei’s friendship is so good. ill be so happy if susie becomes a healer

- “you do not do crazy things like ‘have opinions.’ or scream when i capture you.” seriously kris is Not Okay

- i only got 5/6 werewires but im pretty sure im past where you can fight them and its pissing me off

-noelle is adorable

- terrified to find out whatever the fuck roulx has been doing this whole time

-oh shit nvm theres the last werewire

- njadkslfnasjdfnajksdl found the annoying dog. why.

- i’m so fucking lost where am i supposed to go

- is gamer’s delight just a mountain dew pie

- oh my god susie’s heal attack

- NOELLE IS ADORABLE

- video game piano tutoriel fucking got me okay

- okay but if we take this at face value, that’s a LOT of characterization for kris. they like bath bombs (or potentially just making shit they find on pinterest), they actually are a knife nerd, they’re thinking about college, and they are a gamer (which i think we already knew a bit). and i think they probably googled magic immediately after chapter one, which is adorable.

- kris keeping their eyes closed for asriel’s room could just be the game continuing to keep the audience in suspense, but i wonder if in-universe it’s also kris’ choice to keep their brother away from the Player 

- beardly is papyrus if papyrus sucked

- if anything permenant happens to lancer im killing everyone in this dark world and then myself

- wow, backstory! what an asshole

- okay i thought that was basically what was wrong with lancer, but why is ralsei fine then???? how did he even GET to this dark world anyway? i am Suspicious.

- wait shouldn’t rouxls be dying too then?

- how fucking long is this game????

- “it’s nice that you’re you” oh god. oh god.

- OH MY FUCKING GOD

-ah. so roulx IS also dying. ralsei what are your secrets?????

- that’s TWICE now that ralsei, and ONLY ralsei, has been able to change our pov. RALSEI WHAT ARE YOUR SECRETS??????

- BABY LEBSIASN

- ooh Lore(tm) part 2

- mmmm im not sure i trust ralsei. again. the fountains seem....weird. why does he want to close all of them except his? i dont think he’s evil, but. hm. i feel like something else is going on here.

- dsfmlkasdmfkal someone’s gonna notice that we keep stealing shit to put in this one random closet

- you know what here at the end of the game i actually really like queen, she’s a very fun character

- time for the reunion tour!!!

- think i will leave the boss rush challenge for later lmao i did just spend 7 hours on this game

- went to the graveyard. hmmmmmmmmmmm

- okay what the FUCK is up with that door toby. and why arent there any other humans here?? really probably fake game theory: this is the reverse of undertale, and all the humans are locked up underground.

- man we’re gonna fail this group project

- ???????? why can’t kris play piano now?

- oh shit is that shyren’s sister? the one that became an amalgamate in undertale?

- god i missed sans

- JESUS asgore you gotta get your shit together

- don’t you fucking play the “Home” motif at me again i WILL cry

- susie’s “i have to spend time with my friend’s parent” walk is incredible

- aaa kris i’m sorry i keep doing this to you!!! i’m so worried about them where did they go? the thump out the window sounded like it hurt :(

- .....huh. i er, huh.

- what the fuck is this credits music

jesus christ that was 8 straight hours, i might have made mistakes

[australet789]

since you finished omori, i want to hear some of ur thoughts.

Like the character synergies, music, plot or something like that

oh boy do i have thoughts

under the read more for spoilers, suicide mention, violence, psychologial horror:

Oh god where to start.

First to say that it's very clear that the main inspiration is Undertale/Deltarune, basically because of the tone and intention, and while they tried hard, it failed at some points.

The big fail, for me, is how they handled the Dreamworld compared to the Real World. Cause once you get out and get a glimpse to the real world, you want to come back to it and try to solve the mystery. The Dreamworld doesnt sound appealing anymore, you just want to get to the bosses and speedrun those sections (specially Sweetheart's castle and everything related to her), so you can get back and focus on what's happening in the other world. Which is sad, because, while there's lore hidden in the Dreamworld, the characters are no memorable there. It lacks the charm that Deltarune has in this matter, if we compare the two pieces of media. I would say that maybe the writers tried to make the Dreamworld unappealing in a symbolic way for Sunny to move on, but that's a stretch.

Now to the real world

oh boy, now that's the interesting part

I think that area is the best one. You get to know the town, you get hints and reactions about Mari's death, why it couldnt have been made a scandal, the kids are grown up now but you care for them, for their now, their fucked up present, more than their past. Because you want to help them. even tho i felt it was more about helping Aubrey and Sunny, than the other three. Because with Hero and Kel we knew their backstories, but for Aubrey and Sunny, we didnt know the whys. And Basil wasnt as cared until the reveal moment, because he has been framed as an antagonist for the whole game until that moment.

btw the horror with Sunny's nightmares was amazing. The foreshadowing with the One Eye figure being Mari's judging eye was super cool. The whole section of overcoming your fears was very well done.

Before going to the controversial part (yeah, that part) I want to say that my favorite character is Hero. My man deserved better, he deserved to know what really happened, and when you see the photos with Mari, you can see how much he loved her That broke my little heart.

Kel and Aubrey are ok, altho i favor Aubrey because of what you see when you enter her house. You realize then that her anger was justified. Obviously the bullying was wrong, but she was in her right to be angry at Sunny and co.

Sunny

Sunny is my least favorite but not for the reasons you may believe. I dont blame him for what happened to Mari, nor following Basil's plan to make it look like a suicide. ( funny story: i have seen several comments on youtube being like "kids wont ever think about suicide, the whole plan feels unrealistic", and i was like "dude, this is a game inspire in undertale...UNDERTALE. I was literally thinking about suicide at 6-7 years old. It's not weird for kids to have those thoughts". ok end of story, let's continue). Because if you gather information, you may know that Mari has weak knees caused by a prior accident. Now, both siblings were at the border of the stairs. I dont know you, but being so close to a border makes myself tense and try to keep my balance. Sunny pushing her just so he could pass (cause Mari was blocking the way) most likely made her lose her balance, and probably nothing would have happened has she not had the knee problem. Her legs probably wobbled, which caused her to fall and die.

Now the source of a lot of discussions in the fandom game: the suicide plan. Honestly? I also dont blame Basil to coming with that idea. Of course the idea was terrible and telling the truth would have saved a lot of the problems. But they were kids and the thing with kids is that they dont think the long consequences of their actions or how would that affect others. Which is exactly what happened. Basil just wanted to protect Sunny. In that moment he didnt care that a suicide is actually a big thing, and in the small religious town they lived, it was gonna be worse, Basil just cared to save Sunny and nothing else. If the accident was framed as suicide, they wouldnt focus on Sunny. I'm pretty sure that went through Basil's mind and that's why he did it.

It work, but not as they expected

Because obviously, the parents knew what happened. I'm pretty sure the police knew too, but it was stated that Sunny's family was one if not the richest in the town, so i would imagine the parents paid for the silence. but still, the family got broken: Sunny's dad disowned him and left.

But again, that's not why i dont like Sunny that much. What i didnt like of him was, when he finally gets out of his 4 years self confinement and reunites with Basil and he later finds Basil crying, he just freaking leaves in a cold way. I was livid when that happened. Basil risked himself by helping Sunny, lived with the same guilt for years, only for Sunny to see him in distress and just flees? wtf dude

And that happens again in the final boss fight against Basil. It's clear that Basil is having a mental breakdown and seeing hallucinations, and instead of helping, SUNNY TRIES TO RUN AWAY AGAIN!

For me, those two instances made me not like Sunny like the other characters. Yes, he was suffering too, but that's not the way to treat the friend that literally helped you when you killed your sister. Getting his eye lost was very deserved tbh.

And im glad that, in the true ending, he actually decides to reveal the truth. Basil and the others deserved as much. I would have loved to know their reactions and if they would decide to forgive Basil and Sunny for it. I like to think they did, at their own pace.

[macklives]

session 92 end (bye 413...)

this session was so long but so fucking hectic what the fuck

im going to try and slim it down to its bare essentials rather than go on a full rant because im pretty sure i want to make a post later on about vriska’s characterisation (not anything about me liking her/disliking her, just an analyse on her life really, so it wont be too bias because thats not the point of an analysis. i also want to do one on aradia, been meaning to for a while... hmm... damn i havent done much analogies lately, and i THINK the last long post on a character i made was about davesprite??? so its been a fucking while. that being said, ill leave a lot of details out for this end of session notes so i dont just repeat myself later on. rather will keep to plot points here and then make character points in another)

alright

first we had a page or two where aradia confided in nepeta about her being dead which means nepeta is the only one to know this revelation. im pretty sure aradia confided because there was no other way around it, since nepeta was her server player, so it was inevitable. either way, aradia still put her trust in nep, which means, if you think about it, nobody else knows and nobody else ever will. and considering aradia asked nep to keep it a secret, it probably wont get explored by others until MAYBE later on, whenever its plot relevant, so everyone will be in the dark about it for a while which ill have to remember for future dialogue and scenes with aradia in them

then we met vriska

which, yes, is a meme. i may not have been on a lot of fandom platforms, but you cant escape some of the stuff that goes around the internet. even if you dont know undertale, im pretty sure you know of sans. or komaeda if you have/havent seen danganronpa. its just.. the memes, ya know? ive heard from many sources of the “vriska did nothing wrong” quote (even through mbmbam which??? WHAT) but since i didnt even know what it meant, i never explored it so then i never knew it was a homestuck thing. imagine my surprise...... i think even at the time, i wouldnt have known what homestuck was either honestly so it wouldnt even matter. i only recently learned about the fandom.... uhh, maybe half a year ago??? yeah, august, so my knowledge was slim but vriska is a thing ive heard before, which still shocks me

goddammit

anyways back to her

so her intro was something, we pretty much found out she likes DnD (a FANATIC in fact) and feeds her lusus the flesh of living trolls. which is fucked up. but i wont get too much into detail about that until i make a post about her life on alternia and the consequences of such. or maybe just alternia in general...?? or *both* heheheh but i feel i need more information before i go off on a tangent about that

then we met??? white text dude?? who is a major asshole but an asshole with insults that hURted, to think i felt bad for VRISKA when that happened. woah.

i said before, but... karkat, he cant really hit deep because his insults are just HIM and his way to express himself. like some people find it natural to just go “FUCK YOU” to show emphasis on a point, and thats just karkats way. he may do it so aggressively that it takes you a second to realize what he said, but usually i dont take anything to heart whenever he spurts out some insults. ive progressed to the point where whatever he says, is just “karkat” and not him trying to be actively mean. rather, its now funny whenever he does say anything SOMEWHAT creative, dude has an imagination that goes on for miles

but vriska?? she IS trying to be a bully, you can tell. but i feel theres something much more to that. like shes trying to prove herself and her “blueblooded” demeanours or whatever the hierarchy is. she doesnt want to show emotions so she makes herself a barrier by being mean is what i can gather from her conversation with kanaya. im pretty sure youre not supposed to understand her until its pointed out and rather see her as an “antagonist” at first, but yeah, her insults are more pitiful than anything and i also cant take her too seriously. i may not like her as a person but her character is interesting because you cant always have the goodie two shoes as the protags. it doesnt diversify the characterisation so i like vriska as someone who makes the plot work and it becomes more interesting since you have someone that makes it harder for the main crew to progress. a happy-go-lucky adventure with no trouble and no turnabouts would be boring in a way. so having a character like vriska, or like this new white text guy, it makes you stop for a second and realize oh shit okay, here’s where shit CAN go wrong and WHY. and i do especially like it when these bastards of characters somehow have more depth than being the “bastard characters”. kinda humanizes them in a way. doesnt mean you have to LIKE them continuously, but theyre humans (trolls whatever) in the end and every person has their own story whether its for better or for worse

for example, i like her being placed into the story, along with white text, by how its all leading to this “accident” and is slowly showing us hints on what happened, but in the end, it wont be until later that we know the full story. even if it was in the past, it apparently is very vital to the plot and shapes how the characters act in the future, so important aspects like that are to look out for. and usually they only occur when theres been some trouble within friend dynamics. so without these bastard of characters, plot wouldnt grow AS strong and i often keep that in mind when i explore a story.

anyways, I HAD A POINT TO THIS: so vriska and karkat are characters who are yes, mean, but it seems to be their personality, and the way they either show emotions and convey feelings (karkat) or make a barrier so they DONT show emotions to produce vulnerability (vriska), white text guy seems to mostly be out to be an asshole. he told vriska she was useless to sum it up but im not too sure if this is one of those “first dialogue” to mould out a bias opinion before we even get to the character themselves, but judging by how vriska and karkat played out, he surely means something bad and i dont know how to explain it. but i cannot base anything off from one piece of dialogue. i dont even know what else to call him other than white text guy so...... ill just leave that out for now, until we finally get his introduction

though, i do wish to mention, and will expand on, im not wrong when i say karkat and vriska are similar but in different context. sorry if youre favourite is karkat and you dont like vriska, or vice versa, but uhhhh their introductions are so similar its uncanny and the way they’re portrayed is the same except one is more on crack about the meddling, while the other is angry about the meddling. similar to how it was with karkat, we were introduced to vriska talking with someone we knew (tavros) whom she obviously didnt like, so obviously, from her point of view, she wanted to be menacing. like how karkat was menacing to jade because she wouldnt listen to his point... he got angry, so he lashed out. but us, the readers, didnt know that. we thought “oh god its this asshole” until we made it further in the story and started to warm up to karkat. it may not be the same with vriska, she may be a bully regardless, but you cannot tell me we moulded a bias towards her character as we did when we first read karkat. theyre both truly mean to other people, maybe both for different reasons, but i do want to point out the similarities and not leave that out. im pretty sure andrew basically gave us a conversation that formed our opinion of a character right off the bat rather than go into depth of WHY they did it, and how they are naturally without the conditions of the game. which, you can also see with vriska when she conversed with kanaya. andrew started off with a character who only appears to speak once, and makes you judge them from first appearance alone, without any explanation as to why they said what they said and how they are with other characters, let says. so you assume they were simply a rude character. now look how karkat turned out. so im guessing in homestuck, the first impression should never be the opinion you stick with until MAYBE 5 more conversations with that character (each one different)

OKAY done with the vriska introduction, now to slutquius

yes, hes kinda weird, i have stated that many times. i have no idea what to say about him other than he likes porn, he likes centaur dick which just so happens to be his lusus as well and if that isnt a red flag idk what is

he also likes his lusus milk, right from the udders of his guardian

fun times, fun times

my opinion of equius kinda.. differs. which i should really put in place the “dont judge by first impression” rule, because at first i thought he was rude with, then i thought he was hhh okay, because i understood why he was being so protective over nepeta and her team placement, since the people she was going to play with WERE dangerous. but if you think about it, both sides will probably put you in danger. it just depends on which ones you confide in more to protect your back rather than those which would cause trouble on purpose, in my HONEST opinion. so equius was a little overdramatic on that part, but i got what he meant. he was on the blue team and he didnt want to leave nepeta alone without him on the red. but then this session happened. and he went back to being weird again because of the whole porn thing, especially being so open about it like dude chill youre 13. but the thing is, then i felt bad for him because hes basically touch starved. to say that he could break anything he touches, i doubt people would go up to him for hugs. in fear they would be crushed to death by a simple hug. so im guessing hes rather lonely and doesnt really know how to interact because of this. so i felt sad that he had to live a life where he needs to be careful of everything he touches so it doesnt break randomly. see? poor dude. but then things got weird. and im pretty sure hes a masochist. so my opinion on equius is a fucking cosine graph

which brings us to the final point:

gamzee and equius’ conversation

i dont even know.....like.........gamzee was unaware that equius was using him for his own power play roleplay, right? gamzee knew it was a roleplay but it had had some.. idk.... obvious sexual implications? and i bet gamzee didnt really know that? he thought they were only venting out through a simple roleplay and trying to get closer because he originally thought equius hated him, considering equius flat out said “i hate you” and gamzee went “you tell me everyday and im okay with that” so.. gamzee probably wanted only to get closer to equius so he helped out his little problem which.. thats so sweet but i feel bad he was coerced into something he didnt get, especially since he was innocent enough to go along without knowing equius’ true gain

anyways, equius was getting off with the hierarchy thing. considering he’s “lower” than gamzee, and gamzee is surprisingly ...high on the spectrum??? so equius wanted gamzee to boss him around, because it felt only natural to him since he’s the “inferior one” and gamzee is The Big Man. like i get that, but it was written in a way that was so uncomfortable, that i wish i didnt. equius is just a weird character... hes not BAD per say, but hes... hes something alright

but im really liking gamzee. the two things which struck me in that one conversation, was the “i dont get why we should dictate people by the colour of their blood, i just see people as people” piece of dialogue and “i cant go around pleasing just everything so its alright if you hate me”

thats... so good, idk. i really liked that. i also really liked when kanaya said “youre dangerous but dangerous people are needed and are important because it shapes you” like <33 my fucking heart

god homestuck may be a tad on the weird side with some of its characters but it surely knows how to create great lines of dialogue

and that concludes the long 4 hour session i did, hope you all enjoyed it

with that, i rest

[theropoda]

3, 4, 6-8, 11, 13-17, 19-22, 26-30 uwu

WOO LAD THAT’S A LOT THANK U!!! this got long and i wrote an essay or two LOL so im putting it under a readmore!

3: Best game you’ve ever played? WEEEELLLL.......let me preface this with two things: one, i am a FAKE GAMER as in my laptop is not at all made for gaming, it’s piss poor, so a big chunk of games i’m interested in is because i watched a playthrough of them lol. i have a 3ds but only 3 games on it (animal crossing new leaf, tomodachi life, nintedogs & cats). second, i’m very bad at choosing favorites of things.....BUUUUT .....i choooooose, in no particular order, OFF, pigeonetics, elder scrolls oblivion, pathologic classic HD!! i’m more than likely forgetting a few though, so sorry about that

4: Worst game you’ve ever played? as i said above, cannot choose favorites, neither can i choose whatever the opposite of favorites is but...uhh, does lif even count as a game? like lif, the stupid little furry flash game i remember playing on some shady website. it was surprisingly very active with a BUNCH of people there but i kept dying like every 5 seconds....AWFUL

6: A game that’s changed you the most? WELL define Changed.....ummm aha first thing that comes to mind is OFF. it’s one of those things where you never knew you wanted something so fucking bad until you saw it--and it’s like that for me. i NEVER knew i loved that odd, surreal, colorful, “looks playful and simple in some parts but incredibly violent and unnerving in other parts” aesthetic til i played it. like aesthetically i love that game to BITS and something about it just stuck with me til the end of time.

later in life (meaning, past year or so) it changed me because it taught me a lesson about storytelling and creative endeavors. a very useful lesson. which is: things don’t really need to have a meaning. stories, art, music, writing, whatnot, while it CAN be deep and meaningful, while you CAN use it as a way to communicate with the world about all kinds of heartfelt things, it can also be...nothing, really.

once i, as usual, got ridiculously overwhelmingly sad about small things. specifically seeing other people around me come up with all kinds of deep and meaningful characters and stories, sometimes putting them into webcomics or writings of theirs, and they were all so well-thought out and detailed and what i envied most was people put a lot of themselves and their experiences into them, venting and coping through them, whilst also making these larger-than-life grandiose complex stories and worlds and so on and so forth.

it made me look at my own ideas and get mad/frustrated at how shallow they were. but then i remembered OFF and i felt better because Fun Fact, mortis ghost has a now-abandoned dA account and if you go through the comment section on his profile, he answers a lot of fan questions and he mentions several times that the game didn’t really have a “meaning”, it didn’t really have a “deeper story” or moral or anything, really. i’m paraphrasing this but i vividly remember him saying “i wanted to make a game, so i did”.

that made me feel a lot better because it made me realise that sometimes art--especially stories, in my case-- doesn’t NEED to be DEEP or have MEANING...sometimes it can just BE!!!! sometimes it really can just be all about AESTHETICS like who GIVES a shit if there’s a hidden meaning if you take the first letter of all of your characters’ names and put them backwards, sometimes all that matters is if they just VIBE with you y’know....

yume nikki is similar in this regard bc that game doesn’t have any story other than “collect egg” and yet it’s so impactful. that game doesn’t have a story or meaning it just IS........ :) GOD THATS SO LONG IM SORRY ABOUT THAT but yeah. funny violent ghostbusting baseball man is a game that changed me :)

7: A game you’ll never forget? OFF AGAIN LOL,,, it’s just so memorable because of how unique it is. visuals, soundtrack, story, everything is so memorable. unforgettable. oh god you can tell how much i love this damn game can’t you

8: Best soundtrack? yakuza 0, OFF, there is a picture (another game by mortis ghost, again composed by alias conrad coldwood who also composed OFF), pigeonetics (the entire soundtrack of which is here), jojo’s bizarre adventure all star battle and eyes of heaven, silent hill 2 & 3, undertale....probably forgetting more but all of these...earcandy

11: Hardest game you’ve played? i am a shitty gamer so this is Most games i’ve played lol!! but uhh..well you see. hardest game i remember playing as of recent is pathologic classic hd in which it’s...not only hard to understand what any character is saying at any given time lol but also, i don’t think it’s HARD it’s just...you need to focus. you REALLY need to fucking focus and pay attention in this game. so i wouldn’t say its HARD, but i’m only putting this here bc it’s in recent memory.

i say recent memory because the true answer is susceptible to “yeah, but now you’re older, it must not be so hard.” as in if i played it now i think i’d have a way easier time. but when i was around....10-12 years old i had several ps3 video game adaptations of animated movies and i had SUCH a fucking hard time with them. g-force, bolt and up in particular were fucking HARD. like genuinely, the hardest time i had EVER had in my live playing video games is tied to these three fucking games. g-force and bolt ESPECIALLY. one particular level in bolt took both me AND my sister around a year to fucking finish.

again, i was baby, so i bet i’d have a much easier time with them now that i’m 17. but for now, in my experience, bolt and g-force for the ps3 were harder than pathologic classic. i think icepick lodge should take a few notes for them for pathologic 2.

13: A game you were the most excited for when it wasn’t released yet? STREETS OF KAMUROCHO...i spent the entire day of its release anticipating its launch lol

14: A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting? hmm..most games i like and know about do have voice acting so i dunno....i guess it would’ve been kind of cool if morrowind had like, full proper voice acting. but i can understand why it only voice acted things like greetings and battle insults because GOD that game is SO...complicated...and as a result, the conversations are so lengthy and text-full. playing morrowind is really like a goddamn book! if it was voice acted i’m sure all that information would have to be shortened bc i know no one is going to fucking voice act two whole paragraphs

15: Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover? pigeonetics and yakuza in which instead of being about the criminal underworld it’s about shady and unethical pigeon clubs, breeding, racing, etc etc...a lot of illegal shit does happen in the world of pigeons especially when it comes to racing; prized racers have been kidnapped and held for ransom before. and then there’s Avian Cucking: The Sport, where people breed the sexiest pigeons (horseman thief pouters), release them outside to seduce other people’s sexy pigeons, and bring them back and keep ‘em, drama ensues. will kiryu ever escape his past as a professional pigeon-napper, and find solace in his new life as a pigeon hobbyist? find out now by playing YACOOZA......

JOKES ASIDES i don’t know i really don’t....umm, pigeonetics and animal crossing somehow?? :O... like, instead of managing your own town it’s managing your own loft!...orrrr, the jojo games (all star battle & eyes of heaven) with yakuza, because i think they’re somewhat similar because they’re both haha Wacky Silly AND serious over the top fighty-fighting.....or maybe a crossover with OFF and discover my body, which, despite being an incredibly short and obscure indie game i still love to bits for what it’s worth. WAIT ANIMAL CROSSING AND MINECRAFT THAT WOULD FUCK SO HARD OH MY GOD

16: Character you’ve hated most? From what game? i can’t think of any character i like, HATE...with a burning passion.. there are a few i dislike or have a complicated relationship with though.. i’m not interested in the series anymore but ouma from drv3...i’ll admit that he is a bit fun sometimes, especially in the very early beginning he’s a likeable brat but as the game progresses he becomes more irritating than anything and i have an issue with him in regards to writing, despite the fact that i have never been awake in any english class ever lol. it’s too long to put in this already long post but i’ll keep it at that. if you like him, well, good for you for finding joy in something i couldn’t! but he just doesn’t do it for me.

AH I JUST REMEMBERED....MINE......FROM YAKUZA 3....maybe i’d change my mind if i watched a playthrough of y3 again, because i think you always absorb something better on your second watch (tho i honestly Dont have the energy to do that all over again, the yakuza games are too fucking long), but i really hate his writing. spoilers for y3 but, i think mine’s writing, alongside other things in the game, were super messy...and a big part of why i hate him is that not only is he one of those “could’ve had great potential but fell flat” sorta guys but also his love for daigo is seen as some fans as good gay rep and i?????/.............um....WELL let’s just say that, i think people nowadays will see any gay character ever in any circumstance and say it’s good gay rep just based off the fact that A Gay Character exists....he was Not, good gay rep imo....he was not, let alone, Good. .........

17: What game do you never tell people you play? can’t think of any games i wouldn’t tell people i play.. idk exactly what this question’s asking. does it mean what game you don’t tell ppl you play bc you’re embarrassed about it...? i’m not very embarrassed by any of them. the only thing that comes close, i guess, is uhh lioden and wolvden. i’ve only interacted with those communities a LITTLE TINY WEE BIT, yet of what i’ve seen it’s a goddamn dumpster fire and i’d never want to be associated with them lol

19: Which game do you think deserves a revival? i’m well aware it’ll never happen and that it’s more a wet dream than anything but...PT/silent hills..... on a more realistic/”could happen” note, PIGEONETICS!!!! SERIOUSLY, it’s an amazing game about amazing animals and it teaches genetics in a very simplified and efficient way!! genetics is SO hard for me to understand, i fucking hated studying it but this game really helped me understand how it works AND its super engaging and interesting!! HOWEVER, of all the pigeon genes we know of, only a handful were seen in pigeonetics and i’d LOVE a sequel that employs new game mechanics AND new genes!! i wanna learn about bronze and stencil genes! i wanna learn about phenotypes like grizzled and pied!!! genes like sooty and dirty!!! @ UNIVERSITY OF UTAH GENETICS DEPARTMENT PLEASE IM BEGIGNG YOU

20: What was the first video game you ever played? earliest memories of Gaming involves me at my aunt’s house playing two games: super mario brothers and some kind of trapeze game. i don’t remember anything else though

21: How old were you when you first played a video game? i can’t remember but i must’ve been REAL tiny.... 6-9 years, maybe??

22: If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do? immerse myself meaning go into their world...? huh....on one hand i’d like to go in the world of yakuza 0 to play in the arcades and do whore related activities but i’d also love to go into the world of animal crossing (and i’m pretty sure i’d be some sort of generic dromaeosaurid in that game!!) and shop, chat with villagers, do chores for them, go fishing, bug hunting, eat delicious fucking food like the apples mangos peaches cherries etc etc.....OH AND FOSSIL HUNTING THAT’S THE BEST PART!! though it would definetly be a little weird, to be a little dinosaur and finding a fossil of a...little dinosaur....i guess the non-sentient species went extinct and the dinosaur i am is some kind of, descendant of a sapient non-avian dinosaur that survived the k-pg extinction event...oh but who cares all i want is a cool little ambulocetus fossil or something. and some cherry pie :)

26: Handheld or console? my old ps3 just went kaput one day years ago so i haven’t used it in years so i can’t compare well... but i’d say handheld, because it lets me like DO stuff more...would love to get a console one day, a ps4 maybe but i’m kinda worried it’ll make me stay in one room all day wasting away my time when there’s other stuff i can do, y’know? but something handheld like my 3ds, on the other hand...i can do stuff with it. i can take it to my room and play it between breaks i take as i clean the room and fold my clothes, i can watch something on the tv and play the game during ad breaks, i can take it outside too if it has charge to last me a while! so....handheld i guess

27: Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry? yakuza 0 and undertale in particular have ALMOST made me fucking bawl with many of its moments....yakuza 0 especially, after that Fucking Ending i had trouble sleeping because oh my fucking god. video game people SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

28: Which character’s clothes do you wish you owned the most?

29:  Which is more important, gameplay or story? HMMM....well, if i were to play a game with a shitty story but really good and fun gameplay i’d probably continue playing it for the gameplay. but if i played a game with shitty gameplay but an interesting story, there is a chance i’d play it more for the sake of the story but also i might just quite and see the rest of the story on youtube or something. i’m more likely to go through a boring story for fun gameplay than go through boring gameplay for an interesting story, so i guess gameplay is more important to me....that is, WHEN i actually own and play a game as opposed to when i just watch someone play a game because i don’t own the game but wanna know abt the story lol

30: A game that hasn’t been localized in your country that you think should be localized? i have no idea how video game localization really works....but i assume localizing a game in india would mean something like, removing content according to cultural norm and also somehow translating it into the 22 official languages..? or just two or three language if it’s tied to a particular state, which seems way more doable. i honestly have no idea? i’ve never interacted w the indian gaming community that much to be honest, all i know of it is of the video games i’ve seen sold in some game stores and a few whispers about like solid snake or whoever from my school’s cafeteria....the most popular games here, to my knowledge, are those very streamable games like fortnite and PUBG and your call of duties and whatnot. those generic shooters. and even then, that honestly isn’t the “indian” gaming community bc this country is so FUCKHUGE, it’s just tamil nadu. one state.

soooo, according to what little i know of gaming interests in where i live, i don’t think any of the games i like should be localized here bc i don’t really think there’s an audience for it as far as i can tell :( maybe animal crossing? it’s a fun little games for all ages and i think it has a chance of becoming popular here, so maybe that is worth a shot! but i can’t think of any other game that i like that really has an audience here (other than Me lol)

[keijiisaundertalefan122-blog]

Asgore hate

Haha hi yeah im sorry if you hate asgore please give a true reason reason than just saying he killed 6 kids. Asgore didnt want to fight frisk. It was clear to see how he fights and when he speaks to frisk before even starting the battle. Toriel knew what the other monters wanted to kill the kids yet she let them go. But when frisk falls down and gets to asgore she is like 'oh fuck maybe i should do something'

And how passive aggressive she is??? Like. Yeah asgore did supposedly killed the kids and got their souls to FREE HIS KINGDOM. To ya know. Give them hope still. Honestly i dont think asgore kill the kids. You find their stuff around the underground. Assuming other monsters killed them and brought their soul and body to asgore. Now if you dont hate most of the other characters because they tried to kill frisk over and over, and maybe even killed the 6 kids. Undyne was ready to kill frisk. Didnt give one fuck about them like she was determined to kill this fucking child. Toriel even attacked frisk to 'prove if they are strong' she can literally kill you. She left you alone in the ruins where the monster can openly harm you. Sans didnt give a fuck about frisk either 'youll be dead where you stand' if he didnt make that promise i think one step out the ruins sans wouldve killed you. So why love sans. Mettaton used him fighting frisk for views. He just wanted to be popular on the plus of that alphys made mettaton as a 'killer robot' and manipulate frisk going through the core, giving wrong advice and what to do, aND LIED. Mettaton even says she lied.

She also kinda made flowey. Even if she didn't realize it by leaving the flower vessel. Flowey messed with timelines and just did was ever he want. He even try to get frisk to do genocide and asriel. Asriel did a lot of shit too as flowey. He also too fights frisk as 'GOD OF HYPERDEATH.' as flowey he killed the monsters and toyed with them over and over, killed frisk many times. But guess what. In the end of the fight. We hug and forgive asriel, and the other monsters. Why cant you forgive asgore for trying to do what he believe was right for his kingdom? Everyone did something bad in the game. And the whole point is to forgive and well in a way forget. Frisk did not hate everyone because them as a child understood why they did what they did. Asgore very well loves toriel and you know it on he reacts and speaks to toriel when he sees her. If you still love everyone but hate asgore im sorry but whats the point to even play undertale and be in the fandom when you cant even understand the point of the game. Please. Check yourself and try to have a heart and realize what game you supposedly love and forgive the poor father. Not only toriel lost her 2 kids but so did asgore.

[saltypepperspice]

Glitchtale in the hourglass of salt

Glitchtale is an animated YouTube series created by @camilaart, now with this review there will be spoilers for this series and others I will use to get my point across. So let's start.

Glitchtale is about Undertale. Kinda. The main problem is it kinda strains from the actual plot of Undertale and usually leaves only small details that I had to ask her where to find them to prove her point. Its style has gone through some major changes as Cami has improved as an animator and an artist, as most do. I did like the style at first, it wasnt anything special, but then mid season 2, the style was pretty fricking good... but now in the recent episodes, something felt off. Felt different... felt... anime...

Now before anyone says this series is not in anyway like anime, it's so clear, Jessica straight up goes into a chibi art style which felt so out of place, and re-watching the latest episode made me more annoyed, Sometimes the characters would speak, but their mouths wont move, and when they do, it just opens and stays that way regardless to what they say. Which feels odd. Though on the good side it does have some nice palette choices.

Another bit of a problem I have is the writing, because i use to care about these characters. But now I really dont give a crap if one of them dies, and there are so many things I don't understand. And this one is just depending on how much you see plot twists. But plot twists are tossed out into the open compared to what they should be. I started showing a friend Glitchtale and right off the bat when seeing Betty, she told me she thought she was evil. I tried to cover it up and lie and say shes not, but when it happens she just kinda went "called it". Now if were looking for a good example of a plot twist here are the standards I think it needs to be a good twist

1. We need to have a fair amount of prior knowledge

2. We need to be mislead, but not too much

3. We shouldn't expect it

A good example of this is in the movie SAW, the entire movie keeps up wondering who the Jigsaw Killer really is, and around the end of the film we think it's the sketchy criminal we've been watching, but suddenly, from the nasty bathroom, a victim watches the corpse he was trapped in stand up, revealing that he used medicine to make him seem lifeless, and this moment is one of the most shocking moments in a film ever, it's such an amazing twist. But the reveal of Bettt felt so... alright. Before the big twist happens, were already getting a lot of info and clues that its Betty, since prior, she had acted pretty sketchy. Which is the last thing a good plot twist needs. A nice personality is the easiest and cheapest way to make a good plot twist. If rather, Betty would have made an illusion of herself dying and then revealing it later, that would have been amazing, I would have been shocked. And us being given more knowledge is just bad. We just need to know a sliver so it is understandable when it becomes a major plot point. In the movie Friday the 13th, the movie doesn't talk about Jason drowning every five minutes or how his mother became crazy. All we hear before the grand reveal is "The Boy who drowned In that lake". That's all. And when Ms. Voorhees reveals her reasoning for her crime, it makes sense, we heard about the boy. We knew that the two counselors were murdered the year after so it didnt just get tossed In that uh-oh. She be a killer.

Cami told me that maybe I forgot so much of the story, but it's hard to remember when all this is getting tossed around. At least the wizards weren't too bad. At first. But then it just spiraled out of control to things that are not explained or reasoned. Amber has a two soul colors because... Betty's soul has lived 300 years despite it still being a human soul because... and if the arguement could be that pink is some kind of "diffrent type of soul" That's like when movies tale place on earth the whole time but then the newest movie is about them in space.

Not to mention all the characters are just anime tropes. Gaster is edgy, Asriel is edgy now, Papyrus is a nice boi, Frisk is the kid no one undestands and Betty... discount Freddy Krueger.

This is my final point but everything Betty does just feels like I'm watching A Nightmare on Elm Street (but it's not scary). Even Betty's additude of the time messing with Frisk for the past is just something Mr. Kruger does. But better. When he messes with people, he does it with fashion. Someone is a puppeteer? String em like a puppet and walk them to their death. You want to be on TV? Let our friend Freddy give you the joke of a life time and turn himself into your TV, and shove your head in it. Betty just. Makes people see the past and their mistakes. And when she does it she could at least be fun about it. Do something to make it more of an entertaining villian. I believe every villian needs a gimmick that makes them scary.

The Joker is a killer, but hes fun with it

Jason is Tall Dark and Evil

Betty is just sorta a stabbing person to the point is where I don't even understand their motive. Once again. Here are two good movie motives that can prove how to make a good one

1. Saw: After giving up on life, The Jigsaw Killer dedicates the rest of his to making anyone who also didn't respect life, to under go In something that will make them.

2 . Friday the 13th: A deformed and mentally challenged boy, Jason grows to become the mommas boy of a lifetime, by killing those to finish what she started everytime he rises from the dead

The series just needs at some point a filler to explain a lot before it moves on, better main plot points and to explain how the universe works without needing to ask major points to the creator, and when you still dont get a good answer right a review on it...

Wait.

[autisticsquidward]

human/modern AU of ok ko!

explanations/headcanons under the cut (warning for spoilers/up to date info on the show)

1. dendy      -autistic, wears a kids union suit to deal with sensory issues (she knows it’s pajamas but she doesn’t care!)      -wears red rubber boots for keeping her socks safe from puddles and mud      -pokemon cards are her favorite thing instead of pow cards, since i figured they were analogous. they're her and ko’s mutual special interest. she carries her whole collection in her backpack “in case of catastrophe” and as a comfort item      -has a ds and a laptop in her backpack too. still calls it her hackpack even though she cant hack things with magical powers because ko named it that      -shes native american. i thought about making her japanese because kappas are japanese water demons, but with the whole “nerdy emotionless asian sidekick” stereotype being a big thing, i thought that would be gross and stereotypical. instead i made her a member of the oneida tribe and part of the turtle family clan. the colonization of the kappas in-show mirrored the colonization of real world native american and first nations people, so i thought it would be neat for her to be first nations. i made her oneida because their clan, the turtle clan, is responsible for the keeping of the environment and the keeping of knowledge, and with dendy’s hackpack/her fixing things and her being a kappa i thought that would be both appropriate and pretty cool!

2. ko      -hes already human, i suppose, but i made him less “hero-y” in the sense that he dresses like he could actually be a hero in real life and more the way kids are obsessed with heroes in our world. hence, spiderman!      -watched a bunch of safety psas for riding bikes and misinterpreted them so now he wears kneepads and a bike helmet everywhere      -carol ironed on the spiderman onto a plain cotton t-shirt cuz ko has sensory stuff that prevent him from wearing most merchandise      -also autistic plus has adhd! special interests are pokemon and spiderman; he never stops talking about them      -hates shoes but that’s already canon      -i made him white cuz i’m kin with him and that’s pretty much it!

3. rad      -oh, rad, you really are a 16 year old boy now aren’t you?      -mesh muscle tank top because of course he would. highlighter yellow running shorts and nike sneakers because he likes the aesthetic of being on the track team. he says he didn’t join the track team because it would cut into his me time but really he didn’t make the team and is too embarrassed to admit it :(      -he wears weed socks but hes never seen a weed in real life. he thinks you eat the leaves      -he and enid get their ears pierced together. he has four piercings on his ears and used to have a belly button ring but he didn’t like it so he let it heal. his parents are happy he expresses himself, even when hes being macho or emo or whatever strikes his fancy that day      -hes pretty much ian’s self insert so hes a second generation ghanaian immigrant just like ian.

4. enid      -shes here, shes gay, and shes punk. has a nose ring she wears when she wants to look intimidating but otherwise its four just like rad. they have matching earrings      -gave her a leather jacket with gay patches after a lesbian i once knew. seemed her style i guess. ones the gay flags and one is two venus symbols. id have drawn more but they’re hard. there’s spikes on the cuffs but i’m unsure how well they came out      -black skinny jeans. coolest jeans. bought em from the men’s section      -dyes her hair purple because its her favorite color (much to ko’s delight)      -gave her combat boots after seeing @deanky‘s redesign (link). thanks dean for the good idea!!!       -shes chubby buff. very strong, very chubby. kinda like a lot of people drew sans from undertale except shes not so short. i didn’t do the creepy tiny waist massive thighs shit the show does for all the female characters because its creepy and shes 16 and its not even good for her character?? shes a ninja and like, has organs??? so shes chubby and buff thank you good day      -probably does a martial art or boxing or wrestling but i genuinely dont know anything about sports so you come up with that heacanon ;) (her and rad being on the wrestling team together would be cute!)      -she’s afro-latina! she and her mom are pretty obviously black and her dad calls her mom “querida” during parents day so its pretty much canon yall

[brainfarts-com]

I want to get this out of my system. Not like anyone gonna see it, but have been bottling it up for years and not let go of it. My parents know the person but dont know the damage. The only person who knows it was damaging, doesn't know the full story. No one knows but me and it has been eating me away from the inside for 7 years. And still no one else will know it, but ill have it down, giving myself a chanse to get it straight.

I changed schools after the 4th grade. My mom didn't like the teachers there so she brought me to a better school. Which was absolutely fine, I missed my best friend a lot but it was a great school with amazing teachers and classmates. Exept Luca. She was something else. She was strong willed and strong worded. She always got exactly what she wanted. Her parents spoiled and phraised her non stop. And she made that everyone elses problem. On my first day in school, I remember her smiling at me... and the next thing I remember is that I was in her friend group (which meant two other girls). It feels like I completely blacked out a few months. From there it was downhill. When I got there, I was an ambivert at least - loving attention, spending time with people and very much a people pleaser. She used that up against me big time. She lowered my self esteem to zero, made me believe I was average, but at least worse in everything than her. She ordered me around like a puppy. It got to a point that I made fun of myself just to entertain her- because I knew that was what she wated to hear. She made me fear her- but I didn't know why I was afraid of her. Thats what got me out of it. I sometimes tried to ask her to stop, because I did feel uncomfortable and like this isnt normal, but it never worked. She said shed change, but after a month she was the same as ever.

After two and a half years I broke down in tears to my mom and when she asked why am I afraid of her, I realized how unrealistic I was. The next day I didn't go to her. When she was standing behind me, shouting my name, I didn't turn around. I was shaking while she said: "pah, it must be one of her tantrums". I didn't sit with the table they sat in, I asked the girl I admired instead if I can sit with them an her table group was surprised, but nice and let me sit there. The rage on her face... That I could betray her... She asked me what is my problem, I said: I just want space... I was shaking so hard. Ever since in stressful situations and confrontations, I shake uncontrolably. Her answer was not nice, bit the best I could wish for- she didn't want to interact with me anymore.

The faces of other people... some even gratulated me and offered to help. The girl I admired said I could hang with them if id like. Thats when I realized, how nice classmates I have. Before i was separated from them by Luca, who made everyone a bad guy. But now they accepted me, talked with me, joked with me. Even tho I became a lone shark most of the time, but I got a lot of support from them. They probably didn't even notice. But that didn't last too long.

Less than two years and high school started. I had no idea, how to interact with people, so I did the same as before. Lone shark, helping out with school stuff. But now that didn't work well- my new classmates didn't care for me, just to get what they wanted. They even made fun of me, sometimes with talking with me like im an idiot, while I helped them with homework and help them on tests. But I was naive and frankly, I had it worse with Luca, this was way nicer than before, so I didn't think much of it.

A miracle that I got a friend. She was nerdy and she was the butt of the jokes as well, but that wasn't why we became friends. We liked the same youtuber. A few months and we were inseparable. But that didn't magically teach me how to be friends with someone. So I did the same as before- listened and acted the way I thought others would like me to be. That was what Luca trained me to do. That was not my friends fault, but it ruined the friendship. Slowly I became empty with no energy to act. I became snappy and quiet, which made her distance herself from me. Later we talked it out but at that time, it was the worse. I had nothing going on, no stimulus, same thing repeating, smiling to teachers and roommates and that empty feeling inside.

At that point, I was barely alive. For years, I told myself: if I wouldn't have friends and family, I wouldn't be worth living. I did not realize, how fucked up that mindset was. Now I didn't have friends, my days became even blanker and acting became harder. I couldn't laugh at a video I found funny- god, I remember that balloon one, I thought: hah, thats funny, but not a chuckle, not a smile, just the thought. And still, I didn't realize what bad of a shape I was in mentaly. I was suicidal, but not outright, the thought made itself normal in my brain, like it is an everyday thing to think of.

My only chill time became YouTube. I didn't have to act while watching. Than I found undertale there. I knew the story and the characters so well while ive never played the game, but I loved it. Once it recommended a let's play of it to me. The thumbnail was pretty and upon seeing how long the video was, I simply said I'll click away if I get bored.

It hit me like a horse kick. My face showed genuent expression for the first time in years. The sheer energy of it, the thing I lacked for years. Only the intro caught me, the happy guy who said it- I binged the whole series. And than went on a Jse channel binge. It was amazing, it gave me life, it made me want to draw more, it gave me the will and energy to live. Soon his and Mark's videos became the thing I awaited the most in a day.

Now I remember, it was half a year after watching them that I became snappy. Because they were nice and they didn't ask me to be someone else. Sean said in so many videos that "you are worth it", and he said so many encouraging words along with Mark that I started to believe them. The way I went about it later with my friend was not good tho. Neither of us adressed the problem, we just... avoided it.

Months went by. I started to heal a little, but also got too attached to both of them. It was unhealthy, I know, but they were all I had who didn't judge me. This was the time when my relationship with my mom started to go down. I didn't meet her high expectations. I started to stand up for myself and told her I don't want to be a dentist or a psichologist. She only realized i'm serious when I didn't get into any college. I took a year off, but she still tried to push me. No matter how many times I told her, she gently manipulated me into going along. Or so She thought. I went on the exams she wanted me to, but I failed one. I didn't put effort in, because I didn't want the goal. And that finally made her accept that I want to be a kindergarden teacher. To this day im listening to "you could have been blah blah", but I dont care.

In that off time i grew a lot. I found the jse community. I stopped being dependant on their content. I started to heal for real. I slowly built myself an ego and expand myself. The things I should have done years ago, when I was a kid. When I was taken that chanse away.

Luca. She made my life so difficult and I dont think, she knows it. I could bet that she didn't see herself damaging. I bet she still doesn't see that. But... that doesn't change anything. It doesn't give me back my lost time. It doesn't matter. I ended up how I am now because of her. While it was a tough road, there are things that I wouldn't be the same without her. I wouldn't have the community. I wouldn't have the friends I do now. I wouldn't be the same, the me I worked so hard for. Of course, if she wouldn't intervine, itd be easier. Probably, who knows. I think it would be. But moarning on it won't change it. I have set my motto to be "Don't worry about the things you can't change, it only causes you more stress", but I havent applied it to this situation.

It is time to do it. It is time to let go of those bad feelings. Of course thats easier said than done, but I have the power to it. I allow myself the time to do it. She is my past, a past that shaped me but doesn't define me.

It is time to be unapologeticly me

[betweengenesisfrogs]

OFF THE CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #3: THE SELF PILE DOESN’T STOP FROM GETTING TALLER OR: THE PROBLEM OF DEAD MARIOS

DISCLAIMER

IMPORTANT THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

So, a long-ass time ago, Rose and Dave had a conversation like this:

TT: After you go, what do you think will happen to me? TT: Will I just cease to exist? TG: i dont know TG: i mean your whole timeline will TG: maybe TT: Maybe? TT: Is there a chance it'll continue to exist, and I'll just be here alone forever? TT: I'm not sure which outcome is more unsettling. TG: the thing with time travel is TG: you cant overthink it TG: just roll with it and see what happens TG: and above all try not to do anything retarded TT: What do you think I should do? TG: try going to sleep TG: our dream selves kind of operate outside the normal time continuum i think TG: so if part of you from this timelines going to persist thats probably the way to make it happen TT: Ok. TG: and hey you might even be able to help your past dream self wake up sooner without all that fuss you went through TT: I think the true purpose of this game is to see how many qualifiers we can get to precede the word "self" and still understand what we're talking about.

This is the most important sentence in Homestuck.

I am dead serious.

Well, OK, I mean, it’s pretty important for understanding some major Homestuck themes and shit or something like that.

Also, I totally should have said: Pre-Retcon Doomed Timeline Non-Dreamself Rose but ultimately about to become Dreamself Rose who semi-merged with Pre-Retcon Alpha Timeline Rose and Doomed Timeline Dave aka Davesprite AKA future Davepetasprite^2 or as we all call them around the office, Davepeta, had that conversation.

Maybe you begin to see what I’m going to talk about here.

One of the major frustrations a lot of people had with the retcon was that the characters we ended up with at the end weren’t the ones we’d come to love and know throughout the story. Was it even worth it, to lose the characters we loved to the tyranny of Game Over? The victorious kids, with the exception of John and Roxy, were other people, with other histories, other goals, and other choices.

Allow me to submit that that may be the whole point.

SBURB is cruel. We’ve known that for a long time. It’s cruel not as Caliborn is cruel, but as the cosmos is cruel, as a supernova is cruel. It wants what it wants, and doesn’t care about how that intersects with the needs of humanity. It wants to make universes through a complex game-playing method, and drags hapless, vulnerable adolescents along for the ride. And most of the time it doesn’t even succeed, leaving its champions to rot in a doomed timeline or similar! Skaia’s victory is an amoral creation myth where individual human beings are just the carved pieces on the chessboard. (I mean, the other ones. Not the carapacians.)

Again, let’s consider the theme of VIDEO GAMES vs. REAL LIFE.

Homestuck, let’s be real, is basically some postmodern horror timey-wimey Jumanji. For a generation way more familiar with pixels than cute little tokens It’s easy for teenagers and in fact, basically everyone, to fantasize about escaping their life and slipping into some game world forever, where they get to do awesome things and be a heroic person.

Homestuck makes that literal. Congratulations, everything you ever knew is dead. You will never see it again, except your internet friends, who turn out also to be your family and other important people. I mean, from a distance, SBURB sounds like an awesome game, right? You figure out who you are and get to wear a cool costume displaying that identity. You get to make anything you want and enjoy this hyperflexible mythology tailored to YOUR CHOICES. HS fans talk all the time about how cool it would be to play a real version of SBURB. That’s a big part of the appeal of SBURB fan adventures. They put you and your friends in the story. Or your favorite characters! It sounds like a fantasy come true.

The thing is, as fantastical as it is, it’s also really fucked up, and ultimately you and your friends are being used. By a giant frog to let it have its babies. By the universe. By a smug blue cloud thing that doesn’t care about you at all.

SBURB does not care about you at all.

The funny thing, SBURB features a mythology with so many layers and nuances and seemingly human motifs about growth and self that you might search for some grand ultimate meaning behind it, but it’s not even human enough to have a personality, to be something you can argue with or fight. It just is. It’s all the cruelty and power of a god without any of the dazzling personality. It’s empty. It just wants to make universes all day long, or fail trying. It is a great, weird tadpole-making machine that eats children.

One of the big ways it doesn’t care about you is its attitude toward the self. Humans and trolls and whatnot prefer not to be relentlessly duplicated. SBURB says, oh yeah, let’s make tons of copies of the player characters and use them for a lot of different purposes.

There’s the dreamself, an essential bifurcation of identity (you are now and were always the dream moon princex) that sometimes gets merged into god tier but sometimes doesn’t. There’s doomed timeline selves, who exist ultimately to augment an Alpha timeline whose Alphaness is decided very arbitrarily and frequently by Lord English. There’s the you who exists before a scratched session and the you who exists afterward, who are two different people but started as one baby in an act of ectobaby meteor duplication, your player self and your guardian self. Dead timeline yous fill up the dreambubbles made by the horrorterrors and get endlessly confused with each other. Any one of these could be the you experience being at any given moment, and which one it is entirely arbitrary. Don’t like being Dead Nepeta #47? Tough hoofbeast leavings, kiddo.

To top it all off, in Terezi: Remember, we learn that every single time we thought someone changed from one self to another, was resurrected or something like that, it was another act of duplication. For every time someone’s died, there’s another version of them waiting in the Dream Bubbles, surprised that they’re not the main character anymore. And we have no way of knowing which is which. Even John, good old everyman John, may or may not be the person who died three or four times. It’s really impossible to say whether we’ve been following the same person throughout our story, or just the illusion of the same person, like a horrifying cosmic flipbook.

The retcon is a return to this same theme. Ultimately, there’s very little new in the changes John makes to reality except that they drive the point home.

John’s friends all died. John and his friends won the game. These things are both true at the same time, except those things may not have happened to the same people. There was a happy ending. Hooray! For, um, some folks who may or may not be the ones we care about. In fact, it’s very confusing, because from Rose’s perspective, Roxy is dead but came back to life, and from Roxy’s perspective Rose is dead but came back to life, except also she came back to life as a weird tentacle catgirl of pure id and self –indulgence. So there’s that. Um. Which Rose are we rooting for again?

Or wait: is it none of them, because the first Rose died in a doomed timeline, hundreds of panels and a number of years ago?

There’s a tension here which one experiences between saying it’s okay because it’s still the same people, and saying it’s not okay, because it’s not the same people at all. This tension is exactly what we’re meant to wrestle with. To put it another way, Homestuck asks if identity can work in aggregate. Are all Johns John, all Roses Rose, and do they all share in what they accomplish? Or are the final victors only accidents created by the whims and needs of the frog baby machine?

What I’m saying, basically, is that the retcon, in the sense that it pointed out our confused relationship with these characters, was already here.

In interviews and questions put to him over the years, Hussie constantly compares HS and SBURB to other video games, particularly Mario, which he frequently returns to as a baseline of comparison that most of his readers will know. One answer, from a recent Hiveswap interview, is particularly revelatory. To the question of “Why do you kill off all your characters?” Hussie replies:

[…]HS is supposedly a story that is also a game. In games, the characters die all the time. How many times did you let Mario fall in the pit before he saved the princess? Who weeps for these Marios. In games your characters die, but you keep trying and trying and rebooting and resetting until finally they make it. When you play a game this process is all very impersonal. Once you finally win, when all is said and done those deaths didn’t “count”, only the linear path of the final victorious version of the character is considered “real”. Mario never actually died, did he? Except the omniscient player knows better. HS seems to combine all the meaningless deaths of a trial-and-error game journey with the way death is treated dramatically in other media, where unlike our oblivious Mario, the characters are aware and afraid of the many deaths they must experience before finally winning the game.

The big man hass the answer.

Homestuck is the story of those dead Marios.

Other works, like Undertale, have engaged with this topic as well. But one of the major differences between Undertale and Homestuck is that in Undertale, between “lives,” one’s consciousness is preserved. In Homestuck, it’s discontinuous, and the value of the overall trial-error process is called into question by the fact that you, the player, may not even get to experience the victory. What meaning does victory hold if that is the case?

So, to put it in a nice thesis format:

One of the central themes of Homestuck is the challenge of reconciling an arbitrary and destructive pattern of growth and victory with the death and suffering you experienced along the way. Homestuck asks: is victory worthwhile if you’re not you anymore? And would you be able to know?

What even is the self? Is there such a thing?

If you were left feeling somewhat disconcerted by our heroes’ tidy victory and departure to their cosmic prize, or by how which Rose gets the spotlight is so deeply, deeply arbitrary, there’s a good reason for that. You’re supposed to be.

The philosophical problem of Wacky Cat Rose is insignificant next to the bullshit of SBURB.

And don’t forget—John and Roxy’s denizens helped them achieve the retcon. Ultimately, the victory they achieved was mediated by the same amoral system of SBURB, and was a victory over an enemy, Caliborn, whose power was created, perpetuated, and ended by that same system.

Okay, so here’s where it gets contentious. There’s an argument to be made, which I’m not sure how I feel about, that some of the character development that could have been in post-retcon Act 6 was left out precisely to push this feeling and play up this tension. Note that this is not the same thing as saying that they were deliberately badly written, but that they’re deliberately written to make us uneasy.That Hussie deliberately played with the balance between making these retconned characters feel familiar and making them feel eerily different to leave us feeling uneasy with the result.

I’m not sure I like that idea. It smacks a little too much of that “everything is perfect” thinking that comes sometimes from the far Metastuck camp. Some of the differences may also be the result of flawed writing. (See: Jane and Jake’s character arcs, which I might talk about later.) And I want to be able to critique those flaws. Ultimately, I think we still needed more time and development to figure out who these new people were—even if our goal was ultimately to compare them to their earlier selves. And again, more conscious acknowledgement of the problem from our heroes—especially John, the linchpin in this last and biggest act of duplication—might have helped drive this theme home.

Still, I think the Problem of Dead Marios is one of the most fundamental questions of Homestuck, maybe THE biggest question. It’s essential to understand it to understand what Hussie’s doing—or attempting to do— in the retcon and the ending.

I don’t know that Homestuck offers us a clear answer to that question. There are some confusions around the issue, too. Where do merged selves fit in, exactly? Clearly they’re a big part of the discussion, because Hussie spends some time in Act 6, especially near the end bringing the identity-merging powers of the Sprites to the forefront. (See also: the identity-merged nightmare that is Lord English.)  Can we even come up with a clear answer to what it means when a dead Mario returns to life grotesquely fused with Toad? How does he beat the game? Does he tell himself that the princess is in another castle? Or what if he merges with Peach? Are they their own princess? How do they know if they’re in the right castle?

Um. Anyway—

Interestingly, it’s not all grotesque—spritesplosions suggest that personalities that are too different don’t stay together long, so a fusion might rely on some inherent compatibility between the two players. Erisol’s self-loathing, sure, but also Fefeta’s cheerfulness. Davepeta seems to be a way of bringing out the best in their players, a way of getting Davesprite past his angst and Nepeta past her fear. Honestly, I know a lot of people don’t like Davepeta as the ending of these two characters’ arcs, but I can’t help but love it. They’re the ultimate coolkid. Cool enough to know they don’t have to be cool. Regular Dave got there, too, of course. But was his retcon assist from John ultimately any different?

Then, of course, we come to Davepeta’s speech to Jade in one of the last few updates before Collide. Davepeta suggests that there is such a thing as an ultimate self beyond the many different selves one piles up throughout the cosmos. A set of principles that describes who you are that’s larger than any individual instance of you. Your inherent Mariohood. (Maybe this is comparable to your Classpect identity, which attempts to describe who you are?) Davepeta even tells Jade, strikingly, that one might learn to see beyond the barriers between selves. Be the ur-self, in practice, rather than theory. This would be incredible news for Jade, who wrestles with the issue of different selves perhaps more than any other character. (There’s a lot to say about Jade.)

Honestly, I wish this ur-self idea had been developed more, and I honestly expected it to be. It doesn’t fully come to fruition, I feel. (Same goes for Davepeta’s character. Ohhhh, ZING!) I’m not sure it entirely makes philosophical sense, especially with fusion—I mean, doesn’t Davepeta themself disprove it? Or at least complicate it? Like, are they part of the ur-Dave or the ur-Nepeta? They seem to imply they’re BOTH? Does that even work? Does that mean that Marieach is all the Peaches and Marios at once?

(In fact, Bowser/Peach/Mario are but the three manifestations of one eternal principle. Also, Bowser/Peach are the true power couple. Read my fanfiction plz.)

And what, say, of Dirk, who ultimately ends up rejecting aspects of his other selves? It feels like there’s a lot more you could say here, and I wonder if Hussie would have said more, if he’d had time. What’s weird is, none of our victorious kids never reach an ur-self (though to their descendants, they become archetypal to some degree), which one might have expected. They’re just individual selves who happened to get lucky. Does that make them representative of the whole? It feels like something’s missing here, or like something got dropped at the last minute.

Same goes for the idea of the Ultimate Riddle. You’d be forgiven for missing it, but there’s been this riddle in the background lore of SBURB that seems to have something to do with personal agency in this overwhelming, overarching system. Karkat called it predestination, saying something like “ANY HOPE YOU HAD OF DOING THINGS OTHERWISE WAS JUST A RUSE.” But others have interpreted it more positively. My favorite interpretation, from bladekindeyewear: the answer to the Riddle is that YOU shape the timeline through your existence, personality, and choices, even when it looks like it’s all predestination. Ultimately it’s your predestination, your set of events, based deeply on your nature, that you are creating. Someone like Caliborn can use his innate personality to achieve power; someone like John might be able to use it to achieve freedom.

I definitely expected something like that to be expressed more explicitly. Like, a big ah-ha moment that helps John or Jade or whoever understand how to escape Caliborn’s system. Something like that would have been very helpful for a lot of our heroes, actually, who’ve been pushed around by Skaia and SBURB together, in finding a cathartic ending.  Once again, I wonder if something was dropped or rushed because there wasn’t time to put it all in. There’s places where you can see hints of that Answer being implied, maybe? But it’s kind of ambiguous.

You can see how the Answer to the Ultimate Riddle ties into some of Davepeta’s ideas. If your personality, the rules of your behavior are a fundamental archetype that goes beyond each individual self, then the answer to whether it matters if one self of yours makes it through to victory is an emphatic YES. You are all of those people, and by winning one round with Skaia, you’ve won the whole game, despite all the arbitrary challenges and deaths it heaps upon you along the way.

This may strike some as too positive for Skaia’s brutality, or again, some way of excusing flaws in many characters’ arcs, or unfair things that happen to them. To be fair, I don’t know that Davepeta’s necessarily meant to be taken as authoritative or the voice of Hussie. They may simply be offering a purrspective.

Hussie not choosing to come right out and engage with the Ultimate Riddle leaves the question of Dead Marios and what they mean for the victorious versions of our cast very open. I like that in some ways—let the reader decide—but I can’t help but wish we had more to work with in making that decision. Plus, it might have brought the thematic messages of Homestuck all the way home to tie them more closely to our characters and their experiences—character development being one of the things most people found most lacking in the ending.

NEXT TIME: All that wacky gnostic stuff probably

[gaybaconprincess]

I found an old Doc with a Marching Band AU so take it

Jericho / Joseph Wilson (Flute)

‘That one gay friend who has a better fashion sense than me’

Don’t pronounce his last name as ‘willis’ like the principal or he will f you up

And by that he means he’ll get his scary brass boyfriend to f you up

Probably the sassiest person in Band

He is an angry human espresso and if you look at Kyd Wykkyd for too long he’ll break your leg

Very protective of his batnerd

Kole is also a flute n they are very good buds

Vows to one day burn the school’s band uniforms so they have to buy new ones

Calls everyone ‘fam’

If it’s possible to be that one controversial archetype he will be it

He is also the school’s biggest male feminist

Bumblebee is the biggest female feminist

Also he likes penciling in weed symbols (despite the fact he has never touched a drug in his life) all over the school campus

Mainly only joined Band because the Wilson bunch were sitting at a family dinner once and somebody (he doesn’t even remember anymore like maybe ROse?? Maybe Father????) said that the only instrument he could play was his twangy guitar and ofc he took that as a cHALLENGE

Raven / Raven Roth (Clarinet)

Very dark humour

Only real friend is Jericho bc they like to complain about Grayson together

Also Jericho is the only person who laughs at her jokes

Has more power over people than she lets on

Dating the head cheerleader helps too (angel)

Pretty chill

Not v good at physical fighting but just her all around dry personality will intimidate you

The woodwind section is filled with very violent human gnomes it seems

she has a tumblr indeed but trust me yOU DONT WANT IT

its filled with actual witch spells and v v gory things 

Joined Band for the extra credit, stayed for the time away from home

Her home consists of her usually absent mother and emotionally abusive father (my way of inserting Trigon in here somewhere) and Joey is really the only person that knows and she can just vent to

They’ve had well over a few crying sessions

 SeeMore / Seymour Johnson (Saxophone)

Joined band bc he’s a broke idiot in need of a scholarship

Joined saxophone because mEMES

Plays ‘we are number one’ every f-ing time Kyd so much as looks at him

bf(f)’s with the Herald

Totally thirsty for some brass trumpet boy but totally not the Herald oh no

(it’s so the Herald)

Has hit himself in the face with his sax thirteen too many times

Wears the nerdiest glasses possible but no one can say shit bc he’s the best marcher they’ve got really

Chillest of the chill you will ever meet

Cries @ disney movies

Probably watches conspiracy theory videos in his free time

Is slowly attempting to bring tumblr humor into the real world

also afraid of chickens. look its a really long story k.

Joined Band to prove to his parents that nO HE IS NOT DOING DRUGS AFTER SCHOOL HE IS ACTUALLY ATTEMPTiNG to MAKE YOU PROUD

 The Herald / Malcolm Duncan (Trumpet)

Best friends w/ Jericho even tho Jericho regrets it

*Jericho walks into the Band Hall*

‘aND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA’ *trumpet noises*

He and Seymour meme together

Is just obnoxious in general

Pulls candy and other food items out of nowhere at the worst times

Just wants people to hang out with after school. Hot Spot’s no fun and Jericho’s family is insane.

 BumbleBee / Karen Beecher (French Horn)

Is just way too tired for this

Mom friend

Doesn’t have time to deal with everyone’s shit

Joey can relate

‘malcolm duncan i dare you to blow that trumpet in my ear oNE MORE TIME’

Is everyone’s big sister but mainly Mal’s

Makeup game is always on point

Wants to kick Seymour and Mal in the throat everyday bc jUST KISS YOUR SEXUAL TENSION IS RUINING THE REHEARSAL

 Kyd Wykkyd / Elliot Knight (Trombone)

Toll pencil is dating smol espresso

Looks mean and scary but just wants hugs and colored pencils

‘Deal hugs not drugs’

Makes too many puns

Literally every other sentence has some hidden pun in it

Loves picking Joey up and carrying him around

Gives people really terrible nicknames

Biggest weab of them all

‘I sexually identify as Terezi Pyrope’

Don’t even say the word homestuck/undertale around him he’ll either start crying or laughing maniacally

‘What do you mEAN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT RWBY IS’

Has memorized all of Light Yagami’s lines on Death Note

Quotes Steven Universe (mainly Pearl) on a daily basis

k like,,,,you think,,,you tHINK he’s the smart friend.

oH NO BUDDY ARE YOU WRONG

if you’ve ever seen any Roosterteeth video ever

He is Gavin Free.

The embodiment of ‘wot if...our legs...didn’t know they were lEGS???’

Joey just kinda shushes him and pretends to know what he’s talking about

Billy Numerous / William Strayer (Euphonium)

Mammoth’s ultimate wingman

‘God bless murica’

Mispronounces words on purpose to piss off Kyd and Raven

Hates his pointy marching shoes

Hides tennis balls in the saxophones to Seymour’s dismay

Got hit with a trombone once and then had to pay for it to be fixed

Totally not kyd’s

Likes to make fun of Joey’s height which is WHY he got hit with a trombone

Roots for BBQ places every time the Band stops to eat on a trip

‘Aight but...does Wykkyd is gay??’

Mammoth / Baran Flinders (Tuba)

Is the most intimidating person you will ever meet and he kNOWS IT he GLOATS IN THAT FACT

‘gEEZ YOU GUYS SHUT UP I DONT HAVE A THING FOR STARFIRE THATS DISGUSTinG’

‘We were just asking why she wasn’t at rehearsal today’

Is also a vry broke idiot but somewhat enjoys band

The aMOUNT of times he has been stopped by football coaches and borderline bribed to be on the team

Is the one who shamelessly sprints the whole way to the cafeteria everyday

‘Foods before dudes, sorry’

He and Billy often have eating competitions

Jericho lives in fear every time he’s not tardy for class

Also looks mean but will cRUSH YOu....with a bear hug

When asked what 2 plus 2 was he responded with a very startled and nervous 22

Kid Flash / Wally West (Percussion)

Look,,,,buddy,,,,amigo,,,,chum,,,,

He and Kyd Wykkyd have had a lil rivalry goin on since the fiRST TIME KYD STOLE HIS APPLE JUICE IN PRE-K

Y do you think he joined percussion… (it’s because percussion is usually seated behind trombones and Kyd hates drums and loud noises)

bUT on the plus side his ADHD is now a lot less terrifying

During practice he literally just plays Hall of Fame on repeat

‘No...no no….no no plEASE STOP TOUCHING MY HAIR’

(jokingly) chants the word ‘gay’ and slowly gets louder every time Kyd so much as sPEAKs

He and Kyd have sarcasm competitions

Also memes but less out loud and more…

‘Wally I sweAR TO GOD IF YOU DONT STOP TeXTING ME MEMES IN CLASS’

‘Wykkyd iS THAT AN WEED IM CALLING THE POLICE’ inside jokes

Jinx / Jaya Salem (Pit)

Just wants a nap

All the time

Someone get her an energy drink

Puts up with Kyd + Mammoth + Billy + See-More’s shit not to mention her little brother most of the time

It’s Gizmo. The little brother is Gizmo.

‘I just...want to just like...can I plug myself into a charger? Can I do that, is that a thing?’

Literally the only person out of her friend circle that passes most of her classes

dO NOT TOUCH HER CATS JUST DONT DO IT

‘Do you think if I concuss myself I can get out of practice for today?’

all of her jokes are also either self depricating or just insulting to others

insomniac

Punk Rocket / Thomas Leonard (Drum Major)

mOST IRRESPONSIBLE DRUM MAJOR EVER 0/10 WOULD NOT RECOMMEND

‘Well y’know...i’m already in a Band so like...how hard could Drum Major be?’

Very hard. He made a mistake. He regrets everything.

School Principal: ‘are you aware that your hair is white?’

Rocket: ‘are you aware that your a fUCKING SQUARE???’

He got suspended after that

‘Okay look I know it looks really gay that I’m riding on a motorcycle with my really hot buddy but it’s not - fuck that is really gay, maybe I’m really gay.’

One big bundle of ‘oh no’ when you pop the question of ‘what’s your sexuality’

Gets wAY TOO INTO the really big moments when directing on field

Fell of the pedestal his first game

Over time actually starts taking Band very seriously and enjoying it

Slade Wilson

funds the Band’s everything

Addie cooks for the Band and helps with fundraisers

also I just really need an AU where Slade is just,,,,a good dad,,,,Joey deserves a good dad k

he was off in the army for a while so he comes back and apparently Joey is not four anymore?? and he has a boyfriend???? and turned out to somehow be shorter than his own mother?????????

Joey made ‘when will my father return from the war’ jokes the entire time to cope

Slade is still getting used to things and the crowd and screaming of football games makes him v uncomfortable but he goes to support Joey

who is off to the side trying to avoid looking at his father who is now waving his hands frantically

Rose comes too but mainly to make fun of the entire Band

Grant’s already in college so he don’t give a shit

Literally everyone in the Band lOVES Mr. Wilson and Adeline but Joey just wants them to leave him alone

Slade is that one dad,,,,he tRIES SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND BAND HUMOR AND IT DOESNT WORK

still doesn’t know how he feels about Kyd 

Slade and Joey bond over Slade picking him up after practice and Joey iMMEDIATELY going into rant mode

‘tHIS HETERO A HOLE DAD YOU WOULDNT BELIEVE-’

surprisingly okay with Joey’s sexuality, he’s still getting used to it nonetheless

Mrs. and Mrs. Wykkyd

Kyd Wykkyd has two v lesbian moms and you can’t tell me otherwise like that’s my headcanon for him plus I love supportive gay parents that are better parents than the hets themselves

Kyd was adopted but they love their beautiful son v v much and he loves them

Kyd never really knew his biological parents and everyone acts like it’s a big deal but he he doesn’t?? care???? he knows who his parents are its Aarti Bindiya-Knight and Alison Knight duh

one of his moms is East Indian so he takes part in a lot of her culture just like his other mom does

he also gets vERY OFFENDED and filled with Righteous Anger when anyone discriminates or makes Indian jokes / lesbian jokes in class

Elliot is taller than both of his moms and usually has to bend down so they can hug him

Alison is American and very vERY kind hearted

Aarti has a very muscley stature and it taller than Alison. Her hair is cut short and curly and she looks like the person who will want to fight you and hug you at the same time.

Alison is v v short and has very light blonde hair that just kind wisps everywhere. V pale and really really likes sundresses.

Alison still tries to kiss Elliot on the cheek before he gets on the bus but Aarti holds her back so Elliot can run

she’s the cooking mom. she cooks. all the time. that’s how she shows her emotions.

‘Aar what if he forgot his backpack or his lunch do you think he’s doing okay what if someone is bullying him as we speak-’ ‘Ali. Ellie is fine. He is twice your height either way there is no way he is getting bullied.’

Alison got Elliot into drawing which he does a lot now

they are v v supportive of literally anything he does and most kids are actually kinda jealous. 

tHEY ARE THE OVEREXCiTeD PARENTS AT EVERY GAME

NEITHER KNOW WHATS GOING ON BUT THEIR SON IS DOING A THING SO THATS WHATS IMPORTANT

they still keep home videos from when Elliot was a baby despite his birthday wish being for them to burn all of the videos last year

Barry Allen

he’s the track coach at their school and everybody was ASTONISHED when he showed up to a football game

‘okay yeah I know where the track field is - can you all maybe chill I just wanna see my nephew hit his drums.’

He and Wally are the ‘Red headed Heathens’ of the school

a term coined by the principal himself

Barry is still trying to get Wally to join track (he is also still failing)

Blows his whistle like a fricking AIRHORN at games

Very big despite only working on his legs ever and also very affectionate so I hope you have a strong spine because he shows his appreciation via hugs

the only teacher with actual freckles

fRECKLES

‘I would give you some cool pep talk Wally but to be honest I have no idea what’s going on just go out and have fun.’