#most other undertale characters either won’t be used or are super important

[thectdl4112]

Wanted to post my rough draft for a story I’m gonna write soon

Undertale/RWBY fusion

The CTDL (Cathedral) a RWBY and Undertale fusion story

The words monsters is just the meaning of another race. While words like Grimm or Demon is a more accurate version of our Monster.

Monsters take the role of the Faunus of remnant instead of being able to steal another’s soul they are able to naturally have two semblance’s their Soul semblance and then their monster/magic semblance an ability that is similar to true magic but much weaker than actual magic. Monster unlike humans are blocked from aura unable to express their soul outside their body and over the years have honed their souls inside their form able to create LOVE an acronym and as nice as it sounds is much the opposite while attuning with your soul one must kill another human, monster, or Grimm

but something living with a higher form of sentience and expose their soul to it allowing it to witness it strengthening one’s body and soul making it harder to be injured allowing one to hit harder, move faster never able to reach the peak speed and regeneration of humans but with high enough lv one finds it easier to hurt and they pack the meanest punch around.

True Monsters often referred to as Boss Monsters, Endless Monsters, and Eternal Monsters are monsters that do not age they are born this way with much stronger semblances and their monster semblance has become true magic related to their true monster type and much stronger than normal monster semblances.

Humans have a single semblance still but they also have access to aura. Aura is an ability that comes from their soul and not their semblance it allows one to steadily increase their physical attributes the longer you use it and the more you train it. It is known it can rapidly increase through the act of killing but only if you kill with the intention to hurt and destroy not mercy killing. Killing Grim is a common way as most universally hate the grim. Using aura one can enhance weapons, infuse bullets and projectiles, and even create an Aura/Soul weapon a weapon intuned to your soul that is perfectly able to be used by its wielder and is unable to be held by others.

LOVE is a technique to increase a monsters physical strength and physical defense this technique is unique as monsters discovered it and only they know how to gain and increase it. It is known to other humans that it requires more dark practices than aura training to gain. As you need to un shield your soul making it vulnerable you then need to kill with intent afterward while around the same as training aura it is more frowned upon with its more savage workings and the after effects. Increasing LOVE causes one to slowly become more willing to hurt more wanting to hurt you want to gain more LOVE as its power is addicting only having one or two levels is normal but more than that can have bad effects on your mind and soul. As for the true meaning of LOVE is lost to others besides the True Monsters most are confused by the acronym LOVE as it truly means Level Of Violence this technique strengthens your body a dissipates the connection of your soul and body allowing you to take more hits without truly becoming damaged and hurt.

Inspection humans and monsters alike are able to track one’s growth and see a lesser version of another’s growth if they have unlocked their aura or monster semblances respectively. By listening to your soul and a projecting it to your sight you can see your Soul Sheet it is extremely private information and when inspecting another you can usually only see ones name and Aura level.

Usually looks like this

Alice Sora Horizon Aura Lv 3

14 Years 2 Months 16 Days (Can be Shrunk) Health 100% Stamina 100% Aura 100%

Wonder/Journey Semblance:The Path is Bright: You have a passive semblance. You are able to see glowing strings that connect to important things in your life the brighter they are the sooner and more impactful they are to you and those you love. With strings connected to others you can examine the strings to know who they are, why they are like, and a slight feeling for what they feel towards you.

Grim are the scourge originally spotted coming from an underground cavern some 10 thousand years ago they quickly took over the entire NorthWest continent taking over the late Winlow Kingdom. Infecting it with what has been described as toxic magic a sort of rapidly decaying and healing form of physical magic. It looks similar to ink and feels like ash to the touch. They take on the form of animals at the weaker levels but as a grim ages and gets stronger they change and evolve either taking parts from other Grimm, parts from the Land, or mutating new parts Themselves. The First and Last form of grim the Scavenger Grimm and the Mutant Grimm are usually stronger as they have they same strength and weakness as normal Grimm but not added weakness from the living. While Century Grimm are either the weakest or strongest Grimm known and with their name it often takes century’s of taking and absorbing parts of the land to gain any significant power. The strongest Grimm from each life cycle are similar to true monsters in magic abilities they live in the center of the southern continent and patrol a large decaying castle. The First is the Chimera a classic common type of chimera but ramped up to 11 taking on seemingly every Grimm type seen besides the other two Ancient Grimm it is the second largest and has the widest range of abilities from controlling lesser grim, flying, and poison. The Largest of the Grimm the Behemoth a grim that took over an entire mountain full of earth dust. It has perfectly fused with the mountain can move it wherever he wants and able to sprout its true snake like body from wherever it wants. It has the ability to even use the earth dust that was stored inside the mountain to create devastating magical attacks. And Finally the Contagion an Grimm that focuses on mutation and creation designing many lesser Grimm and adding new functions to itself it even captured a true monster at one point and imbued its magic into itself allowing it to use basic elemental magic and inspect others. It is conniving and able to use higher levels of thinking creating traps and such. While we just discussed the end and peak Grimm can get to how are they made? Grimm periodically shed parts of themselves creating pools of Grimm where over weeks to years Grimm will begin their lifecycle and spawn until the pool is dried up. The second way they are made is from veins of the tar like liquid erupting from bellow creating giant lakes of Grimm making void. How were Grimm made why do they act so strange and could they possibly be protecting something?

??? A leading figure of the Grimm a humanoid woman with spider like features and veins of Grimm void she has been periodically seen throughout the world commanding Grimm. She was last seen heading the siege on human kind when A mysterious human wielding powerful magic, the king, and the queen worked together to both destroy one of the titans and massively wound the woman. It is likely she is healing from the wound of over 4000 years by the strongest forces of non Grimm possible. One would wonder what she would use this time for plotting? Grieving? Or festering? What we do know recently more and more mysterious figures have been around many having been sighted with Grimm like limbs and nefarious purposes. Has the leading Grimm worked with Human and monster kind just to get to her end goal? Or is it all a ruse?

Souls everyone has them Humans, Monsters, and even Grimm Humans souls can have up to two traits and these traits are the core tenets that describe you as a person are you filled with wonder at anything new, do you strive to peruse justice for your people at any cost, do you struggle to survive and live another day, or are you determined to a fault never giving up and never backing down? Human souls influence their semblance and how they act they power one’s aura and the more one drains one’s aura the more taxed one’s soul can get. Human souls are mailable tough not enough to change a souls trait but if taught by someone such as a True Monster they may unlock the powers monsters have such as LOVE and Second Semblances. Monsters souls are soft they are universally weaker they must be exposed to strife up close to reach the heights of power humans are able to easily get they are full of love, hope, dreams, and magic able to make wonders happen and they unlock two semblances their soul semblances similar to a humans but usually weaker then their magic semblances distant from they soul and based on their species a skeleton type monster finds their second semblances to be based around bone magic maybe something else if their lucky maybe summoning undead or creating bone constructs and maybe even poison but it is heavily restricted to their Monster Race. Grimm souls are different unlike a humans and their ball of colored fire or a monster and their gas like grey Heart soul. A Grimm’s soul is like a pustule like a large ball that has been repeatedly stabbed then over inflated in areas blocked off in others, drained in others, new sections added and it is completely void of color of shape they are only desire only hunger only hatred. The reason Grimm attack us in the first place is to feed on our souls as we found out after a hunter with a specialized insight perk discovered they had the ability and power to do so the younger ones seem to have the smallest stomach and are often always starving and it seems the older one gets the less they rely on feasting on souls.

Hunter an honored profession by both humans and monsters with several academies and Guilds all over the continents they are a company designed to help defend towns and kingdoms from the ever present Grimm threat. They scout for new Grimm types and nests. They exterminate wandering packs getting to close to civilization and protect kingdoms when Grimm try to monopolize on weakened walls. Hunters often hunt Grimm for parts as their bone protrusions and plates are extremely durable, Grimm blood while toxic can be used in a variety of magical medicines, and finally their eyes and organs can be safely dined upon.

Dust while monster and true monster have magic and magical replications humans don’t but we have discovered a substitute a dust that collects from the souls of the dead decades after one dies their souls start compressing (the remnants at least if not devoured by Grimm) into a tangible crystal these crystals attune to certain elements and when one combines it with aura or force or even technology its powers can be harnessed and used creating magical like effects. Some use it in intricate patterns to make spells some weave it into clothes for special functions and some apply it directly to one’s body a dangerous but rewarding practice attuning one’s self to an element.

The Ancients: Two monsters that have been alive since the beginning of creation. They are partners and sometimes lovers they once had children but nothing is known for certain. As they are immortal and the longest living creatures known on this planet they rule the monsters. The King as he is known by wields the strongest form of Fire magic seen on remnant and his first semblance lets him greatly enhance those he trusts and if they in turn trust him he gains a percentage of that power permanently if they lose that trust he loses the boost but if they die while still trusting him he keeps it. He was the one to land the killing blow on the fourth Grimm Titan that drove the Grimm back. He holds his Soul weapon on him at all times a giant Crimson Trident able to pierce even the strongest defensive semblances and toughest Grimm hides. He is an imposing goat like monster mixed with lion attributes he stands at 9 feet tall and often hunched over to speak with others. His fur is a whitish grey with a large cat like whip tail, large claws, and giant golden mane. He has large red eyes and large imposing horns that curve back. The Queen is the kings partner She has lived for the same amount of time and has often been heralded as the Queen of Cleansing flames as her magic lets her create a variety of flames from healing Fires, to Sticky Fires, to burning Fires, and even Colorful flames. She often uses her flames to heal citizens bathing her healing courtyard in healing flames every noon and during every holiday the streets are filled with the rainbow aurora of her healing fires. Her semblance Dampener allows her to weaken everything from one’s aura, semblance, physical abilities and even Grimm she is unable to affect non living things such as weakening buildings supports. She is able to use this to completely drain people but it takes time.

The ancients take turns ruling the kingdom for periods of a hundred years one rules and the other rests as immortality is forever it would be a shame to waste it all ruling the monsters. After a century has passed they give a 1 year break to their chosen Prince to rule for the year while they relax together then after that time the switch and the other rules for the next hundred years.

The Declawed/White fang a group of monsters who were tired of both the rule of the ancients and the segregation from the human kingdoms tired with how human kingdoms acted against them and tired from how little the king and queen were doing this group of monsters started protesting lead by the Belladona family they started a movement for equality and with minor progress over the years and even making a seemingly uninhabitable island a monster paradise through effort, magic, and semblances they were slowly making a change. Not enough though and when the past chieftain of the Declawed stepped down and traded the title to the new leader they led more aggressive tactics and was labeled a terrorist group as they started bombing places that wouldn’t serve monster kind and even assassinating high profile humans who had anti monster practices. They were renamed the White Fang and started wearing Grimm masks when doing their more aggrieved stunts to show how if they truly thought they were demons or Grimm then they would wear the face of them. The more aggressive practices worked and even though the past leaders don’t agree with it they see the progress they make.



Atlas is a northern continent and the name of the kingdom with the highest human population and density it is rare to see monsters there as many anti monster laws are still active. Atlas is home to the most advanced technology of this era using dust they have created most technology spread around the world such as they ever popular Scroll (a sort of phone that expands like a hand held scroll with a holo light interface) and they supply the world with the most dust.

Mistral is Eastern continent and kingdom. Mistral is home to a mixture of humans and monsters it is more forestry and often has rainstorms and normal storms. Mistral is known to be a place of thieves and criminals it is often thought that atlas gets their monsters “workers” from mistral. Mistral has many Century Grimm throughout their land. It is home to many groups of bandits both human and monster.

Menagerie is a southeastern continent below mistral home to only accept monster races. Menagerie was founded by the terroist group called the White Fang why many don’t export to menagerie it is not needed much as it is pretty self sufficient with the highest population density of purely monster kind.

Vale is a more southern continent and kingdom surrounded on all sides by natural barriers it has a more human dense population than monster dense it is known to send supplies to menagerie while also having dust technology from atlas. It is home to the best Hunter School of remnant.

Vacuo is the western continent and kingdom of monsters. It is a mixture of desert and plains on the lower end. while populated mainly of monster kind and home to the King and Queen it still accepts humans. It is the forefront of Grimm defense often sending incursions of Hunters to cull newborn Grimm and clear any pools or nests. It has the highest amount of hunters of any kingdom.

Winlow was the northwestern continent and kingdom home to large expansive plaines with little natural barriers from Grimm. It was where the Grimm first appeared from and they soon devoured all and destroyed the entire kingdom and corrupted the remains poising the land creating pools of Grimm and nesting. It is a wasteland full of only Grimm and destroyed nature.

This is a short very very rough draft of a sort of prologue.

Story idea it is the year 4112. 4112 years since the Grimm Titans and their army attacked the entirety of the human and monster kingdoms eradicating much of the population leaving less than 8 million Humans, Around 6 million Monsters, and True Monster are hovering around in the Hundreds. The Two ancients are still alive and are still ruling the Monsters. You are Chara Rube Rose the adopted daughter of Summer Rose and then the step daughter to Taiyang Xiao Long and Step sister to Yang Clover Long. You weren’t raised by your birth parents as they abused you until they got rid of you you were picked up by some traveling monsters who raised you for the majority of your childhood they were killed by Grimm and you were saved by your new mom Summer Rose she took you in and you met your new sister and new father Taiyang and Yang. You were raised together for years until your new mother died on a hunter mission you became slightly despondent and clung to your sister you did everything together and one day she dragged you outside during winter in a wagon where you fell asleep when you woke up to a scream you saw your sister about to be attacked by a Grimm when a shadowy figure emerged and sliced the in two. Qrow Branwen your uncle saved you two he was what he called a “human who some magical guy decided I look better in feathers�� it was a dismissal but it was technically true he was certainly human but also vaguely monsterish his hair was more feather than hair he had sharper nails and sharper vision. And coolest of all he could turn into a bird. He had this awesome shadow semblance as well able to move between them. Uncle Qrow never stayed for long he was a hunter this experience strengthened mine and Yangs resolve to become a hunter. Yang says I’m too attached to weapons but she is too attached to her looks so I don’t care.

Uncle Qrow was around when I unlocked my semblance he is one of the only few humans I like outside of my family but he’s not really human so it doesn’t matter. He said my semblance was affected by my time around monsters and it turned into a pseudo magic semblance that made me happier than even when mom made me those chocolate cookies for the first time. Qrow did say I was a mixture of unlucky and lucky as I didn’t unlock a full magic semblance as my first but a pseudo it does mean I have a high chance to unlock a magical second but it also means I can’t unlock true magic only monster magic. So I think it means I can be more monstrous just not really monstrous which is kinda a bummer. My semblance is hard to control but I love it all the same I asked Qrow to teach me more monster things and he said he would if the next time I came my perfect weapon was finished and when he came by it was. My Crimson Crescent as giant Scythe weapon I have to use my aura more currently to wield her. She has the ability to turn into a sniper and I can mechasift her into a burst Rifle and large Combat knife. Qrow was impressed and taught me about LOVE and told me that people with both LOVE and aura were really rare he allowed me to safely get love it was difficult not the killing Grimm part that was fun but the exposing my soul it was apparently harder even for humans but my pseudo magic semblance should help. I did it and when I got LOVE for the first time it was the best feeling in the world it was so fun to have LOVE! Qrow forbid me from collecting more LOVE until I became a hunter though I was already 14 my birthday is in a few weeks and then in a few months Yang will become a hunter trainee at Beacon academy I really wanted to become a hunter at the same time oh well I want looking forward to being around that many humans anyway Yang says I have social anxiety or something but that’s not true! Okay maybe a little true for monsters but I just hate other humans I usually just hide from them around my sister though. My semblance also helps me pick out the ones that hide as humans for some reason they suck? Here’s to a new year and hopefully a better one than ever!

Are main character is obviously a mixture of Chara from undertale and Ruby from RWBY she has a mixture of both of them the weapon loving and scatterbrainedness from Ruby and the human hating and LOVEbugness from Chara they both also love their families a lot and have a lot of determination to do whatever they feel is right. Chara originally thought what was right was to save monster kind and if you follow through with it she has no complaints but if you go to kill everyone she thinks your teaching her what is now right in her ghost like state becoming monster of LOVE. I wanted to add the traits of both allowing her a seed of corruption and the classic monsters better than humans she has going one giving her a monster semblance to sort of push the Chara demon look. I also do want to keep her happy and loving with her family and close friends and still have some social anxiety with monsters as even though she likes them she still a ball of anxiety from her childhood. She had a rough childhood till she was abandoned at the age of 6 and then her new family was killed at the age of 8 where she then lived with her new family since then and most are still alive now! She has been around death a blood her whole life her prior family has been killed in front of her she gained LOVE at a young age which changed her and she was majorly abused in her first family she has a fascination towards the dark and even though she doesn’t think of killing humans she often thinks about hurting others but so far she hasn’t acted on it but maybe she spend to long killing some Grimm here and there but nothing to much.

Chara Rube Rose Aura Lv 6 LOVE Lv 1

14 years 11 months 14 days Health 100% Stamina 100% Aura 100%

Determination/Family/Blood Monster Semblance: Dhampir: (your semblance Blood Control has mutated) you are able to rapidly regenerate your own blood and control it outside of your body you can solidify your blood making a sort of crystal substance. Your senses are sharper with massively enhanced smell and sight. Giving you night vision and You can sense and smell blood around you from much farther away. Drinking the blood of others can rapidly heal you and strengthen you. You feel a desire to drink blood and it can substitute as your meals and is preferred over food. Daylight irritates you and dulls your blood senses. You are deathless able to age till maturity but never age till you die. You may extend one’s life if they are connected to you via familial bonds by bitting them with your fangs if you die they will rapidly age with your death.

Extra:Your semblance is a partial monster one if you unlock another monster or magic semblance it will evolve again Progress towards second 2%

Characters on our main character team Chara Rube Rose, Talia Weiss Schnee, Diana Blake Belladona, and Yang Clover Long.

They also have different powers and abilities from their original.

Talia Weiss Schnee is a member of the Schnee family a household started and held in atlas the biggest kingdom with the highest levels of dust mining in the world the Schnee dust company is the biggest and best dust mining company in the world. They are held in the most advanced kingdom in the world. Her father’s company supposedly uses unfair monster labor and has the highest death rate of monsters in the mines. Atlas is also the biggest monster bigot and has many monster human segregation laws still in play. Every monster hates the Schnee fit campaign as they almost always support anti monster laws they often state they don’t need to rely on the king or queen as their dust and technology is much better. Many Schnee family members have been assassinated by the white fang. Talia while not outwardly showing it is still racist towards monsters while she strives to be a good person she still has a prejudice against monster kind and while Winter Schnee her sister and an atlas soldier has tried to stamp it out embers of it still remains in Talia. Talia is the first in the Schnee family to have an altered form of her generational semblance

Talia Weiss Schnee Aura Lv 6

16 years 3 months 6 days Health 100% Stamina 100% Aura 100%

Diligence/Family GenerationSemblance (Mutated): Meticulous Glyphs: With practice you can create a glyph a glyph is a pattern that you imbue your aura into for magical like effects making wind reducing gravity or maybe summoning fallen foes. You can imbue a glyph with dust to change its effects making a summoned creature made of ice or enhanced speed buff powered by wind. Mutated function allows you to save certain glyphs for ease of use by diligently making a glyph then powering it to 99% you can stop and sacrificing a part of your aura you can save it allowing you to deploy it at anytime with no more work needed. The stored glyphs cannot be dust infused

Extra: the mutation is purely advantageous and only added the save function made from a constant desire to be different from her family and diligent study on her family’s semblance and studies Saved Glyphs: Wind Wall 2% Chains of the Storm 13% Lesser Speed 5%

Diana Blake Belladonna coming to the school with a fake name the headmaster saw through the ruse quickly and allowed her to join the school with only a a last name change. She was once part of the Declawed and then the White Fang she disagreed with her parents when they wanted to leave the White Fang. So she left her family and continued onto the white fang. She joined and worked with the more aggressive protests she soon fell in love with her mentor and they worked together on her many missions. However over the years with the repeated “accidents” with Adam’s missions she starts disagreeing with them and finally when he goes to blow up a train with innocent people still on it she knocks him out and abandons the new White Fang striving to be better without the senseless aggression she aims to become a hunter to kill Grimm and protect innocents from the real monsters. Diana is a Cat like monster called a Cheshire Sith they are humanoid monsters with Black fur.they all have a monster semblance with one key function transformation. Diana has pale white skin but it’s almost Smokey looking fading away she has large cat ears and a long tail that splits in two. She has larger hands and feet with claws and slit yellow eyes with a more cat like nose and whiskers. In her human form she loses her cat traits and her skin becomes solid here eyes are less cat like and he teeth are less sharp.

Diana Blake Belladona Aura Lv 8 LOVE Lv 4

16 years 4 months 12 days Health 100% Stamina 100% Aura 100%

Solitary/Faith/Family Semblance: Vanishing Trick: Able to turn invisible but unable to affect the world unless you step into someone’s shadow you then turn faintly visible and are able to affect the one whose shadow you are in either positive by trickling your aura to theirs or negatively such as striking them with an attack only they can feel or see while others cannot. Monster Semblance: The Cat Sith: you are able to turn into a human and back 9 times a day the final change is the one you must spend the night as. As a monster you gain the ability to float and see another’s soul. For short periods you can turn intangible and invisible. When humanoid you can strengthen your aura you are physical and lose the ability to float and see souls. In your human form you are naturally stronger and swifter you unlock aura for both forms but only able to train it while human.

Notes monsters already have long lifespans and Cheshire Cats longer as they are spectral in nature they may live up to a thousand years if they don’t become a true monster in that time

Yang Clover Long is the half/step sister of Chara she is a natural muscle head even with years of training she thinks with her fists first. After meeting her sister for the first time and seeing the small girl she fell in love (not weird love) and has tasked herself to protecting her. She was heartbroken when her mom died and was the main one taking care of Ruby while her dad coped when she found out she had another mom she went out looking for her bringing Chara with her to fix their family. They were attacked by Grimm then and saved by her uncle she then vowed to become a hunter like everyone in her family to find her other mom and protect her family when needed. Nothing will ever shatter her resolve and love for her sister.

Yang Clover Long Aura Lv 7

16 years 2 months 3 days Health 100% Stamina 100% Aura 100%

Family/Wrath/Justice Semblance: The Lions Mane: Grows a golden spectral mane of fiery fur around her neck and hair. This mane boosts her physical strength the more angry she is and the more she feels she is fighting and enemy. This mane can also be lended to others she is close to for weaker more defense focused effects this also weakens hers if she is wearing oneSemblance: The Lions Mane: Grows a golden spectral mane of fiery fur around her neck and hair. This mane boosts her physical strength the more angry she is and the more she feels she is fighting and enemy. This mane can also be lended to others she is close to for weaker more defense focused effects this also weakens hers if she is using a mane on herself.

[jcmorrigan]

001 - Kingdom Hearts

Favorite character: On the villain side: VEXEN IS BEST ORGANIZATION XIII MEMBER. Shoulda stayed evil, though. I like it when he complains and screams about everything and hates everyone. He's one of my favorite villains, just, like...in general. So fun to write. Also attached to Demyx, but I actually liked him more in III than II because it reminded me of my rawr lolspeek weeb days when I f/o'd him without knowing what f/o'ing was and then transitioned this to shipping VexDem like heck. On the hero side: MY GIRL KAIRI! But honorable mentions go to Sora, Riku, Aqua, Ven, Terra, Xion, Roxas, Lea, Ienzo, any Disney character I loved beforehand (this is way too fuckin many to list), Merlin (OKAY I WILL SINGLE HIM OUT), Yen Sid (I'LL SINGLE HIM OUT TOO), you know what let's also single out the Mickey+Donald+Goofy power trio...just...any KH hero who isn't part of the Yozora stuff or the KHUX stuff. ...Except I also LOVE Strelitzia, and she is the only KHUX-exclusive kiddo I care about but I care about her MANY. (Oh, and there's a least fave I have who's a "hero" but that's a debatable label). I would go on about why I love all of them but...that's too many characters to elaborate on

Least Favorite character: See, I think the real answer is Yozora, but the thing is I just tend to forget about him or not care (unless I'm doing a weird AU where he's Noctis' bratty Nobody, don't ask). He kinda represents the Shark Jump and I don't like watching that scene where he literally petrifies Sora for not being strong enough. But again, I can just kinda forget about him if he's not fed to me through a social-media unit. The one I LOVE TO HATE is Master Eraqus. The man actually triggered me back in the day. He is purity culture. He is the overbearing parent who will not accept you unless you are perfect. He is by and large the reason VAT didn't communicate with each other properly. He was the one who taught Aqua to think in absolutes. He lied to Ventus for years and then insisted to kill him was the only option, and then, when Terra tried to defend his brother figure/friend without knowing WHY Eraqus was doing such a thing, Eraqus didn't offer an explanation and instead switched targets to Terra citing that the problem was Terra's lack of OBEDIENCE. Eraqus is just very "my way or the highway" and uses his moral high horse to justify doing things that utterly lack compassion in any regard, which is something that GETS to me on a deep level, and let me tell you, I hated him for so long until I realized he was actually a super fuckin fun guy to imagine as a Bigger Bad in AUs that either have the KH protags teaming up or have villain protags needing a "greater good lawful evil" figure. And I just have found too many good memes about him cheating at chess and killing children. I have to laugh. Making fun of him is fun. He's a ridiculous character. That said, this recent trend of "erase everything bad he ever did and paint him as the ultimate hero of the saga" makes me raise eyebrows for SEVERAL reasons

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): VexDem, SoRiku, Kairi x Jaune Arc (RWBY), Aqua x Rosalina (Super Mario Galaxy) x Bayonetta, IsaLea, Ventus x Papyrus (Undertale), that was six but they all needed to be mentioned

Character I find most attractive: Ienzo. HOO BABY he is adorable. I saw someone make a Valentine's Day gifset of KH and FF characters shortly after III dropped and seeing his smiling face paired with a romance quote made my heart FLUTTER

Character I would marry: Probably Ienzo, see above. He's also a very kind guy. Favorite redemption in the modern era.

Character I would be best friends with: I hope the Destiny Trio would adopt me into their friend circle the way they've tended to do with every other inter-world denizen they've come across. I would love to have them as my positivity squad. Or, y'know, two positivities and one "it's okay to screw up" guy. Just. I would love to hang out with them. I often worry that I'm unlikable to my faves, but even though I would usually prefer to hang with the villains, I can pretty much guarantee these three would be open-minded about me. (Do I kiiiiinda wanna be friends with Vexen though? Of course I do. He'd hate me but maaaayyyyybe he would see me as one of his pet idiots who makes him look smarter, and we could bond over our fragile egos?)

a random thought: You ever think about that one NPC lady in Traverse Town who refused to tell you where she was from because it was none of her business? You ever wonder where she WAS from? What her world was like? How she ended up being the survivor of the Ansem Apocalypse when it hit her? All I know is that when I read her lines out loud (I used to read KH speech balloons out loud all the time), I gave her a Southern accent for no discernible reason and I stand by it. That woman has a twang.

An unpopular opinion: I don't want KHUX to be canon because I feel it's smaller-scale and takes a lot of mystery out of the worldbuilding. I always assume that the KHverse just includes ALL worlds in fiction, and that includes their thousand-year histories, meaning the Age of Fairy Tales should've happened long long long LONG LONG LONG ago and not five generations. And whatever screwed up the world should've been more than just five people having a fight, and whatever saved it should've been more than just five people getting along, and Daybreak Town really suffers from having to stick to mobile-friendly graphics and therefore is the least aesthetically attractive KH town ever, and I don't like that Lauriam and Elrena used to be such selfless people. I do still love Strelitzia because she's shy and relatable and quirky (sitting on the roof) and she questions authority and if you go with shipping subtext she's probably bi (or pan?), but I don't like the "Lauriam's dead sister for his arc's drama" bit. I liked when Marluxia was angry because he wanted to run Organization XIII but it was in the hands of an idiot who wasn't him. And more than anything I just like imagining that the Age of Fairy Tales was something bigger, further in the past, and more mysterious than something designed for a mobile game. Scala ad Caelum, however, I like a lot better because there IS a lot of mystery there and also it's a very pretty town with an amazing design.

my canon OTP: I really only count the Disney couples as the "canon" ones, so this is a question of picking my favorite Disney couple that shows up onscreen. I hope I'm not forgetting an important one, but I think the title has to go to Aladdin/Jasmine, which is always perfect in everything. (This would be an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY if KH had ever adapted Treasure Planet, and if it ever gets the mind to adapt Treasure Planet then even if I don't care about that game I will immediately declare that Amelia/Doppler takes the KH canon OTP crown. *taps watch* Get on it Squenix)

Non-canon OTP: SoRiku, which I counted as "basically canon" after DDD until III decided it wasn't sure. But I'm just a sucker for how DDD is the two of them all "HE'S GOT MY BACK AND I'VE GOT HIS AND I'D DO ANYTHING FOR HIM SO LONG AS HE'S HAPPY." It's just the best kind of Friends-to-Lovers, except when you take all canon into account it's Friends-to-Rivals-to-Enemies-to-Friends-to-Lovers and that's a very juicy dynamic. BUT ALSO: VexDem, which is a nostalgia ship SO STRONG I had to accept that it eclipsed my former Vexen ships by a mile and I wanted to go back to my roots. That one, I have a much longer essay about that I'll just have you refer to so I don't repeat myself for pages. To make a long story short, their scene in III was JUST DELICIOUS.

most badass character: OOF THEY'RE ALL BADASS but in the end it's between Sora and Aqua, because Sora gets the widest RANGE of abilities across the series that he masters while Aqua gets the most POWERFUL abilities due to her Mastery (Command Styles seem like they'd be the most OP things ever in-universe and I'm here for it because flashy battle moves make brain go brr).

pairing I am not a fan of: SOKAI, Xehaqus, RikuNami, Vanitas/anyone not evil

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): OH BOY. KAIRI THE MOST. YOU ALL KNOW WHY: lack of screen time, Fridging for drama, forced romance to invite death flags (they really wanted to milk that death to get people talking didn't they?), giving Alyson Stoner ZERO direction to actually follow up on Hayden Panettiere's performance. But then I remember that they made Vexen redeem and lose his entire personality and I just...uuugghhhh. I can't believe he died twice in this series. And then Demyx is FUN but also I know he's flipped sides as well, which means he won't be fun much longer! Xehanort seems to switch motivations to whatever makes him the biggest threat (and several of Eraqus' old flaws seem to be mysteriously glued onto him), Sora isn't a motormouth anymore, Riku just doesn't get anyone who cares about him anymore because everyone's distracted by Sora and Kairi, IS ANYBODY GOING TO ADDRESS THE ACTUAL ISSUES THAT DROVE THE WAYFINDER TRIO APART, oh God Marluxia and Larxene you're good guys now what have they done to you

favourite friendship: I really like each of the trios. But you know what's even BETTER than the trios? If you put...all of the trios together...meaning Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, Terra, Ven, Roxas, Xion, Lea, Hayner, Pence, Olette...and then you added Isa back in there...and you gave them Ienzo...and you brought back Naminé...and you say that Subject X is Strelitzia and you have her turn back up so she can have justice done...AND YOU HAVE AN ULTRA KEYBLADE GROUP OF FRIENDS. As for Vexen, any purely platonic relationship I have for him is a crossover but trust me I have many crossover pals for he

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: See everyone I listed above in the friendship question. They can either mentor me or let me be their big sis/mom. But also, I will GLADLY be Merlin or Yen Sid's daughter. (But also would I kiiiiinda wanna be a VexDem daughter? This is the worst idea. Still wanna try)

[ineffablefool]

How to center and nice-size an image in an AO3 fic using a work skin

Maybe someone can use this?  In my fic for the DIWS Good Omens Mini Bang, I embedded some images from my wonderful illustrator.  The centered images will never be wider than the text, no matter the screen size, but they also are never stretched larger than their native size (I resized ‘em to 800px wide in my trusty paint program for faster downloading). Here’s how one looks on my giant monitor and on my phone screen:

If you have never done AO3 skins before then I promise they are not actually scary!  You have the option of doing relatively complicated things with them, but this thing is simple.

Anyway this is how I center my images.

Step one: make a skin.

In your AO3 dashboard, click “Skins” in the menu (left or top of page, depending on if you’re on a big or small screen).  This takes you to the Site Skins page, which are for if you want to make all of AO3 look different to just you.  You want a Work Skin, though, which makes your fic look different to everyone, so click My Work Skins.

Click Create Work Skin in the top right and you’ll get an editor that’s similar to when you’re posting a fic!  You only need to set two things.  One, give it a title that makes sense to you (the title won’t be visible to people reading your fic).  Two, paste some stuff into the big “CSS” box.

This is the stuff to paste:

.centered {  margin-left: auto;  margin-right: auto;  text-align: center; }

.centered img {  max-width: 100% !important; }

That was the stuff to paste!  Just toss both of those two blobs in the big editor and click Submit.  Now you have a skin!

Step two: use the skin in your work.

Open up the work you want to do this in.  Find the Select Work Skin box (just under the Choose A Language box) and select the skin you just made.  Yay!  Sorry, the Homestuck and Undertale ones are just there for everyone and that’s how it is.  (Nothing against Homestuck or Undertale.  I just don’t like unneeded entries in lists.)

Step three: center your image.

This is the most complicated bit, only because I can’t give you an exact thing to copy-paste.  But I can give you a basic template!  Don’t try to paste this into Word or a similar word processing program.  The quote marks could get turned into “smart quotes” (like the ones I typed there, just now -- see how the opening and closing quotes are different from each other?).  If you need to save it off for later, Notepad or another very simple plain-text editor will be perfect, because it will keep the quotes as not smart quotes.

Find the spot in your AO3 work where you want the centered image to be.  It would be between two blocks of text which are wrapped with <p> tags, so something like this...

Into that space, you’re gonna hit Enter a couple of times (which I’ve already done in the screenshot) and then paste this block:

<p class="centered">  <img src="BANANA" alt="ORANGE" /> </p>

That was the block to paste.  Before you’re done, you need to change two things!

BANANA goes away.  Inside the quote marks where BANANA used to be, you need to put the URL of your image.  This URL must start with http or https (preferably https), or else it won’t work.  I can’t give specific instructions on how to get this, because it depends on where the image is hosted!  If it’s only on your computer, or attached to an email, it can’t be embedded.  It has to have been put somewhere on the web, like Flickr, Photobucket, or Google Drive.  It will work to embed from Tumblr, but I don’t trust Tumblr not to change everything up and bork all the old image URLs, thus breaking your embedded images on an arbitrary date in the future.  (Any image host could theoretically do this, but -- well.  We’re all familiar with Tumblr, right?)

ORANGE also goes away.  Inside the quote marks where ORANGE used to be, you optionally can (I recommend you do!) put a brief (200 characters or fewer) description of the image.  This is text which is invisible when viewing your fic in a normal browser -- it’s there for screen reader technologies, used by people who are blind or otherwise have trouble seeing a screen.  Their screen reader software will literally read out to them, so that they can hear it with their human ears, the description you put here.  Don’t start it with “image of” or “picture of”, because the screen reader tells the human that it’s an image already.  Here is a pretty user-friendly guide on how to write alt text!  If you’re more technically-inclined, the W3C has more involved docs.  Remember, the screen reader is going to say out loud whatever you put here, so don’t make it super long, or else you’ll force people who are using screen readers to wait through the long description for your story to continue. 

A finished version of the banana/orange block might look like this:

<p class="centered">  <img src="https://www.my-nifty-example-website.com/prettypicture.jpg" alt="Two dogs having a tea party wearing fancy hats" /> </p>

Step four: do it again if needed.

If you have more images to center in the same work, just repeat step 3 for each!  Step 2 has to be done once per work.  Step 1 might be done once ever (and then you just keep pulling that same skin into many works), or you might do it multiple times (if you want other changes in the skin that are special to only this one work).  I do a different skin every time I have a fic that needs a skin, but that’s because I do extra fancy things that are different for each fic.

You never have to do either step 1 or step 2 more than once per work, even if it’s multi-chapter.  In future chapters of the same fic, just do step 3 again.

Step five: preview and/or temporary draft is your friend

I am an IT professional with a (technically expired but work with me here) Microsoft certification in HTML5/CSS and seven years of writing this stuff for pay under my belt.  Even I don’t post without previewing.  Preview and saving as a draft without publishing are both your friends.

Some fun(?) notes

What you are doing here is using cascading style sheets.  The AO3 skin is a very simple stylesheet, which is a series of rules that your readers’ browsers will use to apply to text in your story.  There are standards that all your normal sort of browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge, Opera...) are supposed to follow when they see these rules, so that no matter which browser someone uses, a webpage will look as similar as possible.

A skin created from the above steps defines a class named “centered” and tells the browser how “centered” should look.  Then, in your fic, if you apply the class named “centered” to something in the big editor -- like, say, the <p>aragraph tag that wraps around your image -- then the style from your skin will be applied. 

The magic of cascading style sheets is that you can define your class exactly once and then use it many times.  If you decide you want to change all the places you used it -- maybe you want every centered image in your 87-chapters-long heavily-illustrated fic to have a green border? -- you have to change exactly one place: your skin.  The change will bubble down to every single place you used it.

Skins do not allow all the features of true CSS (no media queries; I am sad), and you can’t put comments in your skin (the editor strips them out).  Browser-specific overrides also do not work (if you don’t know what this means, that’s okay, you have to go to extra work to try to use them in the first place).  But they’re still pretty cool.

A lot of people will just put <center> tags around their thing, and use width=“100%” or some other number, but that is technically not standard HTML, hasn’t been for a very long time, and sooner or later Chrome is going to get clever and stop respecting it.  (Google’s developers like to make Chrome very clever and change how it does things just because they feel like it.  It makes my day job rather more difficult.  Ask me about SameSite cookies!! Actually, don’t.  Never ask me about that thing.)

For portrait-oriented illustrations -- taller than they are wide -- I like to float the image to the right of the text and have it take up no more than 50% of the width of the screen (as seen near the end of this chapter).  But that is a more complicated thing than this one, and I am keeping it simple today.  Maybe I’ll show how to do the nice floaty at some point.

For any-oriented illustrations, you could have a small resized version which links out to a larger version as a click-to-zoom thing.  That is also a little more complicated, so it isn’t in this post.

Questions and clarifications welcome.

That is how to center and nice-size an image in an AO3 fic using a work skin!  I hope you are having a good day.

[cheriesjubiles]

please don’t look under the read more i’m just testing

Can you imagine a world where we're all represented by a font? Huh, I wonder which one I would be? sees Arial Too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. sees Badaboom Too.. uh... Deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now THAT'S the one! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a question. If your personality were represented by a font, what font would you be? Take a moment and put your font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I'm getting bored with ol' Calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many requests to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you all have wanted Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. True loyal theorists will know that Earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, Comic Sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played Undertale I'm sure that was a really weird opening. ANYWAYS, Sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, pause the video and come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright, so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of Sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, Sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is Papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of Undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given to us by a shopkeeper in Snowdin, who explains that Sans and Papyrus, quote, “just showed up one day and asserted themselves.” Weird, right? What's more is that, well, Papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. Sans is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly powerful and deadly serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts around the world through ridiculous routes. Even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines that you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements on the player's actions in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE, just to clarify. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, the idea that he doesn't belong in underworld seems to be correct. The evidence seems to point the fact that he WAS, in fact, formerly a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, Papyrus asks Sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, “we call that the sun.”

This is important because A, the usage of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun shows that Sans has a kinship or knowledge with other humans, and B, that despite he and Papyrus both being skeletons, or, supposedly, brothers, and apparently appeared in underworld at the same time, they clearly-- uuuGGHH take two CLEARLY have two very different histories. Why would Papyrus not know the name of the sun but Sans would? We get further clues to Sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the Mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "i know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, i gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say he means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is, "and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on his dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, as though he's from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface, but from a different time period, who seemingly has the power to teleport. That's a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg Sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After some searching you find the workshop which contains items that leave even more questions. A photo album featuring Sans and a bunch of smiling people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean? Well a lot of Undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named W.D Gaster. A ghostly character who never truly appears in the game. Honestly, covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably one best saved for another day. Even still, none of the Gaster theories I've seen have been able to explain all the details. In particular, the photo album, and the badge. And that's what kept nagging me as I researched Undertale. A badge? That one in particular really stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of a room? Something that supposedly reveals the truth about Sans? Badges just aren't important in Undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from Undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was, in fact, the most important badge in the history of gaming? The Franklin badge. Now, for those of you wondering what I'm talking about, the Franklin badge is a pivotal item from the Mother series. You know, the one with Earthbound. Or, maybe you don't know that one either. Uh, you know, the one with Ness from Super Smash Bros? Yeah well, Ness is from Earthbound, and Earthbound is the second part in this larger Mother trilogy. Alright? Good. Anyway, the Franklin badge is a really important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life multiple times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the Smash Brothers series. So I asked myself; what if the badge in Sans' drawer was THAT EXACT badge?

Well first off, it made Undertale connected to my favorite game, thereby making it even COOLER, but that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as I started looking, more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of Earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the best, most satisfying endings in gaming to look back on your journey in picture form. And what does Sans happen to have in his other drawer? A photo album with pictures of Sans with people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not characters present in Undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the Mother series. But then, how do the blueprints and broken machine fit in? Well, in the final stretch of Earthbound, Ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien Giygas. To do that, Dr. Andonuts (remember him, by the way, he's going to be important later) with the help of the science geniuses Apple Kid and Mr. Saturn, create what's known as the Phase Distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes with a cost. It can't transport organic material. As a result, the young heroes must put their souls into robotic bodies to use the machine, and thus, save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and I'm not ashamed to admit that when I first saw this scene, I cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor Andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love and care about are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's this incredibly dark departure in the final moments of what was otherwise a fun, quirky, and colorful RPG. So what does all of this have to do with Undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that Mr. Saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken Phase Distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch, but it actually explains a lot. If Sans wound up in Undertale via Phase Distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences. Not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why Sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the Phase Distorter is a time machine. By being in underworld, he's not only in a different place, but based on how he talks, he's also in a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between Earthbound and Undertale continue. When you speak to Apple Kid at the end of Earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of Ness overcoming Giygas, saying that he's going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to harness its power. Seems awfully similar to the same experiments happening in Undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that Sans was a key player in those experiments. But I'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, because I have plenty. During one of the endings of Undertale, we see Undyne and Alphys hanging out on the beach on the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical resort location named Summers that you play through in Earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of Mother. When Undertale's crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset falling across the landscape of a tall mountain, a large city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection to indicate water, and a lack of trees in this middle section here, hence the sand.

Well, in Earthbound you have the big city of Fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a desert that just so happens to be adjacent to some water, and to the east, the mountain in Onett where a meteorite lands on Earth. I always called it Aw-nett. But if that's not clear enough for you, Mother 1, Earthbound Zero, Earthbound Beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of Eagleland (Eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) between the world of Eagleland and the surface world of Undertale. But the strongest physical connection, one that definitely unites these two franchises, comes from none other than Papyrus himself. He wears a custom-made costume known as his “battle body”. But if you look really closely at the design on the armor, you'll notice some markings on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of Starmen, the most iconic enemy of Earthbound. And look at the way he stands! I always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arms of the Starmen in the Mother series! In short, we have some incredibly strong proof that the Earthbound universe is somehow connected to the Undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took it one final step and said that Sans happened to be Ness from Earthbound? Sent through the Phase Distorter during a test of courage, carrying the Franklin badge and his photo album and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does Sans’ behavior. Remember, Sans can seemingly teleport. And Ness just happens to have the PSI ability to teleport. Now look the way Sans always stands, hands in his pockets, directly facing the camera. It's a very similar stance to how Ness is depicted standing in most marketing for the game. It even explains why Sans bleeds when you finally hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, Sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of Ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creator's previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind Undertale, had previously worked on a Halloween hack for Earthbound. But this just wasn't a simple reskin. The Halloween hack tells the tale of Dr. Andonuts after the events of Earthbound. Remember, I pointed him out? He's the one who made the Phase Distorter. In Toby Fox’s version of the story, we see that after Giygas' defeat, the souls of the kids never return home. Instead, by going to the past to defeat Giygas, they create a new timeline that they're stuck in. As a result, Jeff never reunites with his father Dr. Andonuts. And Dr. Andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, and extracting the souls of his son and his son's friends to send them back to what he assumes was their death. In his mind, he's killed 4 kids. And in Toby Fox's game, he's lost his mind trying to deal with that guilt. I'm telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of Undertale in this game. The appearance of Amalgamates, the first use of the awesome song Megalovania, the prototypes for Flowey? And the theme of having the choice to be nonviolent in an RPG, SPARING your enemies. But then why's all this matter to the theory? Well, remember, in Toby Fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home. Just like Sans. And, in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. Presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his 3 friends.

In short, Undertale is a continuation of Toby’s version of Earthbound, with Ness never being able to get home, adopting the name Sans, and accompanied by Papyrus, a former Starman, an alien force able to speak English and still equipped with his armor, and signature posture, but without any knowledge of earthly things... like the Sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’ve got ourselves a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!

[espytalks]

ive been drawing for quite a while. and looking through my old art, i found ive been drawing online for a whole flippin decade. wow.

so here’s 10 drawings ive done over the last 10 years, with commentary. it’s a long one, though, so be careful.

2010:

I had to dig through my deviantart for these first two. This pikachu is the first thing i ever posted online! i remember drawing this in ms paint with a mouse. i remember being very proud of this, and in a way, i still think it’s cute. it has a “drawing my kid done that i hung on a fridge’ vibe. 

i didn’t do much around this time. i barely knew how the internet worked, and i mainly read instead of drawing. i did some pokemon sprite edits though, for some reason. i remember really liking doing that.

2011:

i’m pretty sure i drew this mew in gimp. also with a mouse, because i had no idea tablets existed. ive always been super into pokemon, and around this time i think i was watching a lot of mickey mouse cartoons? it’d explain the weird style. 

i’m impressed with the shading, though. i did the best with what i knew, and what i could figure out on my own. not pictured is the hundreds of mickey sketches i did around this time, or the self insert oc i made lol.

2012: oh no it’s pony time. i spent about 5 years drawing primarily these things. kinda wish i hadn’t in hindsight, but ah well.

i had this program on my ds that i could draw and post my art on, and i was using it a lot around this time. a lot of my art has this sketchy look to it, because of that. i remember i had quite a few followers on it, or at least i think i did. i dunno if that website still exists, or if anyone even uses it anymore.

but anyways, this drawing is super cute. ya can’t go wrong with a sleeping pone. i forgot the cutie mark, tho. i always forget minor important details like that. either that or i drew her as a filly. can’t remember.

2013: yeah, i think this as vent art? can’t remember, but i drew it on that same program. i put a lot of effort into the perspective. this was based on my room at the time, btw.

2014: i believe this was for a new artist’s training grounds on eqd. i must’ve had a tablet by now, cause i can see tapering in the lineart. it was a big deal for me, and it sucks that i can’t remember what the first ting i drew with it was. i think it was some sketches.

but you can definitely see some improvement by now. i was really getting used to drawing this one thing. but a lot of people following me seemed to like my art back then. it was called cute, and expressive and cartoony. 

i think this was around the time i was at my best, as far as notes and interaction goes. 

2015: *megalovania intensifies*

i was super into undertale at the time. and 2014-15 was when i started to try and draw other things aside from ponies. you cal tell my poses and anatomy is mega awkward and kinda bad here, but this was a major improvement for me. 

2016: i was a fan of steven universe since it first aired, but i very rarely drew fanart for it. but as i was getting more comfortable with drawing peole, i got more ambitious with the characters i tried to draw.

i also from around this point on tried to get better at traditional art. and i think this was the first inktober i tried, but i don’t think it was the first i finished.

i really liked this drawing. and i may or may not have a wip redraw of this going on right now. wish me luck!

2017: KNOOOOOXXXXX I LOVE YOU, YOU PRECIOUS BOI

this is my favorite drawing. i peaked here and i will never be as good and pure as this single icon i did. it’s purple, he’s happy, it’s PASTEL AND SPARKES!!!!

i also got super into bendy and the ink machine this year, which sparked a renewed interest in trying to improve in drawing, and also led me to create my favorite oc ever.

i think i improved a lot around this time. my shapes and anatomy became cleaner and more consistent. on a technical level, i think this is where i started getting really good as an artist.

2018: i don’t think i improved a lot this year. i honestly feel like ive stagnated since then, and depression hasn’t helped. 

it’s a tough choice between this and the hollow knight drawing for best drawing of the year, but this is my personal favorite. sorry, mm, but mickey will always win out in my opinion. i know ya liked the other one though, and it’s also really good. 

i like how this turned out, and i’m so glad it’s got the most notes of anything else ive drawn. it’s pretty, and i love the style. this is how i wish i drew all the time.

2019: and finally we have this.

i don’t care how poorly this did. i was proud of myself for doing this. it’s cute and pretty and i like it. I created a vague story where she’s a little astronomer who’s like, caged for some reason, but now she’s free.

in hindsight, i think i coulda done a lot better, but i still like it. it’s one of my favorites that ive done this year. i wish i drew more this year, but the last few months ive been super depressed. it’s been hard to want to draw anything, and i feel so uncreative and mediocre. 

i’m hoping next year i’ll be better, and i’ll have stuff in my personal life more sorted out, and i won’t feel as bad.

this was nice, though. i’m glad i looked through my old art. maybe i’ll figure out what i’m missing, and get back on track. and maybe i’ll finish these wips i have going on lol. we’ll see.

happy new year, everyone. and may this next decade be even better for us all as creators, and as people.

[doodlefox-beta]

ｂｕｎｇｕｓ

can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note  the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like  a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time  he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach  that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises,  comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on  the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale  world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if  we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy  with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!

[smashmusicideas]

March 13: The Ways We Talk About Newcomers

I’ve talked before about how I’m less interested or engaged in talking about newcomers to Smash, at least at this point in time. But something that does interest me is the talk about newcomers, and how we think about them. Because I’m concerned that it’s easy for the most dedicated Smash Bros. fans to fall into a trap of thinking the same way about how characters function, the role they serve, and the things they represent. And then yesterday, I watched this thing from IGN, and it inspired me to talk about this further. So I’d say to just watch the thing, and we’ll discuss it below.

I think it’d be fair to assume this video, or at least certain parts of it, wouldn’t go over well among Smash fans. This isn’t me knocking another journalist’s work, just so we’re clear. I don’t think it’s an good or well discussed list (and that it advocates a character who’s never appeared on a Nintendo console does kinda irritate me), but Filip Miucin isn’t wrong or whatever for making it or pushing the characters he did. And I maintain that every newcomer will always provide something of value, regardless of how much I may or may not like them.

The reason I’ve even talking about it is because of something I think is worth talking about, and that’s how we think about newcomers or characters in the Smash series. In the video, all of the characters suggested (except Geralt, who again, has never appeared on a Nintendo console) are on Switch, either now or in the near future. Most of them are from franchises - Shovel Knight, ARMS, Dark Souls, UNDERTALE - of the 2010s. Most are third party characters, to the point where I was wondering if it was supposed to be for just guest fighters before Captain Toad showed up.

But if you look back to a lot of fan made polls - for instance, ours at SG, or the one Nintendo Life posted - it looks far different, and certainly closer to what we would consider a “normal” poll. There’s a lot of older characters, especially representing the late SNES and N64 “era” of Nintendo. And it’s probably not coincidental that a great number of Smash characters come from that period, or that it’s the range in which a lot of hardcore Smash fans grew up and for which they have a lot of nostalgia. We (and I sometimes fall into this as well) often put excess value on the game culture and environment in which we grew up. For me, it’s the GameCube and PS2 era; for someone else, it’s the Wii. And that perspective can sometimes make us forget that the audience for the series is larger than just us.

I feel like I use him a lot for these analogies, but King K. Rool really is a great example for this. Among the most committed of Smash’s fanbase, he’s one of the most undeniably popular, well liked characters. But he’s also a character who hasn’t really been “relevant” (for whatever that really means, admittedly) since the year the first Smash was released, and he’s not really a part of whatever Nintendo is. This isn’t to say he won’t show up at all, or that people are wrong for wanting him, or anything like that. Him getting a costume in Smash For implies Sakurai and Smash know he’s popular. But we often treat characters like him - or Ridley, or Paper Mario, or Daisy and Waluigi - as a given, when that’s really not the case.

I think Sakurai works a bit in both ways. He likes to reference new and major Nintendo games, and and he likes to cater to Smash‘s wide audience, and he likes to find characters who was especially distinct or innovative. But that’s not really the point I’m trying to make. The point is that any person approaching Super Smash Bros. is going to see it - and the history and values it represents - differently. Some people are going to see it exclusively through a prism of being a Nintendo fan, and often one of a particular era. Other people are going to see it as a place of Big Icons, albeit icons whose importance is dependent on the person. And most likely, the new game isn’t going to reliably match any pattern or expectation. So I suppose the best thing to do is not to worry, and don’t openly dismiss or mock how someone approaches the game.

(Link to my writings on Smash Bros for Nintendo Switch)

[crownedcryptid]

Your turn - 4, 6, 8, 16, 19, 29

yay! sorry for the long answers.

4: Worst game you've ever played?

I honestly avoid playing a lot of games because I know I won’t like them but one game I tried to like and poured a lot of time into was Borderlands Handsome Collection (so pre-sequel and 2). I was super into telltale’s borderlands game so I wanted to try the main series, big mistake. I found the game extremely difficult, tedious, confusing, and unentertaining. Yet I kept making myself play it cuse I thought i’d grow to like it but, I never did. Part of the problem is probably because I played single player but I have no friends with a ps4 heh

6: A game that's changed you the most?

This is a hard question but the first thing that comes to mind is Danganronpa, can’t specificly think of what that has changed about me but, I like it a lot. Maybe it’s because the game’s big focus on hope and believing in yourself and others cuse like, I need to have more hope for my own future and stuff lol. Now that I think about it Undertale has a similar message! i lOVE UNDERTALE (telltale walking dead season 1, bioshock infinite, and life is strange also come to mind. I think all these games influenced me creatively too)

8: Best soundtrack?

UUuuuuhhhhhhh either Pokemon Black/White 2 or Danganronpa 2. I really like the soundfont from b/w2 and how lots of songs in the game use weirdly compressed vocals. Danganronpa 2 has a lot of different techno-y sounding songs with tons tracks that can fit different moods.

16: Character you've hated most? From what game?

Jane from telltale walking dead season 2 comes to mind first

19: Which game do you think deserves a revival?

I’d love to see the ps1 super sponge game have some kind of remake or sequel since that game played a role in my childhood. I also think sly cooper and kid icarus are two franchises desperately in need of continuations cuse there still so much potential.

29: Which is more important, gameplay or story?

About 70% of everything I’ve played and enjoyed recently have been story-focused but I’m slowly getting tried of simple point and click stuff. In the long run gameplay is probably more important but I care about both. For example I’m real invested in Persona 4 but havent gone back to play it cuse the gameplay is repetitive. A big reason why I like Danganronpa so much is because it actually has some gameplay, like very minimal gameplay but enough so that there is actual replay value and challenge.

Thanks for asking! I love having reasons to gush about things I like!

[juushika]

travel to first city > get out of habit of playing Zelda in sleep-deprived travel and recovery days > stall out > pick game back up same day we started playing Dark Souls III again and wow the games do not mesh > oh well > travel to other city again, can’t play Dark Souls while here > tl;dr finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

My liveblog from ~50% to the end: game events, Navi as mechanic, time travel???, so much metadata, Gerudo are the very best, cyclical narrative are fascinating and I wish I wanted to play the other games, etc.; it is very long!

me:  hello dark Link is in this one 1) this is the 1.5 things i was not really spoiled for (in context of Ocarina) 2) oh my god i have so much fanart of this scene what a well-done sequence! really subtle and eerie effects/use of reflection and clever combat and like not skillful combat at all “don’t lock on, try and sort of flail until you get around him then stab his butt wildly” but pretty and the fade-out is really effective! so much really good subtextual-to-the-point-of-not-existing narrative; fights with shadow selves are best trope?? i looked at that art again and! it v good! i remember finding this dynamic compelling even before familiar with canon in any way! but it’s not explored, just, “you could explore this yourself, if you want”

me: where is Link keep iron boots when not wear that they don’t effect his weight just curious

Missy: don’t ask they magic also it really amuses me that your biggest connection to OoT is “i have sexy pics of Link and dark Link”

me: what is the logic of traveling BACK to kid Link??? (there is no logic, i know, i know) “you picked up the sword and were too young for it so we incubated you until ready” implies that Kingdom Hearts-esque he grew up in the jar, time passed but he wasn’t there for it but then no! and he can go back! and i get it would be awful to put collectables/shortcuts and then be like ARBITRARY UNPREDICTABLE CUT-OFF POINT being able to pop back is polite; and having offered that, tying it into plot is clever but ……..how???? it work?

[future Juu: Spirit Temple is best dungeon b/c it makes the time travel mechanic part of the core gameplay, aka the dungeons; but the time travel still fails to make sense, here or there or in the ending. maybe I read too much into chrysalis imagery b/c of my KH background? but the original wording, “we put you in sacred realm until you growed up,” just conflicts hugely with everything else time travel does in this game]

Missy: in the room with the rolly boulders HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY GODDAMIT NAVI I GET WE NEED TO AVOID THE BOULDERS YOU DON’T HAVE TO YELL ABOUT THEM NONSTOP hey navi. you don’t like getting squished. i don’t like getting squished. HOW ABOUT YOU STOP SAYING HEY SO I DON’T JUST SQUISH YOU.

me: i am so 50/50 on why everyone found Navi so annoying i have this strong “it not her fault” feel “it the limit of her programing”

Missy: normally she fine but sometimes HEY HEY HEY  HEY

me: some of [the boy’s] retro game adventures in the time before waypoints are… interesting like it’s super immersive which is great more active exploration, less “mindlessly follow waypoint” but they forget that in the samey-textured-fucking-identical-rooms you just … can’t pathfind naturally i come away with this really strong sense of “oh that’s why we handhold” when actually! we could handhold less now that we can have unrecycled textures/assets and rooms that aren’t just boxes! but you still spend  the whole time (in retro games) wishing for a waypoint or a fucking HUD or anything in the world that tells you how go where [examples of retro games that fit this matrix: the original Thief series, the original Deus Ex] and i feel like Navi is that “in such a sprawling and potentially non-linear game, player needs an aid” Missy: esp when HEY WHERE DO I GO? HEY HEY LISTEN sorta useful me: yeah she's good for "how to begin next dungeon" stuff but for stuff like "what do these magic seeds do" "chickens????" she useless and then she breaks out the advice for "DID YOU KNOW BOULDER MAKE THE SQUISH" thanks navi, i had guessed

Missy: hehe yahh

me: there’s actually--and, let us still preserve my overall ehhhhhhhhh opinion of Undertale, but--there’s a great sort of hat-tip to that trope when helper NPC interrupts you while doing a puzzle so that you are forced to “fail” it (need to push three buttons; NPC: “I’ll help you with timing!!”; reminder re: timing forces you to fail timing lol) god aren’t vidya games cool they’re like 50% experience/feelings/narrative and 50% mechanics/game design it’s so interesting!!! i have feelings!!!! 

me: Bongo Bongo actually fav boss so far WITH savestates without, probably hell but with, save stating becomes another mechanic, another move to time, like saving after stunning second hand so i can make sure eye of truth + counter eye + dmg, and then reset to save state if i miss one of those steps which happens a lot pacing great with savestates, very tense without, probably just ragey

Missy: yes and yes

[future Juu: this became a consistent theme. I started using save states to avoid the constant walking back each time I returned to the game, but they universally made combat feel more strategic and dependent on my actions, and less flaily and dependent on ehhh controls]

me: hello yes the Gerudo are extremely interesting is very Amazons

Missy: yes except Ganondork

me: like in any single-sex society, even those created by feminists (Joanna Russ, Nicola Griffith) i want more interrogation of sex=gender, how gender binary works when part of the binary is super unrepresented, characters forgoing binary entirely, etc. esp. interesting here b/c they 1) do have very rare males 2) have contact with non-Gerudo men, so they’re exposed to a gender binary, but how does that impact their culture “occasionally a man and then he becomes king of everything” is super icky for obvious reasons but i wonder what the on-the-ground view of that is, like, they have their own leadership roles, 100 years is a long time to be periodically self-sustaining, does the average citizen even care is it a figurehead monarchy “they just wear the pretty crown and look important; meanwhile, we rule ourselves” system fucked up every cycle that Ganandorf shows up to be ~evil~

me: obviously they do enough breeding outside their race to sustain it, but their culture is actually pretty self-contained/even xenophobic, so how does culture sharing work, how does race work???? Gerudo have distinct skin tone, but are breeding with whiter people presumably a lot, what does mixed race look like??? or b/c ~magic~ is that not a thing, are the daughters all just Gerudo wiki says we unno if they have contact with bio fathers, is there any cultural sharing??? what does Gerudo family unit look like; j/k it’s a “a lesbian and her extended lesbian family”

Missy: Keep in mind Historically speaking *every* Gerudo male in known history is Ganondork Following every game And every timeline So the king of everything may not be so much icky political as Gerudo + triforce of power = Ganon king of Gerudo/evil = harbinger of end of world and Hyrule reset

me: so, Dark Souls-like, we’re sort of stuck in a timeline/event loop, looking at same sort of events in different times/iterations (maybe it’s a reverse Jesus, like, they had this prophecy indefinitely but it didn’t effect daily life, but when it’s realized via Ganon we begin a sort of cycle of the game series) Missy: Most interesting bits there are the Twilight Princess stuff Where the n64 Link is a shade waiting for end of world to pass on his knowledge before disappearing Because yeah--Ganon loop seems like public Gerudo knowledge But Link loop is less talked about. The hero of time is just the legend

me: i’m sort of mad that aesthetic/the plot is just hero’s journey/here have the same narrative 2023842 times makes me not want to play others while iterated narrative is such a great trope and does make me want to care

Missy: Zelda future is open world The narrative is apparently partially taking back seat So the future lore from Twilight Princess would be tasty for you (esp. since Hyrule is bigger and more history has been written) But then the open world of BotW is a different allure. You write your own story etc

me: but open world just so ……………tired the dumb shit one can do in BotW is interesting, i just i like, you know, a narrative or sense of purpose

me: i finish Ocarina i have questions so Zelda sends him back to original time, everyone happy in future, life beautiful, sages together & everyone seems to know what’s occurred or at least that evil gone now child Link shows up at temple, Navi is like bye bitch, child Link goes to see child Zelda does he tell her to not fuck up > Ganondorf doesn’t come to power in new alternate timeline???? b/c either she’s like, hey, i know you want to be an adult now, but time to be a child and live through the reign of terror until future you saves shit, OR they’re alternate timelining it and everything sages etc did won’t really exist, so why so long an epilogue focused on them either way the time travel still doesn’t make sense since all the sword does is pop Link in chrysalis until old enough to use it??????/ Missy: Ocarina -> timeline split the adult saved timeline is the one that leads to Wind Waker, i think tl;dr Link saves world and then goes poof oops

me: “Regardless, Ocarina of Time has always been one of the centerpoint games in the chronology, with the events at the end of the game, where Zelda sends Link back to his youth, splitting the timeline.” (source) okay okay that’s a thing

Missy: yeah so Twilight Princess is the other branch

me: Zelda: still fucking things up sorta gj Zelda she is the center of everything isn’t she, i guess, like, thus the title

Missy: yes she is Ganon-Link-Zelda triforce

me: “When the official timeline was revealed in Hyrule Historia, the placement of Ocarina of Time in the series was revealed to be of even greater value, as the events of the game actually split the series’s timeline into three branches.” (ibid.)

Missy: oh yeah third branch we fucked up branch as in you lose to Ganondork and then.. snes game?

me: god i love iterated narratives it really is a pity i don’t care about the worldbuilding (except lesbians obvs.) and also characters and also aesthetic and also hero’s journey and also gameplay “Link is sent back to his childhood, leaving this branch without a Hero, as told in the prologue to The Wind Waker. Ganondorf eventually overcomes the Sages’ seal and attempts to take over Hyrule, but with no Hero to face the evil,” GJ ZELDA JEEZE like tbf, Link telling Zelda > child timeline is also Link’s fault and Link failing to defeat Ganon > grimdark timeline is also him so he is central, triforce, etcetc but Zelda is actually interesting and Link is mostly fridge horror so, shrug that said, it some good fridge horror i propose alternate timeline for another fanfic i never gon’ write child Link almost warns Zelda, goes, wait, what about timeline shit, nvm, decides to just wait it out seven years of increasing darkness watching bad shit pile up actually seeing it from the ground instead of in summary, it worse than he thought, “i done fucked up”

Missy: do a triforce swap Ganon comes out with wisdom Zelda has power Link still courage

me: Ganon wisdom = grimest dark b/c he would be smart enough to succeed wisdom is power really, it’s more effective longterm than brute force then Hyrule rip

[fyrapartnersearch]

Looking for a Buddy and a Roleplay Partner

Yo! My name’s Sparky-- I'm just gonna use that as a cool Alias because my real name’s stupid [If you really want to know for communication reasons or whatever just ask when you contact me and I won't be offended, promise], and I am nineteen years of age, been roleplaying for most of my life. Recently, a super long-term roleplay partner and friend of mine slipped away from the roleplay business after getting a life before I did, and as much as I respect her decision of pulling away from our mutual trash bin, I’m still stuck in the very depths of it and don't plan on climbing out, myself, any time soon. On that note, this is why I'm here on the hunt for a partner, again, specifically craving a few things-- a few fandoms.

  As I figure you already assumed, I am a walking trash can, and absolutely love longterm [or short-term, I'm totally cool with either,] double-up CanonxSelf-insert, or CanonxOC. Whatever your preference is between the two, I'm 100% up for it, and will totally roll with OC-only if you convince me, which honestly isn't that hard at all if you’ve got a good idea in mind. Other than that, I do prefer the former two, and am currently super into a few fandoms. Before I get into that, though, I want to get a few important things out of the way first. Starting off, no matter what/who you’re interested in that doesn't happen to be in the list I put fandom-wise, never ever be afraid to ask if I'll play a character from anywhere or insert anybody into anything because if I know them or at least get a brief explanation, there’s a large guarantee that I'll be more than happy to play that person for you. With this train of thought in mind, the fandoms I'm going to list are fandoms I know really really well, and there isn't one character I won't play so don't be afraid to mention that you want that one often-rejected character, whether it be because they aren't well known or they aren't liked by a lot of people. I promise you I'll be up to play them for you as long as you play the character I want for me. It's like a fair, trusted trade.

  As for NSFW/Smut, this is my shit in roleplays, whether it be a short-term smut roleplay or a longterm one with it hopefully weaved in logically in the storyline. I can do any Kinks no matter how uncommon they are or how ashamed they make you, I've got like all of them too, so shoot ‘em at me when the Time comes to get down and dirty, and I warn you the smut I write is really graphic and detailed. I love to get the best of every character’s reactions and actions-- as I said before, smut is my shit. Moving on.

  With Long-Term, I super duper love a logical flow of the plot and relationships involved. Strangers do not fall in love with each other at first glance/conversation, but they totally can think somebody’s really hot or really cute or etc. if their personality calls for it, they can say they’ve totally fallen in love at first sight, but there will still be major character development along the way. That said, not everybody has to not know each other or automatically be single at the start of the roleplay-- depending on where we go with the storyline they could have a huge past or already be dating or fuck, even married if our plot fits with it. I'm fine with any scenario as long as it's played out realistically. Even dating/married couples have relationship development.

  Now that we’ve got the basics cleared up, I'll just jump right into the lists of fandoms I'm super craving right now. There’s a lot I'll probably miss that I know I love, so if you can't find something you’re interested in on the list but find me interesting/compatible, just mention it when you contact me and tell me what you’re up for, and we can go from there. Otherwise, here’s what I’m super up for. Bolded ones are ones that will make me automatically love you if you choose them.

  [Tokyo Ghoul]

Character(s) I’d Like: Juuzou Suzuya

Character(s) I’ll Play: Anyone, whether it be Touka, Akira, Tsukiyama, or Shinohara, or Kaneki/Sasaki, or people solely from the Manga.

  [Homestuck]

Character(s) I’d like: John Egbert, Sollux Captor, Dave Strider, Cronus Ampora, Terezi Pyrope

Character(s) I’ll Play: Anybody, again. I know all the characters too well-- Anybody from the Midnight Crew, any Alpha or Beta Trolls, Alpha or Beta kids, guardians, Cherubs, etc.

  [Black Butler]

Character(s) I’d Like: Grell, Ciel, Alois, Sebastian

Character(s) I’ll Play: Sebastian, Ciel, Alois, Claude, Elizabeth, Paula, Anybody from the Circus, anybody from the Manga, anybody from this fandom in general.

  [Invader Zim]

Character(s) I’d Like: Dib Membrane, Tallest Red

Character(s) I’ll Play: Gaz, Dr. membrane, Tak, Zim, Either of the Tallest, any other character.

  [Haikyuu!]

Character(s) I’d Like: Kei Tsukishima, Tanaka

Character(s) I’ll Play: Bokuto, Kenma, Akaashi, Kuroo, Hinata, Kageyama, anybody else you can think of; which is a hell of a lot more than the few I listed.

  [Attack on Titan]

Character(s) I’d Like: Levi, Hanji

Character(s) I’ll Play: Again, anybody.

  Others I'm totally okay with but not craving enough to be on the list above:

[Steven Universe]

[Transformers]

[Undertale]

[Durarara!]

[Free!]

[Borderlands]

[Fallout 4]

[Gravity Falls]

  I already know I must have forgotten quite a few fandoms on the last list because I always do, so, again, if you can't find the one you’re looking for, just mention it when you contact me and we’ll go from there. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to starting something up, and can't wait to hear from people. If you have any questions that weren't gone over just ask away.

  Contacts:

E-mail: Gatorteeth333@gmail.com

Skype: TheSparkyShark

Discord: Sparky, 4225

[find-your-rp-partner]

Roleplay Partner Wanted

Yo! My name’s Sparky-- I'm just gonna use that as a cool Alias because my real name’s stupid [If you really want to know for communication reasons or whatever just ask when you contact me and I won't be offended, promise], and I am nineteen years of age, been roleplaying for most of my life. Recently, a super long-term roleplay partner and friend of mine slipped away from the roleplay business after getting a life before I did, and as much as I respect her decision of pulling away from our mutual trash bin, I’m still stuck in the very depths of it and don't plan on climbing out, myself, any time soon. On that note, this is why I'm here on the hunt for a partner, again, specifically craving a few things-- a few fandoms.

  As I figure you already assumed, I am a walking trash can, and absolutely love longterm [or short-term, I'm totally cool with either,] double-up CanonxSelf-insert, or CanonxOC. Whatever your preference is between the two, I'm 100% up for it, and will totally roll with OC-only if you convince me, which honestly isn't that hard at all if you’ve got a good idea in mind. Other than that, I do prefer the former two, and am currently super into a few fandoms. Before I get into that, though, I want to get a few important things out of the way first. Starting off, no matter what/who you’re interested in that doesn't happen to be in the list I put fandom-wise, never ever be afraid to ask if I'll play a character from anywhere or insert anybody into anything because if I know them or at least get a brief explanation, there’s a large guarantee that I'll be more than happy to play that person for you. With this train of thought in mind, the fandoms I'm going to list are fandoms I know really really well, and there isn't one character I won't play so don't be afraid to mention that you want that one often-rejected character, whether it be because they aren't well known or they aren't liked by a lot of people. I promise you I'll be up to play them for you as long as you play the character I want for me. It's like a fair, trusted trade.

  As for NSFW/Smut, this is my shit in roleplays, whether it be a short-term smut roleplay or a longterm one with it hopefully weaved in logically in the storyline. I can do any Kinks no matter how uncommon they are or how ashamed they make you, I've got like all of them too, so shoot ‘em at me when the Time comes to get down and dirty, and I warn you the smut I write is really graphic and detailed. I love to get the best of every character’s reactions and actions-- as I said before, smut is my shit. Moving on.

  With Long-Term, I super duper love a logical flow of the plot and relationships involved. Strangers do not fall in love with each other at first glance/conversation, but they totally can think somebody’s really hot or really cute or etc. if their personality calls for it, they can say they’ve totally fallen in love at first sight, but there will still be major character development along the way. That said, not everybody has to not know each other or automatically be single at the start of the roleplay-- depending on where we go with the storyline they could have a huge past or already be dating or fuck, even married if our plot fits with it. I'm fine with any scenario as long as it's played out realistically. Even dating/married couples have relationship development.

  Now that we’ve got the basics cleared up, I'll just jump right into the lists of fandoms I'm super craving right now. There’s a lot I'll probably miss that I know I love, so if you can't find something you’re interested in on the list but find me interesting/compatible, just mention it when you contact me and tell me what you’re up for, and we can go from there. Otherwise, here’s what I’m super up for. Bolded ones are ones that will make me automatically love you if you choose them.

  [Tokyo Ghoul]

Character(s) I’d Like: Juuzou Suzuya

Character(s) I’ll Play: Anyone, whether it be Touka, Akira, Tsukiyama, or Shinohara, or Kaneki/Sasaki, or people solely from the Manga.

  [Homestuck]

Character(s) I’d like: John Egbert, Sollux Captor, Dave Strider, Cronus Ampora, Terezi Pyrope

Character(s) I’ll Play: Anybody, again. I know all the characters too well-- Anybody from the Midnight Crew, any Alpha or Beta Trolls, Alpha or Beta kids, guardians, Cherubs, etc.

  [Black Butler]

Character(s) I’d Like: Grell, Ciel, Alois, Sebastian

Character(s) I’ll Play: Sebastian, Ciel, Alois, Claude, Elizabeth, Paula, Anybody from the Circus, anybody from the Manga, anybody from this fandom in general.

  [Invader Zim]

Character(s) I’d Like: Dib Membrane, Tallest Red

Character(s) I’ll Play: Gaz, Dr. membrane, Tak, Zim, Either of the Tallest, any other character.

  [Haikyuu!]

Character(s) I’d Like: Kei Tsukishima, Tanaka

Character(s) I’ll Play: Bokuto, Kenma, Akaashi, Kuroo, Hinata, Kageyama, anybody else you can think of; which is a hell of a lot more than the few I listed.

  [Attack on Titan]

Character(s) I’d Like: Levi, Hanji

Character(s) I’ll Play: Again, anybody.

  Others I'm totally okay with but not craving enough to be on the list above:

[Steven Universe]

[Transformers]

[Undertale]

[Durarara!]

[Free!]

[Borderlands]

[Fallout 4]

[Gravity Falls]

[Pokemon]

  I already know I must have forgotten quite a few fandoms on the last list because I always do, so, again, if you can't find the one you’re looking for, just mention it when you contact me and we’ll go from there. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to starting something up, and can't wait to hear from people. If you have any questions that weren't gone over just ask away.

  Contacts:

E-mail: Gatorteeth333@gmail.com

Skype: TheSparkyShark

Discord: Sparky, 4225

[demonicnoobie]

can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises, comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING

[soapvorer]

can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises, comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!

[11isnotanumber]

can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises, comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!

[senorarcturus]

Can you imagine a world where we’re all represented by a font? Huh, I wonder which one I would be? sees Arial Too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. sees Badaboom Too.. uh… Deadpool…. BROADWAY! Now that’s the one! Now THAT’S the one! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a question. If your personality were represented by a font, what font would you be? Take a moment and put your font in the comments. I’m really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I’m getting bored with ol’ Calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it’s time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don’t think I’ve ever gotten this many requests to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you all have wanted Undertale. And honestly, I’m glad you brought it to my attention. True loyal theorists will know that Earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it’s like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you’re saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, Comic Sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven’t played Undertale I’m sure that was a really weird opening. ANYWAYS, Sans is, well, there’s a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven’t played it, pause the video and come back after you’ve finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won’t regret it. Alright, so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I’m feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of Sans’ mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven’t played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, Sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is Papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of Undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what’s given to us by a shopkeeper in Snowdin, who explains that Sans and Papyrus, quote, “just showed up one day and asserted themselves.” Weird, right? What’s more is that, well, Papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. Sans is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he’s also incredibly powerful and deadly serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he’s one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts around the world through ridiculous routes. Even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he’s only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines that you’ve played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he’s killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements on the player’s actions in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE, just to clarify. In short, he just doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, the idea that he doesn’t belong in underworld seems to be correct. The evidence seems to point the fact that he WAS, in fact, formerly a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, Papyrus asks Sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, “we call that the sun.” This is important because A, the usage of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun shows that Sans has a kinship or knowledge with other humans, and B, that despite he and Papyrus both being skeletons, or, supposedly, brothers, and apparently appeared in underworld at the same time, they clearly– uuuGGHH take two CLEARLY have two very different histories. Why would Papyrus not know the name of the sun but Sans would? We get further clues to Sans’ origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to “go home” or “go back.” He says as much during his dinner date scene at the Mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, “i know the feeling.” He then continues, “maybe sometimes it’s better to take what’s given to you.” As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, “look, i gave up trying to go back a long time ago.” End quote. And before you say he means going back to the surface world, that’s clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is, “and getting to the surface doesn’t really appeal anymore either.” Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on his dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It’s as though the surface world he once knew is gone, as though he’s from a different time. It’s pretty intriguing. So we’re left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface, but from a different time period, who seemingly has the power to teleport. That’s a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here’s where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg Sans gives you a key to his room and says “it’s time you learn the truth.” After some searching you find the workshop which contains items that leave even more questions. A photo album featuring Sans and a bunch of smiling people you don’t recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don’t forget.” so what does it all mean? Well a lot of Undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named W.D Gaster. A ghostly character who never truly appears in the game. Honestly, covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably one best saved for another day. Even still, none of the Gaster theories I’ve seen have been able to explain all the details. In particular, the photo album, and the badge. And that’s what kept nagging me as I researched Undertale. A badge? That one in particular really stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of a room? Something that supposedly reveals the truth about Sans? Badges just aren’t important in Undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn’t from Undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was, in fact, the most important badge in the history of gaming? The Franklin badge. Now, for those of you wondering what I’m talking about, the Franklin badge is a pivotal item from the Mother series. You know, the one with Earthbound. Or, maybe you don’t know that one either. Uh, you know, the one with Ness from Super Smash Bros? Yeah well, Ness is from Earthbound, and Earthbound is the second part in this larger Mother trilogy. Alright? Good. Anyway, the Franklin badge is a really important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life multiple times in the process. It’s SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the Smash Brothers series. So I asked myself; what if the badge in Sans’ drawer was THAT EXACT badge? Well first off, it made Undertale connected to my favorite game, thereby making it even COOLER, but that’s still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as I started looking, more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of Earthbound you’re given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it’s one of the best, most satisfying endings in gaming to look back on your journey in picture form. And what does Sans happen to have in his other drawer? A photo album with pictures of Sans with people you don’t recognize. Of course you don’t know them, they’re not characters present in Undertale. And note the word that’s used here, PEOPLE you don’t recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that’s 2 items oddly linked to the Mother series. But then, how do the blueprints and broken machine fit in? Well, in the final stretch of Earthbound, Ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien Giygas. To do that, Dr. Andonuts (remember him, by the way, he’s going to be important later) with the help of the science geniuses Apple Kid and Mr. Saturn, create what’s known as the Phase Distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes with a cost. It can’t transport organic material. As a result, the young heroes must put their souls into robotic bodies to use the machine, and thus, save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and I’m not ashamed to admit that when I first saw this scene, I cried. It’s DEVASTATING. Doctor Andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you’ve grown to love and care about are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It’s this incredibly dark departure in the final moments of what was otherwise a fun, quirky, and colorful RPG. So what does all of this have to do with Undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that Mr. Saturns are known for their, let’s say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken Phase Distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch, but it actually explains a lot. If Sans wound up in Undertale via Phase Distorter, it could provide a reason for why he’s a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences. Not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why Sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the Phase Distorter is a time machine. By being in underworld, he’s not only in a different place, but based on how he talks, he’s also in a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between Earthbound and Undertale continue. When you speak to Apple Kid at the end of Earthbound, he’s blown away by the astronomical odds of Ness overcoming Giygas, saying that he’s going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to harness its power. Seems awfully similar to the same experiments happening in Undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that Sans was a key player in those experiments. But I’m sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don’t worry, because I have plenty. During one of the endings of Undertale, we see Undyne and Alphys hanging out on the beach on the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical resort location named Summers that you play through in Earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of Mother. When Undertale’s crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they’re met with a beautiful sunset falling across the landscape of a tall mountain, a large city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun’s reflection to indicate water, and a lack of trees in this middle section here, hence the sand. Well, in Earthbound you have the big city of Fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a desert that just so happens to be adjacent to some water, and to the east, the mountain in Onett where a meteorite lands on Earth. I always called it Aw-nett. But if that’s not clear enough for you, Mother 1, Earthbound Zero, Earthbound Beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it’s had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don’t know about you, but to me it seems like there’s a definite connection between the world of Eagleland (Eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) between the world of Eagleland and the surface world of Undertale. But the strongest physical connection, one that definitely unites these two franchises, comes from none other than Papyrus himself. He wears a custom-made costume known as his “battle body”. But if you look really closely at the design on the armor, you’ll notice some markings on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of Starmen, the most iconic enemy of Earthbound. And look at the way he stands! I always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arms of the Starmen in the Mother series! In short, we have some incredibly strong proof that the Earthbound universe is somehow connected to the Undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took it one final step and said that Sans happened to be Ness from Earthbound? Sent through the Phase Distorter during a test of courage, carrying the Franklin badge and his photo album and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does Sans’ behavior. Remember, Sans can seemingly teleport. And Ness just happens to have the PSI ability to teleport. Now look the way Sans always stands, hands in his pockets, directly facing the camera. It’s a very similar stance to how Ness is depicted standing in most marketing for the game. It even explains why Sans bleeds when you finally hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, Sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of Ness. That’s just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creator’s previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind Undertale, had previously worked on a Halloween hack for Earthbound. But this just wasn’t a simple reskin. The Halloween hack tells the tale of Dr. Andonuts after the events of Earthbound. Remember, I pointed him out? He’s the one who made the Phase Distorter. In Toby Fox’s version of the story, we see that after Giygas’ defeat, the souls of the kids never return home. Instead, by going to the past to defeat Giygas, they create a new timeline that they’re stuck in. As a result, Jeff never reunites with his father Dr. Andonuts. And Dr. Andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, and extracting the souls of his son and his son’s friends to send them back to what he assumes was their death. In his mind, he’s killed 4 kids. And in Toby Fox’s game, he’s lost his mind trying to deal with that guilt. I’m telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of Undertale in this game. The appearance of Amalgamates, the first use of the awesome song Megalovania, the prototypes for Flowey? And the theme of having the choice to be nonviolent in an RPG, SPARING your enemies. But then why’s all this matter to the theory? Well, remember, in Toby Fox’s version of the story, the kids don’t come back. They’re stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home. Just like Sans. And, in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. Presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his 3 friends. Which brings us back to Undertale. 3 faces, with “don’t forget” written on it? It’s Ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, Undertale is a continuation of Toby’s version of Earthbound, with Ness never being able to get home, adopting the name Sans, and accompanied by Papyrus, a former Starman, an alien force able to speak English and still equipped with his armor, and signature posture, but without any knowledge of earthly things… like the Sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’ve got ourselves a true sequel. But hey, that’s just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!