#possessives in narration/dialogue relating to another character

[altschmerzes]

Gav I need you to know I think about this segment "Roy forces one of his leaden hands to move. He takes a step, a single step farther into Jamie’s space, and he doesn’t flinch. His boy doesn’t flinch back from him, even though Roy had just knocked him away. There aren’t words for what’s happening in Roy’s mind as he reaches out and takes a gentle hold of the back of Jamie’s neck, hooking an arm around him as soon as he’s close enough and tugging him close into his chest." Every. damn. day. of. my. life! HIS BOY

It haunts me like an affectionate ghost

I THINK ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME TOO........ it's so like. there is so much going on there. the fact that jamie didn't flinch being as significant - maybe even more - than if he had. roy's panic at realizing he'd just pushed jamie away without meaning to. the 'his boy' of it all bc it means we've crossed the point where roy is acting as a parent to this kid and also the point where he's realized that and admitted it to himself directly - bc those things did not happen at the same time, or even really close to the same time. the hug. SO much going on. i'm so excited to get to that sequence and all the stuff surrounding and leading to it.

[posletsvet]

Death Is a Mirror, or How Death Is Linked to the Sense of Self in Jujutsu Kaisen

Death is a fulcrum of Jujutsu Kaisen's message, a major point of reference for both the audience and the characters within the story. Death is a mirror that catches and reflects the last light of a life reaching its end, a moment of full disclosure that overcomes all distances and renders all defenses permeable. Death is a mirror as it asks one question: who are we when there's no more need to lie?

The thread that binds together all major characters' deaths in Jujutsu Kaisen is how, despite multiple characters trying in an unreliable-narrator-sort of fashion to convince us otherwise, no one's truly alone in death. The connections that people forge with others throughout their lives become their tethers to the world -- and then reach even further, transcending death itself. This is how humans, using Jogo's words, can still linger after they die: through the loving memory of those they held dear.

No human exists in a vacuum. We live in the context of our relationships with the world, of getting to know and getting to be known in return. Our lives, in a sense, are a dialogue -- that's why we give and are given names. We shape the images of ourselves through establishing connections with others; our self-recognition and sense of self come from recognizing those connections. Once again, we learn the outllines of our souls by bumping into others.

These two concepts, recollecting your 'tethers' before death and acquiring self-reflection in others, are consistently brought together in the story. Before everything else, it's reflected in Yuuji's (who the story's focal point as its protagonist) idea of a meaningful death, one gone surrounded by those you love. Nobara, who possesses arguably the strongest sense of self with her loud proclamation 'I'm Nobara Kugisaki!' and who's highly conscious about her relationships with other people. Megumi, whose overarching struggle for self-determination has him relying on others to define his own worth and leaves him passively suicidal. Toji, who in his last moments thinks about his family and understands that by leaving them behind he deviated from his true self. Nanami, whose fading mind conjures the image of his closest friend and who, guided by that, chooses to go south and stay true to himself. Kokichi is yet another example, and actually quite an interesting one. His character is explored primarily through the juxtaposition between the concept of 'the body within the world' and his forced isolation, but who still contextualizes the world through his connections with his friends. It's no coincidence that Kokichi's character arc is closely linked to Mahito, who is dubbed a mirror of death.

In short, there's a plethora of instances where death and one's sense of self are tied to one another like that. I'll ramble a bit about how this correlation is discovered in both Gojo and Geto's characters below the cut.

The lack of self

Gojo is somebody who's essentially lacking both connections to others and a sense of self-identity. His entire personality is shaped around the notion that he's The Strongest, the very thing which prevents him, even if in his own mind, from building meaningful relationships with the people around him.

Not having to challenge or change his self-image, Gojo has little to no recognition of himself as a person outside of his title. He has never faced a need to discover himself in relation to the world; he was given a foundation to construct his identity on upon birth. Did he really need to grow past that and redefine himself? Satoru lacks self-reflection -- most literally.

With Gojo's face obscured by the gaping void, we do not get to see his reflection. I'd say it's quite an apt visualization of Gojo's identity crisis. Who are you if not The Strongest? As Gojo's position is challenged with his Infinity suddenly overcome, this question is forced onto him.

But as he's spent over a decade trying to escape answering it, he never got a chance to acquire a definitive answer. So now, in Shibuya, he flees from it once more.

It's painfully ironic and at the same time fully logical that it is Geto who exposes this issue to Satoru as Gojo's sense of self is arguably connected to him more than anyone else. During their student years Suguru was the one who persistently rejected treating Gojo as a title and not a person, who looked through decorum and actively chose to see him not as Gojo Satoru, The Strongest but rather as Gojo Satoru, a teenage boy. For Gojo, it was through Geto recognizing him as a person that he was able to reach that recognition, too.

But after Toji Gojo is forced to seek self-affirmation and validate his ego by reclaiming his position, which was threatened by him losing to somebody for the first time. He tries to reinforce his self-image by separating himself from the world, which ultimately leads not only to his now automatic Infinity rendering him unreachable (= disconnected), but also to a loss of his sense of self as he loses his one and only connection.

As I've already said, with the Prison Realm breaching the defenses of Gojo's technique, this issue, his lack of a firm sense of identity beyond his title, is exposed to him once more. It's reflected in the way Satoru places his priorities post-unsealing. He fights Sukuna with seemingly a single purpose of cementing his position as the strongest sorcerer alive and thus regaining his uderstanding of who he is. The answer to this question has never lain in the plane of strength alone, though, and that is why Satoru fails utterly.

But in death, as the relevance of his Infinity is eliminated, Gojo is finally able to reconnect with his sense of self. He's reverted to his teenage self, to the time he could still relate to somebody on a personal level and get stronger for it. The entirety of the 236 chapter, in a sense, is written as an affirmative: he is The Strongest because he is Satoru Gojo, not the opposite, but it's his death which makes him finally recognize this.

The deviation from self

Now, this image could not be intended as a visual parallel to Gojo's reflection, or lack of thereof, in the Prison Realm's eye. Nonetheless seeing that scene in Shibuya animated immediately reminded me of it, and I think there potentially might be some thematic similarities between the two as well.

Talking about how our identities are defined by our connections to other people as much as our relationship with ourselves, it'd be only logical to assume that Geto should have a firm grasp on who he is. Not only is he a deeply self-reflective character, but also one who actively relates to others.

However, Geto's reflection in Gojo's eyes is unclear and uncertain, almost indistinguishable. It might be a neat way to convey how, finally taking a moment to look at his best friend for the first time since SPVI, Gojo doesn't really recognize him for how much he's changed. But it also could hint at how Geto, driven to the point where he bends and warps his beliefs to justify his actions, also bends and warps his sense of self.

At least how I see it, the image above calls to mind this panel:

The moment Geto tells Satoru he's decided on 'his true feelings' which would define him as a person. Isn't it ironic how in the exact same conversation he talks about how the goal he's settled upon is only possible for Gojo, meaning striving to achieve it would be akin to trying to become someone he's not? The light novel outright tells us as much:

This was the final confession of a man who could only choose to warp himself, who had erased himself in pursuit of his goals. The only person who could bear such a curse was Gojo Satoru.

In this light it's interesting how Gojo's struggle with his sense of self makes itself known through something which threatens his position as The Strongest, whereas Geto's is reflected in the eyes of someone to whom he refers while saying 'If I could become you...', deviating from himself.

A major factor of overcoming trauma is embracing the inadequacy of what happened. So, to a certain extent, by becoming an enemy to the system Suguru wants to prove the world of jujutsu sorcerers wrong and himself -- right. It once again reminds me of Toji's dying thoughts.

The flip side of 'deciding on your true feelings' is ultimately anchoring your entire identity to what is just a single aspect of it. People exist in motion, and our personalities are in actuality as dynamic and complex as our relationships. But Geto bound his self-definition to what was rather simply a reactive feeling, so in the end he inevitably failed to live up to it.

And once again, it's exposed at the moment of Suguru's death. In his case, though, this failure is also what leads to his defeat and consequent death in the first place. I also find it curious how Geto's face is the first thing Gojo sees in the afterlife, while Gojo's face is the last thing Geto sees and acknowledges in his life. And just like Gojo, in his last moments Suguru reminisces about their shared past.

The image almost mirrors what we saw in the chapter 236, suggesting how Geto's true self is in turn tied to Satoru. Despite how vague and uncertain their relationship's come to be, the two are rendered inseperable even in death -- or rather, in death especially.

[that-one-paintbrush]

Hey, Paintbrush here!

Recently noticed that a few others at Hotel OJ have made some tumblr blogs, so I decided to as well! Welcome to my blog, all :)

I'm Paintbrush (they/them) and I've competed on three seasons of Inanimate Insanity! Season three just ended and I've just been chilling at Hotel OJ for a while. Not doing much else, so I'll probably be answering asks frequently.

DISCLAIMER: this ask blog has (unintentionally) become an au

if you want to get the full context, feel free to scroll down certain lore tags or check out the archive! -mod

Tags of interest:

#painty yapping: Paintbrush answering asks, sometimes used for reblog convos

#painty posting: explained here!

#misc asks: Asks that don't particularly have anything to do with a plot line

#bristle blather: Asks or convos specifically related to Paintbrush's bristles

#burnt-out brush: Posts where Paintbrush aint doing so hot... also includes the mini arc where Painty ran away and Backgroundy temporarily took over answering

#magic anon: Temporary events that can be applied on the blog

#rough sketch duo: Posts that feature both Paintbrush and Animatic (from Animatic Battle), Animatic usually played by @animaticaskblog

#backgroundy: A character introduced through a magic anon event, backgroundy is a friendly face on the wall that occasionally shows up on this blog. ....or are they? friendly i mean. backgroundy clearly has a lot to hide, and becomes quite defensive upon being asked about their past

#torch/inner flame: angry paintbrush? wrong! a completely separate character!! torch is a secretive and smooth-talking individual that possesses paintbrush at seemingly random times. also narrates paintbrush's actions

#flooding memories chronicles: Posts taking a dive into Backgroundy's obscure past!

#rediscovering fire chronicles: Paintbrush has an inner flame now. WHAT!!! oh just kidding theyre just possessed. hi torch!! whats your backstory?

#false contract chronicles: AAAAAA SPRINGYS HERE HES GONNA HIRE US ALL AAAA

#painty yapping and yapping: posts where Paintbrush rambles for an extended amount of time, usually not dialogue

#animaticified saga: paintbrush gets ab animaticified. that's it

#art imitates life chronicles: paintbrushs past wasnt ALL sunshine and rainbows... if only they knew what happened!

#backfire arc: paintbrush makes a terrible no good absolutely horrible bad decision. they suffer the consequences accordingly!

#still waters runs deep chronicles: torch and backgroundy FINALLY talk things over like civilized adults

#history repeats itself chronicles: another life has been created via m!a,,,, waow

#mod kit: Posts from the mod! me!!

hey, mod here! (pandemonium, he/they/she)

there are a few things id like to mention:

this is my first ask blog. in the history of EVER!! so pls be patient with me

dont plan on including ships on this blog! but i dont mind ship-related asks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ please just dont be weird or mention proships

like i said, dont be weird in the asks! please no nsfw or fetish-y asks either

dont be an asshole pretty please- i dont mind jokes and sarcasm but if ur only here to be a haterade pls leave 🥺

yall can do magic anons if you want! please try not to send too many tho 😁

i made the paintbrush asset myself! pls dont use it or steal it :')

i may not answer asks immediately so please be patient and dont spam or pressure me into answering! i may ignore and refuse to answer any asks if im uncomfortable as well

keep in mind some of what i say may be personal headcanons or made up on the spot! ill stick to canon as much as possible but if theres an opportunity to add a headcanon, ill likely do so

thanks for reading!

[asterdeer]

also i get the irony of a fanon tma “sweet wholesome romance” Hater Extreme going “it’s a love story !!!” about another eldritch horror podcast where one or both of the dynamic in question are almost certainly going to die tragically at the end but it really is about the framing huh. the whole story depends on trust being nurtured between arthur and john. neither of them can get anywhere without working together. and they can get furious with each other and grate each other’s nerves and not get along and argue and be petty and mean and cruel and it STILL circles back to the necessity of trust and the breaking-down of each other’s isolating walls and harmful habits and coping mechanisms. in the season 2 coda we find out it isn’t even a real podcast without both of them: without john there is no "narrator" and thus no reason for arthur (when alone) to speak either. things happen but things happening doesn’t make a story; the story here is a dialogue. the story here is a relationship, in the most literal sense of the word: two people learning how to be in relation with each other (while one is learning how to be a person in the first place, even!).

in tma, the story was the horror, with relationships (ideally, they said with much bitterness) supporting the horror themes. then the romance element supplanted the themes and previously established character arcs, and the world that the themes had built fell flat. in malevolent, the relationship is the lens by which the horrors are seen, literally and emotionally and i would imagine thematically, too, although i havent thought about it that much yet. also, the relationship doesn’t exist to make the horrors less horrific: it heightens them. the relationship exists because of possession, and stolen agency and manipulation all the little violations of privacy are what possession entails. the fact that they fight so much is a reminder of how fragile their relationship is. but that means that every victory over The Horrors is that much more poignant, because they’ve turned The Horrors against itself thru cooperation and trust and leaps of faith in each other.

anyway s1-2 at least of malevolent are a love story in the sense of “a cooperative mutual journey of wanting to learn how to treat each other the way human beings ought to treat each other”. and also in the same way that tangled is a love story. thank you for your time, I’m sure i will be back, that is a threat

the john 2.0 situation is awful but i see no downsides in the long run. either 1) he eventually gets his memories and his love for arthur again AND realizes what arthur went through to get him back, WAH, or 2) i get to watch him learn to trust arthur and want to be human ALL. OVER. AGAIN. no downsides. this is a love story

[thewhitefluffyhat]

Thoughts on Deltarune Chapter 2

I wasn't even intending to write a Deltarune post, but here we are!

Have some extended ramblings/theorizing about Undertale, Deltarune, and the role of the "Player" vs character agency.

[Warning: full spoilers for ALL routes in both Undertale and Deltarune!]

.

Frisk’s Agency in Undertale

So I'm not sure how common this is nowadays (I haven't been following Undertale theories for a while), but I personally prefer the interpretation that there is no "Player" as an in-universe force in Undertale. I think it's a far more elegant story if the fourth wall isn't broken.

I'm also fond of the Narrator Chara and "Chara isn't pure evil until Murder Route teaches them to be" interpretations too.

And, of course, the third plank bridging those two is that I don't see Frisk as a just a pure, innocent cinnamon roll.

Because I like the story best when it's Frisk who chooses mercy or murder. It gives Frisk a much more complex character, if they are allowed to have the capacity for both immense kindness and immense cruelty. It even gives them an interesting implied character arc, if you take the natural progression path of True Pacifist > Murder Fun Times > Soulless Pacifist.

Just like Flowey, Frisk first tried to use their powers of Determination for good, but eventually they also grew curious and began to see the world as a game. And then they went too far and ultimately regretted it. Regretted it so much, in fact, that they were willing to sell their soul for just a chance to fix it.

After all, it's not you, the "Player," whose SOUL Chara wants. It's you, Frisk.

I also dislike the idea of an in-universe "Player" because that implies that "Frisk" is nothing but an empty shell - on ALL routes. All of those heartwarming moments in the True Pacifist route? All of the silly Flirt actions? Yeah, that's not Frisk, that's just as much the "Player" puppeting some poor kid's body as the events of the Bad Times.

Who knows what Frisk is truly like if their every action - good or ill - is controlled by some unseen, eldritch force? Now Frisk no longer has any characterization.

And given that said force overrides Frisk's agency, then isn't the "Player" evil no matter which route you take? It's become a story where they only "moral" choice is never to pick up the game at all. Hrm.

Anyway, but that's all Undertale. Which brings me to...

What the heck is going on in Deltarune?

Unlike Frisk=the Red SOUL in Undertale, we don't seem to control Kris=the Red SOUL in Deltarune. The game repeatedly underlines that the player only controls the Red SOUL, not Kris.

(Though, with stuff like the sound of the bathroom faucet only being audible when Kris's actual body is nearby - it seems like even when separated, the Red SOUL may still be perceiving through Kris's other senses besides sight...?)

With Spamton's dialogue and Kris's reaction after the non-Weird NEO fight, there's also a lot more emphasis in Deltarune of Kris (and the rest of the party!) being puppeted by some other force. And that's on top of all the stuff in the first chapter highlighting Kris/the Red SOUL's lack of agency.

Because of all those hints, Deltarune seems to be much more explicitly pointing toward that dark interpretation of Undertale - that the "Player"/Red SOUL is removing Kris's agency, regardless of route.

Indeed, I'm somewhat intrigued by the possibility that we/the Red SOUL might be forcing Kris to act nice just as much as we force them to act cruel. The way that Kris deliberately removes the Red SOUL in order to do some very suspicious actions might support that. As do some comments in Chapter 1, like characters in the post-Dark World walkaround noting how Kris is being less weird and more inquisitive than usual. Maybe Kris is the Knight and the Red SOUL is possessing them to undo their evil actions. Maybe the real Kris doesn't want to be friends with Susie and Ralsei at all!

But taking that interpretation to such an extreme also doesn't quite fit. Why does Kris slash the tires on Toriel's car? The only reason I can think of is that they want to keep Susie at their house. And why does Kris create the Dark World in their house? Is Kris creating the fountains because they want to have fun with friends? Especially right after the chapter emphasized how great the Dark World adventures were, that seems very likely.

There are also some smaller details too, of Kris interpreting the Red SOUL's input with their own spin (like saying things sarcastically), or of Kris chatting in a friendly way with Ralsei which the player/SOUL can't influence.

So, I'm pretty sure that even outside of the Red SOUL's control, Kris genuinely does like their friends.

Meanwhile, there were a lot of hints this chapter that Something Bad happened to Kris, Noelle, Dess, and Asriel when they went exploring in the forest by the graveyard. Most likely, they went into that ominous bunker south of the town. Is that incident related to Kris’s current strangeness?

And then, and THEN, there's the Snow Mercy route. That route seems to imply that the Red SOUL is both evil, and very much not Kris. Noelle says Kris isn't like themself, that their voice changes strangely, and she can still hear the creepy voice even when Kris is downed.

How to make sense of this all?

A Theory on Kris and the Red SOUL

One idea is that as scary and zombie-like as Kris looks without the SOUL, they're probably a nice, if lonely kid who desperately wants friends after their big brother went to college. (And possibly after something traumatic happened to them/their neighbor.) They're creating the Dark Worlds for the sake of fun and escapism.

But the Red SOUL puts an end to Kris's happy fantasies. Indeed, if the Red SOUL gives up, "the world is covered in darkness." So without the Red SOUL, would Kris simply keep creating fountains...? (What ARE the fountains, why can Kris and theoretically any Lightener create them?)

Maybe in the normal route, the Red SOUL is trying to gently help Kris move on and accept reality in some way. At the very least, I suspect Ralsei is working toward this goal.

But in that case... that's a pretty strange way for the Red SOUL to go about it, forcibly taking control of Kris to the point that the kid notices and seems to greatly resent it.

But what if the Red SOUL didn't have a choice about this arrangement either?

After all, the Red SOUL's customized vessel was discarded at the start of Chapter 1... and it was placed into Kris instead.

Here's a question: will Kris die if they're without a SOUL for too long?

Because there are an awful lot of moments in these games where characters break free of something they are bound to, but it doesn't end well: -Spamton collapses when his strings are cut. -The Darkeners can move freely outside their origin world for a while, but eventually turn to statues if they stay in another world. -Regardless of whether Berdly removes the Queen’s wires himself, he's exhausted and unable to fight any more after being under her control. -And when Kris takes the Red SOUL out of their body, their movements become slow and clumsy. Like it's a struggle for them to move at all.

Meanwhile in Undertale, post-Pacifist Asriel could maintain his form to say goodbye, but without SOUL(s), he inevitably returns to being Flowey.

So here's a theory: Kris died and/or lost their original soul. Perhaps due to some action/inaction on Noelle's part in the exploration incident. And as a last-ditch resort to keep them alive, the Red SOUL was somehow implanted in Kris.

(Also maybe Dess died/went missing at the same time...?)

And now, the Red SOUL the only thing keeping Kris around. 

But just like in Undertale, it seems like Deltarune SOULs have wills of their own.

Which means Kris's current state is similar to the Chara-Asriel fusion, or Omega Flowey, or even Frisk-Chara. Control of the body is shared. The difference is that instead of the SOUL we play representing the original owner/will of the body, this time the SOUL we're playing as is the intruder.

Essentially, this time around we are playing the role of the Chara-equivalent instead of the Frisk-equivalent!

(Though whether Kris themself is more of Chara or Frisk I’ll leave to other theorists...)

Anyway, while Kris likely wishes to be rid of the SOUL and dislikes this whole body sharing arrangement, they know they can't survive without it. And perhaps Kris being in a partially soulless state might explain why they do questionable stuff like creating Dark Worlds and slashing their mom's car tires in order to play with their friends. (Again, see also: Asriel/Flowey.)

But when the Red SOUL and Kris are in alignment, things go okay. The Red SOUL suggests commands, but Kris is willing to follow and seems to enjoy being with Susie and Ralsei.  

Let’s Talk About Snow Mercy

It's when the Red SOUL and Kris aren't in alignment... well. That seems to be what's happening in the Snow Mercy route. That kind of situation sure didn't go so hot with Frisk and Chara in Undertale, so I doubt this will end nicely for Kris and the Red SOUL either. At the very least, Kris seems to have been visibly upset after what happened with Noelle in this route.

(By the way, there are two other moments in Chapter 2 when Susie asks if Kris is okay - first after the normal Spamton NEO fight and subsequent discussion of what it meant and second after she and Kris approach the bunker.

Three different moments, but Kris appears to react similarly. Are all of these things related? The bunker, Kris being puppeted, and the events of the Snow Mercy route?)

Meanwhile, here’s a contrast. Undertale's Murder Route seemed to exist for the sake of curiosity and power - either the "Player" or Frisk's desires, whichever interpretation you subscribe to. And the changes to the world were all logical consequences of that - because of the Fallen Child's rampage, friendly NPCs disappear, major characters fight you more seriously, etc.

But the actions in Snow Mercy are... weirdly specific, weirdly unpredictable. It doesn't come across as a simple power trip. Instead, Snow Mercy is a bunch of really bizarre actions that feel even more mysterious to the player as they are to Noelle and Kris. I sure wouldn't have guessed that backtracking to the trash heap and freezing a bunch of enemies would lead to new items spontaneously appearing and then giving Noelle access to a scary new spell. It's like something straight out of a creepypasta!

The overall tone that comes across to me is that the Red SOUL seems to know what it's doing, even while the player is kept in the dark. And given Noelle's responses, it almost seems like the SOUL is trying to remind her of events/actions from her past, events which are obviously unknown to the player. All of which leads me to think that the Red SOUL has motives and goals of its own... so just like Undertale, this probably isn't a situation of the "Player" being a fourth wall-breaking force either.

The Red SOUL is its own character.

And I'm certainly curious to find out more about them!

[sendme-2hell]

Ranking the Hugo 2021 Nominations for Best Novel by How Gay They Are

I did this with the 2020 nominations because they were overwhelmingly sapphic, but now that I’ve read the 2021 nominations I think these are even more queer than 2020! The ratings are based on how queer they books are not how much I liked them.

6. The Relentless Moon - Mary Robinette Lowell

Rating: 4/10

Explanation: The way this author writes feels unbearably straight (and white) to me. She definitely makes an attempt to have a diverse cast of characters but is not very good at it so it ends up feeling more like a bunch of stereotypes than actually interesting characters. There is a sapphic relationship that is briefly hinted at in this book. A woman named Wafiyyah says she wants to use her one phone call (they are on the moon) to talk to her female lab partner. The main character speculates that she is probably in a relationship with this woman. Wafiyyah is mentioned a total of 12 times in the whole 500 page book and has about five lines of dialogue. But I won’t forget Wafiyyah and her lab partner. Giving points for her and then points for being on the moon because space is gay.

5. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Rating: 7/10

Explanation: Well, you can’t have a book about an academic cult without at least one of them being gay. This is a misleading description of what Piranesi is actually about, but idk...something about academia, people obsessed with the classics, greek aesthetics, and being gay. There is definitely homoerotic vibes going on through the whole book as well as mentions that that one character is, “picking up men,” and was “gay before it was legal,” and uh...maybe doing some other things. It’s unclear to me. 

*Okay to be honest the next three books on this list are all pretty equally queer. They all have multiple queer characters and are pretty diverse in other ways too. So I ranked them arbitrarily.

4. Network Effect - Martha Wells 

Rating: 8/10

Explanation: The thing that is great about the Murderbot books is that queerness is very normalized. There are multiple queer relationships that are just mentioned in passing, and if I remember correctly (all the murderbot books are one big book in my mind), there is a wlw couple that features prominently. There are also a few nonbinary characters including the main character. Polyamorous relationships as well. I would like to live in Preservation, please. 

3. The City We Became - N.K. Jemisin 

Rating: 8/10

Explanation: You know what I was saying about how Mary Robinette Lowell clearly tried to make The Relentless Moon diverse and didn't do it satisfactorily. Well, N.K. Jemisin said “hold my beer.” When writing characters meant to embody the boroughs of New York, she made sure that the people would all be different ethnicities, genders, and sexual identities. Since, ya know, New York is pretty diverse. She did an incredible job of writing maybe the most diverse book I have ever read (what does that say about me? What does that say about the publishing industry?). There are lots of queer characters in these books including gay, bi, lesbian, and trans characters. Although their identities are not central to the plot so far, I think that a mlm relationship will become very important in the later books in this series. Okay it’s not really fair to say they aren’t central to the plot since I’m sure they are part of her central metaphor or something. 

2. Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse

Rating: 8/10

Explanation: Like the two last books, Black Sun is diverse in many ways. Queerness is not quite normalized in the pre-columbian americas inspired fantasy world of Black Sun, since Xalia, the bisexual sea captain was sent to jail for sleeping with a woman. That being said, it seems that some cultures are cooler with it than others in this world, and non-binary and trans people are accepted. Queer relationships and identities are sprinkled throughout the book. Also this book is just great! I highly recommend it. Might be my favorite on this list were it not for my Locked Tomb brainrot. 

1. Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir 

Rating: 10/10

Explanation: Harrow the Ninth has many notable queer characters such as: the main character, the main character’s evil roommate, the main character’s dead ex-frenemy, a sword, a woman possessing another character (a few of these actually), God, and more! This is just a very queer book. It gave us classic lines such as, “gall on gal,” and “Ianthe had walked away from you, all split lips and gay loneliness” which was weirdly relatable. Plus I’m gonna say 1.5 gay sex scenes (argue with me about this). 

Other Notes (Continue reading for some random thoughts on these books, my actual ranking of them in terms of how much I like them, and a comparison of Griddlehark to Mahit/Three Seagrass): 

*I would say this is a better list than the 2020 nominations where there were a few books I straight up hated. I liked all of these books, even Relentless Moon.

*I would rank the books in terms of how much I liked them: Harrow the Ninth > Network Effect > Black Sun > Piranesi > The City We Became > The Relentless Moon 

*I think it’s funny that “Black Sun” and “The Relentless Moon” were both nominated. Sun vs moon. Don’t make them fight, they are dating! 

*The City We Became was great but the ending was umm...very abrupt...N.K. Jemisin wrote the Broken Earth Trilogy so she can do whatever she wants, but yeah I have to complain about the rushed ending. Black Sun also had an abrupt ending. I guess they are setting up for the sequels. Vs Relentless Moon, Network Effect, and HTN which are just building off of the other books in the series so they don’t have to do as much set up. Oh wait, Tamsyn Muir didn’t do that much worldbuilding in GTN and therefore made me sit through pages about the difference between thanergy and thalergy that made me feel like I was in 11th grade biology class trying to take notes.

*The television show, For All Mankind has a similar premise to The Relentless Moon but actually has a few queer characters including a woman I am in love with. Seriously, more people should watch that show! 

*HTN and Piranesi are both books where you have no idea what the fuck is going on in them for ½ of the book and even when you finish you are left with a lot of questions + they both have unreliable narrators

***spoilers for A Desolation Called Peace and Harrow the Ninth (and amce + gtn): 

When I ranked the 2020 Hugo nominations I ranked A Memory Called Empire above Gideon the Ninth because Mahit and Three Seagrass kissed and I was salty that Gideon and Harrow didn’t (ok they kindaa did. sue me). Anyway, in Desolation Called Peace Mahit and Three Seagrass actually had sex, so in that they are still beating griddlehark. Though to be fair, they never shared a body sooooo... Griddlehark is winning there. Thankfully I didn’t have to compare Teixcalaan and tlt in this list because I don’t know which I would choose this time.

[bettsfic]

Hello! Can I have a piece of advice regarding descriptions when it comes to writing? I think my paragraphs seem bland and lack powerful descriptions that pull the readers in. I can’t seem to describe well a certain place or figure since I’m having a hard time in incorporating the five senses when writing.

i’m sorry to say, anon, this is the eternal problem. (unless you are a poet writing prose, and then description is probably the only thing that isn’t a problem.)

here are some tips that are not necessarily “here’s how you should do it” but “here’s some stuff you could try.”

save it for another draft/layer it in

i almost never put imagery into my first two drafts. description gets woven in over time. think of it the way an artist begins a painting. usually they sketch it out on canvas before they begin painting. then, the first layer of paint is bold shapes, and after layer upon layer, you begin to see the finer details. 

if you force yourself to think about description AND conflict AND character AND dialogue AND pacing AND voice AND style all at once, you’re going to exhaust yourself. when writing, you can only do so much at once. having a whole draft where the goal is to spot places to add exposition is very helpful in minimizing the pressure early on.

consider both relevance and familiarity

the sad difference between consciousness and prose, as much as consciousness sometimes wants to be prose and vice versa, is that consciousness is not linear, and only a single translation from Environment to Brain needs to occur.

prose, however, must be linear. you can only read one letter of one sentence at a time. moreover, it’s translated twice: Environment to Brain, then Brain to Squiggly Black Lines On A Page. it is an astronomical effort to turn consciousness into prose, and we do it all the time. i’m doing it right now.

i have a whole 2-hour Brief Intro to Semiotics (and how it relates to prose) lecture that i’ll skip in order to reach the conclusion: when you are writing, description can be narrowed down into 1) relevance and 2) unfamiliarity.

by relevance i mean, what does the POV character notice and attend to? what is necessary to know in order to move the plot forward? 

by unfamiliarity i mean, it’s a waste of word count to have your character go into the bathroom and point out that there is a toilet. when you write “bathroom” (or lavatory, loo, washroom, etc.) your reader, regardless of who or where they are, will know a toilet is in that room. 

however, let’s say it’s the very first scene in your story. your character goes into the bathroom, hands shaking as they topple a bottle of pills into their palm. describing the bathroom goes a long way in setting the scene. is the place dirty? small? does it smell? stalls or no? is the lock broken? 

if you describe an opulent bathroom complete with velvet couch, underpaid attendant, and sensor-based faucets, that tells me a lot about the potential circumstance of this character. rich maybe? at a party? a banquet?

if you describe a dingy small gas station bathroom with graffiti on the walls, that tells me the character is traveling, maybe. or desperate somehow. what would lead somebody to take drugs in a gas station bathroom? it’s unexpected. unfamiliar. it leads to the conflict. 

describe things using movement and active verbs

a narrative always exists in space and time, and possesses some kind of movement. stories always start somewhere and end somewhere. so it stands to reason that your description should move with the action. and to make description move, you often need to employ effective verbs.

“there was a green chair” is a still-life. nothing is really happening. it’s just a fact. “she sat in the green chair” gives us the image of an action. a character is sitting in a chair which is green. is it important the chair is green? i hope so. maybe there is also a red chair, and these colors are symbolic of something or whatever. 

also consider the stacking of adjectives: “there was a green, plastic, small, wobbly chair” could maybe be “the green plastic chair wobbled as she sat. it was too small for her, and the sides dug uncomfortably into her ample backside.” that’s terrible, but you get my point. hopefully. you See far more in the latter than the former, in part because the description is moving along with the story.

make stuff move, or make people move stuff. let verbs do your heavy lifting.

read poetry

a lot of poetry is just images stacked on top of one another. poets are masters of description. if you want to learn how to craft an image with words, read poetry until your eyes bleed. whenever you read a line or stanza and it conjures a specific picture in your brain that your brain would otherwise not have conjured, take a closer look and figure out how they did that. teach yourself how the strings are pulled.

you probably need less description than you think you do

ever since a mentor once looked me dead in the eye and said of my work, “it’s pretty but i don’t see anything,” i’ve been busting my ass to drench all my prose with beautiful and loving imagery. (in his defense, the assignment he had given me was, in fact, to write a story full of description. i did not, because it turns out i could not.)

i’ve had mixed results. mostly i end up with a bloated word count and a lot of ways to envision sunlight falling onto a bed through half-closed blinds. i’m not proud. 

in my most recent project, however, i finally (FINALLY) made a main character who doesn’t notice jack shit. as an observant and perceptive person, i find this abhorrent, but she is not me. she is an angry teenage girl who doesn’t give a fuck about anything that is not an immediate threat or prize. 

so after years desperately flooding my narration with description, i leaned the opposite direction. i’m good at voice and style. i prioritized voice and style. and here’s what happened:

nothing.

i say my story is set in the suburbs, you don’t then need a whole extra paragraph about uniform houses and checker-cut lawns. you already know what a suburb looks like. if i say 70s style kitchen, you don’t need me to tell you the oven is burnt orange. you either made that leap yourself, or it doesn’t matter enough to know. if i say my characters are having a conversation in a diner, you can already see the vinyl booths and shit on the walls and tacky laminated menu. if i say my characters have landed on Omicron Persei 8, i might need to roll up my sleeves and tell you what that place is like. 

the thing is, even if i didn’t, you’d still think up something. 

the only reason i would describe something is if it’s particularly special to my narrator, insofar that she would go against her god-given right to be a total dumbass in order to Notice Something. does that make the story more difficult to read? no, it just means the reader either makes their own image, or uses no image at all. because that’s what description does: it specifies. absent of specifics, the human mind supplies. 

[numbertale]

NUMBERTALE

[ESPAÑOL]

What is it really?

This Au was supposed to be a pacifist. Due to a near cataclysmic event that happened in this universe it is difficult to know exactly what caused its disappearance.

The only witness capable of explaining the cause of this self-erasing Au is his Sans, although he does not remember it due to fainting, apparently the impact erased something important.

He said that his name was never Sans, that it was a nickname, he calls himself Eight, one of the 12 ... What does it mean that he belongs to the 12?

If you ask who is narrating this, it is said by a friend of Eight, Jackson, I can not say that AU came from since it would be Spoiler my friend.

All this my enigmatic friend told me.

Now the boss give details that I can not say since I have no knowledge of this.

Basic information

Eight/ Sans

Name: Eight Age: 28, currently 31

Height: 1.58 (skeleton) 1.68 (Human)

Weight: 54 kg (skeleton) 64 kg (Human)

Species: Skeleton

Favorite Food: Sushi / Apples

Personality

At first he was a jovial, sociable, relaxed and not very serious sans, after witnessing the cataclysm that ended up destroying his universe.

He became calm, serious and more reserved, apart from showing things seriously, he shows to be constantly alert.

They have a great distrust of those around them, especially the Charas.

He does not feel a feeling of greatness of his achievements to save others, only satisfaction of doing the right thing, he does his best not to be so visible to the rest of Sans and other people in the multiverse.

He prefers to do what he considers to be work in the shadows and anonymously.

Ah, unlike the original Sans, he hates jokes and jokes. Ketchup does not like. Apart from being someone quite active and competent.

He has a taste for board games, especially dominoes.

It is more accessible with children and the elderly.

He likes cats and dogs.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Appearance

Skeleton

Human

Character / Background

After being in the vacuum of his AU, he was found by Core Frisk, since it took him to the Omega line, he was for a while learning to handle his new magic, one day he decided to leave it to start a trip to know better the multiverse.

In one of his trips he meets Horror Sans, who wants to kill him, to his bad luck he was transformed into a human so Horror wanted to devour him. When trying to defend himself, he discovers that he can make two types of weapons appear, which he called Aoi Shio and Nigai Orenji. Inadvertently he opened a portal that led him to Underswap, managing to escape Horror.

He was a prisoner for Berry for a few minutes until he returned to normal to the surprise of Swap Papyrus and Berry, who did not finish asking him questions. After taking him to undyne to do some studies, Berry introduces him to another Sans named Jackson. At first he did not like me as he kept making several bad jokes.

In an unexpected moment, screams are heard from Grillby's, everyone is on their way until they manage to see that the cause is another sans but very different, it was Killer, Papyrus and Jackson began to fight against that Sans, Berry helped evacuate to the area together with other monsters.

Eight froze, recalling the cataclysm again, her thoughts being interrupted by Papyrus and Jackson. Killer had Berry who was about to kill him. Papyrus managed to save him but suffered a stab in the shoulder.

Jackson made Killer back down as well as give him a fight, Eight when seeing such an act made his yellow weapon (Nigai) appear and attacked Killer, gave him some battle, Jackson and Eight joined forces and managed to expel Killer through a portal.

Eight ended up fainting. After a few minutes he woke up at Undyne's house, where Berry, Papyrus, and Jackson were. Jackson told her that Undyne did some studies for her that she has 2 human souls apart from only having half a monster soul, she believes this is the reason why she transforms into a human.

Jackson tells him about the existence of Sans in the multiverse who are equal to Killer, who come to an AU either to eliminate it or simply make its inhabitants suffer.

Due to this experience, in addition to learning about the existence of these Sans, Eight makes the decision to become an anonymous vigilante protector of the Au.

Weapons / Skills

To fight and defend himself, he most frequently uses his weapons which are the Aoi Shio and Nigai Orenji, better known as the Shio sword and the Nigai spear.

He rarely uses his blue magic and bone summoning

The only thing he cannot use frequently in battle is his Gaster Blaster

When wearing them for a long time, if you exceed the time limit, the wound on your left eye begins to expand. If that happens, he loses control like sanity and becomes a bloodthirsty killer.

Not being able to use 89% of his powers like other sans this limits him and gives him a slight disadvantage.

He specialized in hand-to-hand combat.

He manages his two weapons to perfection, and creates his own traps.

One of the abilities he has is that he can transform into a human temporarily, although this is something that he cannot control of his own free will, since he does not know for sure when he will become a human.

The transformation has caused problems such as the occasion that Horror wanted to devour him. Having been kidnapped and another for scaring a town.

The only way he can tell when he will turn human is when the unhealed wound in his left eye begins to ache.

Undyne of Underswap believes that this is due to Eight not possessing in its entirety his monster soul, the two human souls that are united to his soul cause the transformation. Although he does not know why they cause the pain in his eye.

Relations

Jackson became a great friend to him, although he is constantly annoyed by someone he can trust.

With Core he had little problems but he gets along well with her. The Omega line is a temporary home for him.

He doesn't know many in the Multiverse as he prefers to be someone anonymous. The times when he interacts, he is a bit ostile but he becomes understanding and calm.

Curiosities

The only friendship he has made are with Berry, Jackson and Core Frisk.

When he loses control he claims to be someone named "A", belonging to the 12.

He has a journal in which he writes information on other Auses and Sans, apart from containing some of his Au's history along with his first days in the void after his Au disappeared. The diary was a birthday present from his Papyrus and his Frisk.

He was unaware of Ink's existence until he accidentally ran into it in a battle with Error.

The name of their weapons are in Japanese, translated into Spanish are Blue Tide (Aoi Shio) and Bitter Orange (Nigai Orenji).

His Gaster Blasters somehow have a conscience of his own, since they sometimes give him advice when it comes to fights. Each Gaster Blaster has different features, one is yellow with a scar on his left eye just like Eight's, the other is light blue with no scar.

His taste for sushi and oriental food came from a visit to an Au who was set in feudal Japan.

He is a somewhat lonely Sans and is rarely accompanied by any other Sans, other than Jackson

He does not consider himself a hero as such, despite being calm and preferring to resolve things through dialogue. He will not hesitate to kill whoever disturbs the peace in the Aus. As in a case in which he traveled to Underfell, where he ended up killing two monsters that he considered dangerous.

The only parallel version of them is its Fell version called Tooc, it does not have a Swap version.

When redesigning the character, his personality and attitudes are inspired by the Quiverwing Duck character. While its design is inspired by Cross Sans.

I needed to clarify a few things to the new Eight, since I did not think I was creating a more complex story for him.

It is the only information I will give so far.

This Au believes it as of 2017. I don't remember the exact date.

The comics of this Sans I left them suspended due to my dedication to other projects. But it still stands to continue the comics.

COMICS NUMBERTALE / SYNOPSIS

OTHER CURIOSITIES

SPIN-OFF/ DARK MEMORIES

[conduitandconjurer]

Hi there! I’ve lurked for a little while and just recently followed. You have a really interesting take on Klaus and I’d like to ask: what kind of things do you do to get into character so to speak? Are there any important things about his character you like to keep in mind when you write him? And as someone who has written for many years but is considering rp, any advice for a first-timer? Thanks and hope you have a wonderful day/night!

First of all you should know that I’ve been rping on various platforms for over 15 years at this point, and messages like this still MAKE MY WHOLE WORLD BETTER <33333  Thank you SO much for your gracious and generous kind words.  You took a second to extend a hello and compliment my hard work and it means so so much.

So Klaus and I are NOTHING alike, which is exactly why I choose to write muses like him.  It provides me an outlet of escape from my own life (which has its ups and downs) and it’s a creative and intellectual challenge to understand what makes a person so behaviorally different from myself tick. Most writers like to write characters who are like them.  And I do that too, but for me, I just need some single trait in a character that I resonate with. For Klaus, it’s his innate sweetness and vulnerability (which he tries and fails to conceal) and his need (and failure) to establish boundaries (with family and with ghosts), and finally it’s his fear of being insufficient as a person his family can rely upon (which he copes with by creating artificial emotional distance, and abusing substances, whereas I the mun marinate in guilt and try to overcompensate lmao).  While we’re still not alike, I can BEGIN to understand WHY he behaves the way he does, and I can build my portrayal off of that. 

Put another way, most of my muses are queer nonbinary he/him/they pronoun users, often neurodivergent, who are undergoing a moral struggle, usually somewhere in the antihero category, or even villains. I on the other hand am a queer cis disabled woman with PTSD who is a Lawful Good......and I think that, having a point for relating to but still not being exactly like my muses,  I almost begin to see myself as these characters’ mother or advocate of some kind.  I want to see them GROW and THRIVE.  From that urge, I derive the compassion that every writer needs to have for their character to (try to) portray them authentically.  

And that also means that the character is not going to remain within the bounds of their canonical portrayal. The way I write them will always START and be BASED ON that.  But the character will grow far afield of it.  Take Klaus, for instance. I sense you call my portrayal “interesting” (correct me if I’m wrong) because I choose to write Klaus as almost always post-season 2 AND sober.  He’s more at peace with himself than he was during the first season, he’s begun to properly process his grief for Dave Katz, he’s getting clean and staying clean, he’s becoming more emotionally reliable.  But he still makes mistakes, he still has the most severe, frustrating and painful (for him) case of ADHD I have ever seen, people still don’t “take him seriously” (his own words) and he has to grow a thick skin about their dismissive behavior.  

The fandom, even a number of Klaus rpers, like to keep Klaus in this depressing stasis chamber where he’s constantly nihilistic, selfish, and strung out, and a lot of people see Klaus’s addictions as the brunt of jokes, and while that’s cool for them, and I’d never ask them to censor their portrayal, that makes me uncomfortable. As a person who’s worked with, still works with, at-risk youth at the college level, I just can’t jive with it.  Addiction is an illness and it’s not funny, and there are underlying reasons for Klaus’s addictions.  And what I want to do is excavate those underlying reasons, and watch him get the support he needs. He is still a snarky, sartorial, chaotic, quirkily sweet goofball when he’s sober.  He’s still Klaus.  

Things I do to get in the headspace:

--Listen to playlists that I make for the character or mood. Music is crucial.  --Watch videos of Robert Sheehan talking. Doesn’t have to be as Klaus, but sometimes is.  If you can’t hear the character in the dialogue (not only word choose but little mannerisms and speech patterns), rewrite it. Don’t settle until you can hear the actor’s voice.   --Scream to my friends on Discord about how much I love specific elements of the character, to get psyched up. I’m so sorry, @apocalypsejumped, you are the main person I do this to with Klaus, lmfao.  

--Never EVER look at my follower count, because it’s gonna either depress or intimidate me. 

--Look at pictures of the character. I’m incredibly visual. Just looking at my own screenshots makes me want to dissect him more. 

For advice? Oh lordy!   Uhhhh..... 

Write a lot. Practice a lot. I have a PhD and have written book manuscripts exceeding 600 pages, but you don’t have to go that far, lmao. That drabble in your head at 3 am? Get up and write it down. That passing bit of funny dialogue you think your muse would say? Write it down. I used to carry around a physical journal. Now I use my laptop. 

Write fast and only edit minimally because this is for fun, avocational, and you don’t want to spoil it with too much plotting and refinement.

Drop threads that aren’t working for you. Again, this is not a job, and when it feels like one, scale back.

Resist the urge to over-format.  If your posts cease to be easily legible, the aesthetic will only impede the flow of your prose.   It’s okay to vary your writing voice character by character. My syntax, vocab/word choice, sentence length and structure, vary from one muse to the other, bc the standard rp pov is third person singular, present-tense, meaning your muse is narrating it all from their specific pov.  Klaus and say, a very serious, formal character, would not have the same internal monologue, or even exposition. 

Beware of writing partners who are passive aggressive or possessive, who get jealous of your writing with others, and guilt you for spending your time elsewhere than catering to their needs.  I spent eight years in one of these writing partnerships and only escaped last March, and I am still recovering emotionally. Writing partners can absolutely be abusive, so make sure to enforce healthy boundaries and when they are violated repeatedly, run.

Pick a blog theme that is clearly organized and accessible. 

Don’t pick “main” or heaven forbid “exclusive” writing partners until you have experimented with your chemistry with a number of “versions” of their character (especially canons).  Take your time and see who you gel with. Sometimes you can have a great friendship with someone and your writing together still doesn’t click. It all depends on chemistry.  

Pick a small group of like minded friends and write with them. Do not worry about “exposure” or “popularity,” they are over rated.  Fandoms are genuinely crazy.  Just sit in your sandbox with your trusted buddies. <3 

Anyone else reading this, chime in with some writing advice for nonnie! <3 They’re an experienced writer but new to rp! 

[silyabeeodess]

Thoughts on Frisk, Chara, and the Player

Besides what I’ve covered briefly in the description of a comic a few years back, this is long overdue; however, since I might make something focusing on Chara in the future, I decided to go ahead and put down my two cents on these two characters.  Since this is effectively a long essay, I’ll have everything below the cut:

One of the most longstanding debates among Undertale fans is the morality of these characters and their relation to the Player.  Some see Frisk and Chara as effectively polar embodiments of good and evil following the Pacifist and Genocide routes while others see the Player alone as the individual in control of all choices with the two characters bowing to that control.  The truth might be somewhere in the middle.

Let’s cover the most basic thing first.  The Player is you.  Yes, it’s your decisions that take the story in different directions, but you are not a character. You are not a part of the world of Undertale.  You’re an intruder, an outsider, an anomaly--something that the people in Undertale only seem to have a vague understanding of.  Characters like Flowey will break the 4th wall by calling you out for your actions, but it’s often from the idea that you’re still Chara--even if Chara’s own story played out long before you came in.  Chara will ask for your SOUL, but you personally don’t actually sacrifice anything: Even as far as the game’s story goes with the “Soulless Pacifist” route, the most you lose is the time is takes to reinstall the game and play it as you normally would. You can cheat them out of “your SOUL” easily.  They think you’re Frisk.

Most glaringly, however, is that both Frisk and Chara will fight against some of your decisions.  For Chara, you have them not giving you much of a choice with how you end the Genocide route and declaring that you were never in control, amongst other actions like killing Asgore and Flowey. Most people might not notice Frisk’s refusal beyond the fact that we don’t pick their name like we can Chara’s; however, the point where this becomes most clear is during our interactions with Undyne on a Pacifist Run.  When we try to become Undyne’s friend and she insists on fighting anyway after her house catches fire, we have the choice to fight back.  Doing so though results in a weak attack, which Undyne declares as being the result of a lack of will to hurt her.  That isn’t the Player’s decision, and it effectively forces us to spare her whether we want to or not.  

This relationship parallels what we also see in Deltarune, with the Player there also exhibiting control over Kris, but Kris fighting back.  Kris isn’t an empty vessel or puppet for the Player to manipulate, and the same can be said for Frisk and Chara in Undertale. It’s a form of temporary possession, where we--an otherworldly being--take over a host for as long a period as the game’s designers allow. It means that we can’t pin our actions on either Frisk or Chara.  Let’s go back to that second paragraph though.  The other characters don’t really know this, making Frisk/Chara/Kris suffer as a result.      

From a gameplay perspective, this is an awesome idea to tackle. From a story perspective, meanwhile, things get a little complicated.

Here’s the thing about handling it simply as a story: The Player often has to be ripped out of the equation.  Again, you aren’t a character, and the only way the Player can really be present in the world of Undertale is as an OC or persona based on the independent choices of each creator.  Keeping them out means leaving the choices we would normally make 100% up to Frisk/Chara.  Ergo, stop attacking artists and writers for their portrayals of those two when creators have to give them qualities that are entirely up to each individuals ideas and experiences to try and fill in a bunch of blanks.  Beyond Chara’s backstory giving us some information on who they were, which is mostly told to us through other characters, there is no perfectly in-character portrayal of either of them.  

Which I guess brings us to the part where I try explaining my idea of them.  So let’s start with Chara, since again, they have the most background info.

What are some canon points we can cover with Chara?

Asriel describes them as “not the greatest person,” but still cared for them deeply as his best friend. From the recordings in the True Lab, we see they had a good friendship, even if Chara often took a more leading role.

Also according to Asriel, Chara “hated humanity” and had an unhappy reason for climbing the mountain.

It was Chara’s plan to commit suicide, have Asriel take their SOUL, and try to kill humans to break the barrier.

Chara laughed after poisoning Asgore with buttercups. It’s presumed by Asriel to have been an accident, but we don’t know Chara’s knowledge on the situation.

An extended monologue from Asgore has him describe Frisk and Chara as having “the same look of hope in their eyes.”

Asgore considered Chara “the future of humans and monsters.”

They refer to themselves as “the demon who comes when people call its name.”

As of the Genocide route, their goal is the complete destruction of Undertale’s world to join the Player and move on to another. They pin the Player’s actions on their newfound “purpose” to attain power.

Narration in the game is different depending on the route, speaking commonly from a 2nd-person POV on Pacifist and Neutral runs, but 1st-person on a Genocide run. This alludes that Chara is always with us during gameplay.

Chara’s dialogue mimics Toriel’s, hinting to a close relationship following the concepts of mimicry being a form of flattery and a child’s desire to be like a positive adult figure in their lives.

So here’s what I think.  Chara’s hatred toward humanity is supported not only by Asriel’s confession, but also in their actions.  If Chara took control as Asriel described after crossing the Barrier to kill humans and take their SOULS, that willingness to commit murder along with their own suicide indicates not only that general disdain, but also a hefty amount of self-loathing simply for being human.  Whatever happened to them prior to entering the Underground, that hatred was likely only nursed further by knowledge and ideas fed to them from monsterkind: Humans hurt monsters too and monsters are supposedly “made of compassion” while “humans don’t need any.” (They may have even been bullied or faced prejudice for being human, even if it wasn’t from the Dreemurrs, just like how Frisk was constantly attacked on-site.)  This likely led to a monster-centric worldview where all of humanity--and even themselves, to a point--was the enemy.  

I imagine the “Mr. Dad Guy” sweater we find was made by Chara rather than Asriel because of the inclusion of “guy” at the end, since this seems like something more of an adopted child would do than a biological one, maybe not entirely comfortable with the idea yet of calling Toriel and Asgore “Mom” and “Dad.”  I truly do think Chara loved their newfound family and never meant to hurt Asgore: The laugh, while it can’t be confirmed, seemed to be a mark of mental instability rather than something of true malice. With the pressure of being called “the future of humans and monsters” as well, they probably felt like they had to be responsible for humanity’s actions as a whole even if they personally did nothing wrong.  From that perspective, their life--and any other human’s--mattered less than a monster’s, because they had to atone for the crimes of others.  Humanity itself had to atone.  This is why they would be so willing to sacrifice themselves and kill for the sake of breaking the Barrier.

So what happens when the monsters Chara placed on a pedestal start breaking their script?  Asriel stopping Chara from committing murder is one thing: That seemed to be one part of the plan that Chara didn’t tell him about, probably because they knew he wouldn’t agree to it. Beyond that though?  What happens when monsters stop showing that legendary compassion?  Asriel started playing with lives and killed for fun as Flowey.  Asgore declared war against humanity and started killing children.  Toriel left her position as queen and couldn’t protect anyone. Not only was their happy family broken, but monsters started acting like the humans they claimed to be better than through their own “weaknesses” and desire to kill.  They were supposed to be above humanity’s choices, above even Chara’s choices. Vengeance isn’t an excuse anymore: It’s all the same, and it feels like the ultimate betrayal.  

They’re all the same.  Monsters, humans, it doesn’t matter.  It’s an ugly world where only the strong and terrible reign, and it deserves to be destroyed.  There’s nothing left.  There’s no good left.  There’s no hope left... 

Unless, maybe, someone new enters the game. Can they rekindle that hope or will they only prove those dark thoughts right?

In comes Frisk, who we really only know as a blank slate.  We don’t know their history or their desires except to leave the Underground one way or another.   We can’t really say much, so this is where it really is entirely up in the air how we portray them.

A personal headcanon of mine is that they were a bit of a little thief, “frisking” things off of others--which is why we can get G even without killing in the game.  A very morally grey character, fitting the multiple routes Undertale’s story can go and Sans description of them “maybe not being a saint” even if they play as a Pacifist.  Maybe they don’t really know what the right choice always is, but they desire to do their best when possible. 

I can’t say much here because, as I’ve said several times now, it’s up to everyone.  Me?  I like a Pacifist Frisk, even if they struggling and suffer before reaching their happy ending.  Some might have them go through a Genocide route on their own or by Chara’s possession. Some have them with guilt-riddled consciences and others treat them as the purest of souls. Some pick different endings.   

So enjoy your interpretations, your characterizations, and your AUs.  You don’t have to agree with my ideas or anyone else’s: Just don’t bash others for theirs.  Undertale’s gameplay opens things to everyone’s personal experience and should be enjoyed as such. 

[houseofzoey]

Plot

The central conflict of this book relates to Zoey’s mother’s death and the mystery of Aurox. It’s stated multiple times that a powerful sacrifice would be needed to create a creature like him, and Linda was murdered not long before he first showed up at school. Therefore, Zoey and co. are pretty sure Neferet is behind Linda’s murder, but they need to find a way to prove it.

However, as is often the case with this series, very little time is actually spent working toward this goal, or even really discussing it. I mean, absolutely nothing is done about Aurox until the very end, and Zoey has a very easy way to figure out what he is. Her seer stone heats up every time she sees him, so, logically, she just needs to look through it to see what kind of old magick was used in creating him. But that would hugely advance a major plot point faster than the author wants, so of course it doesn’t happen.

Instead, we have a weird half-conflict with Zoey and Stark because Kalona invading Stark’s dreams is making him sleep deprived and grumpy, but this is ended unceremoniously and nothing actually comes of it. We have Stevie Rae and Rephaim regularly arguing about a) him longing to reconnect with his father, and b) her wanting him to stay with her when he turns into a bird. Again, nothing really comes of this. We have the Twins’ falling out, which comes out of nowhere, is way-overemphasized considering how little presence they’ve had in the last several books, and – oh yeah – accomplishes nothing.

There are other, scattered little conflicts, too, like Lenobia and Travis’ romance subplot that takes up far too much room in this book considering how little reason I have to care about it, or the rogue red fledglings showing up at school, or Rephaim and Dallas butting heads over Stevie Rae, etc.

Rather than all these different conflicts making the book feel complicated, or creating the impression that the characters are overwhelmed, all this does is distract from the one conflict that actually matters. Because nothing really comes out of these other conflicts, they essentially amount to padding and filler. It’s only there because the author wanted the book to be longer than 50 pages.

Day One: Chapter 2 – Chapter 12 (Thursday) I’m starting at chapter two because the prologue and chapter one were technically the day before, but aren’t super important to the timeline of the book, particularly as it pertains to the ritual at the end. Basically, in those chapters, we learn that Kalona is still influencing Stark through his dreams but Zoey doesn’t actually do anything about it, and we learn a little bit about what Aurox is and is capable of.

We start with ableism and too much dialogue before Zoey and co. load onto the minibus to head to school, there’s some conversation about grief between her and Damien, and then we start the school day. Zoey, Stevie Rae, Kramisha, Erik, Dragon, Lenobia, and Neferet have a Skype meeting with Duantia. This goes on far too long and basically confirms that, yes, they can treat the tunnels as a separate dorm from the Tulsa House of Night, but Neferet is still their High Priestess – except no, she’s not, at least not for red fledglings, because Stevie Rae is their High Priestess despite not actually running a school or having any valid reason to hold that level of power.

Scattered throughout is a chapter with Kalona and a chapter with Rephaim. Kalona is upset about Rephaim turning from him and orders some of the other Raven Mockers to go ask Rephaim to spy for him. Rephaim, meanwhile, is dealing with bullying and jealousy from Dallas. Damien is showing him around to classes, and they quickly decide that he should sit out his fourth hour fencing class because Dragon would not be happy to see him. While Rephaim is hanging out in a courtyard, his brothers show up.

Now, this is where the timeline gets screwy, because Zoey and Stevie Rae leave the Council Meeting at the beginning of second hour, but somehow they hear the fight that breaks out when Dragon sees Rephaim talking with Raven Mockers. There’s a confrontation, Neferet shows up with Aurox, who transforms and kills one of the Raven Mockers, and Stevie Rae uses her affinity to protect Rephaim without ever actually manipulating the earth because Wasted Potential is this series’ true name. They all argue ineffectually for a while about why Rephaim was speaking with Raven Mockers and what the hell Aurox is, including Zoey feeling her seer stone heat up but failing to even try to look through it.

We then get a single, tedious chapter from Erik’s perspective. He’s a Tracker. He Tracks and Marks Shaylin. She’s blind, but then she’s not because vampyrism. Also, she’s Marked red and that’s concerning. She confuses Erik by talking about auras. The end.

Back with Zoey in the stables, Lenobia reassures her that it’s totally fine to not look at Aurox through the seer stone because that makes her uncomfortable. Also, Stark being briefly possessed is definitely not worth worrying about. Then we meet Travis, the new human stablehand that Neferet has hired for Lenobia. There is much tittering about how hot he is, though the author very confusingly insists on comparing him to Sam Elliott. There is tension between him and Lenobia, but she decides to be courteous to him to thwart Neferet’s dastardly plan of creating mild confusion and irritation – sorry, I mean “chaos”.

Damien shows up to tell Zoey that her Grandma is there and looks like she’s been crying. We get confirmation that Zoey’s mom has been murdered. For some reason, the police assume it was drug addicts looking for quick money, despite the body being entirely drained of blood. After completely mistranslating a bunch of Cherokee words, they agree to perform a cleansing ritual at Grandma’s farm once she has completed her own seven days of mourning.

There’s a scene with Aurox and Zoey. He randomly has Kleenex because he is Heath and ~*symbolism*~. Zoey’s emotions stay with him, which is weird.

Zoey meets Shaylin, who reveals she can see auras in the most confusing way possible. Damien concludes this is probably True Sight, and almost immediately after their introduction, Neferet shows up. Shaylin pretends to faint. There’s some arguing, but because Shaylin is Marked red, she goes to the tunnels with Zoey and co. instead of staying at the school under Neferet’s sway. After Neferet leaves, Shaylin basically says her aura looks like pure evil.

(This is also about where we derail into an infuriating and unnecessary rant about the author’s – sorry, Aphrodite’s – right to say ableist slurs.)

We cut to Kalona. He learns that Rephaim is human now and Aurox killed one of his sons. He decides to seek out Rephaim in the interest of working against Neferet, their common enemy.

We cut to Rephaim. He and Stevie Rae argue because she wants him to stay with her when he turns into a bird, but he says being a raven makes him a dangerous beast. Sure. Right. Also, Stevie Rae tries to convince him to stop holding out hope for his father because he’s a bad parent.

Zoey and co. talk about True Sight. And then they argue about if they can still trust Rephaim after seeing him talking with Raven Mockers. Nothing comes of any of this. They all go to bed.

We have a pointless chapter with Lenobia and Travis.

We then cut to Aurox. He and Neferet go into the basement of Will Rogers High School in a needlessly complicated and drawn out scene. They find the rogue red fledglings and convince them to come back to the House of Night, largely because they’ll all die if they aren’t around adult vampyres – never mind that Dallas is an adult and there aren’t that many of them.

Day Two: Chapter 13 - Chapter 16 (Friday) Stark has a dream about Zoey dying. The narration makes it seem like it’s not from Nyx, but nothing comes of it, so… I have no clue what it was supposed to accomplish.

They arrive at the school. The bus full of rogue red fledglings is already there. Requisite but pointless drama. Then, as everyone is heading into the school, Rephaim pulls Zoey aside and tells her he can feel Kalona calling to him. They go meet with Kalona, talk for far too long to basically conclude that he wants a truce so he can help them defeat Neferet.

Zoey skips class because she’s stressed, then spends several pages recapping events to herself. She has another conversation with Aurox, which is interrupted by Stark. She tries to talk to Stark about Aurox, but then they’re interrupted by Thanatos, who tells them that she has a new class for special students that will take over her first hour slot, effectively saving Zoey from ever attending class with Neferet as her professor. Can’t have Zoey dealing with discomfort!

They eat lunch and talk about daddy issues. This is where we learn that, suddenly, Shaunee also has a tumultuous relationship with her father. We thus start the Twins’ conflict.

There’s a short and pointless scene with Lenobia in the stables.

Back at the tunnels, Kramisha reveals her new poem. They speculate about what it means for a while but ultimately come to no useful conclusions. They once again argue about if Rephaim can be trusted, which – again – leads to no meaningful changes or developments. Aphrodite makes a rude comment when Rephaim leaves to go turn into a bird, and Stevie Rae runs out of the room crying. Zoey goes to comfort her. Then Zoey goes to be and uses spirit to calm Stark’s dreams.

Kalona is watching Stark’s dream, which is cringey and pointless, but seems to be the last time Kalona ever uses this connection to Stark in this way.

Day Three: Chapter 17 (Saturday) Shaunee refuses to go shopping with Kramisha, Aphrodite, and Erin on the excuse that she is sick, which causes tension between her and Erin. Shaunee reflects on feeling neglected and abandoned by her father. Kalona shows up and they talk. Shaunee is sympathetic to his efforts to reconnect with Rephaim, so she gives him her cell phone.

We then cut to Shaunee telling the group about this. Tensions boil over between her and Erin. They officially have a falling out.

Day Four: Chapter 18 (Sunday) While Zoey and Aphrodite are sitting outside the depot chatting about recent events, Thanatos shows up. She waxes poetic about train stations for a needlessly long time. Then she announces that she’s buying the depot in their name (even though Duantia had already declared the High Council was going to do this), and then explains that she wants to uncover the truth about Neferet, which is further cemented when Zoey says she believes Neferet has taken the white bull as her Consort.

We have a scene where Aurox attempts to rape Becca and is only stopped by Dragon showing up. Dragon tells Becca to stop freaking out and walk away gracefully if she’s not interested. Aurox and Dragon talk, and Aurox says Zoey isn’t mean like Becca.

Day Five: Chapter 19 – Chapter 24 (Monday) Zoey and co. attend their first class with Thanatos. Nothing really happens except that Thanatos threatens bodily harm against Dallas, not because he’s a bigot, but because he’s a bigot in her classroom. Everyone writes down questions they would like to have answered and Zoey shows complete and utter disregard for her friends’ privacy by trying to peek at them.

After class, Dallas and Rephaim have a confrontation in the hallway. Or possibly the courtyard. The scene can’t make up its mind. Dragon breaks up the fight, but still doesn’t like Rephaim, so there’s a bunch of yelling and arguing about that. The chapter ends with Thanatos, Zoey, and Stark talking about their fear that Dragon might turn over to Darkness.

We have a chapter with Lenobia. She and Travis are still flirting and I still don’t care. They kiss, then she rejects him and runs away to cry in her room. I still don’t care.

Over with Neferet, she narrates about all the “chaos” she is causing and is very smug about it. Then she sees Zoey and Shaunee talking outside. She tries to call on Darkness to break a tree branch and kill Zoey, but Darkness – which killed Jack and Shekinah without additional sacrifice – refuses to kill Zoey because she’s a High Priestess and demands a powerful sacrifice. So Neferet asks Darkness to break the tree and bruise Zoey. Aurox rushing in to save her is written off as the white bull interceding for Reasons.

We get the same incident from Zoey’s perspective. Aurox gives off the same heat as the seer stone because… sure?

Zoey skips class again and runs into Thanatos, who asks her if she will talk about her mother’s death in front of an entire class of her peers. Thanatos also asks for Grandma’s phone number so she can talk to her about Linda’s death. Oh, and apparently Thanatos can see Darkness and Light, but has kept this a complete secret because apparently it won’t accomplish anything because the High Council is uselss. Also, Zoey is now being compared to Frodo.

On the bus home, everyone discusses whether or not the wind felt unnatural that day, and then Aphrodite has a vision. Too much time is spent discussing ordering pizza as a distraction. Finally, we get to Aphrodite in her room after the vision, which is followed by her rehashing the vision in a completely disjointed, poorly prioritized, and way too dragged out fashion. The conclusion is that Rephaim cannot attend the cleansing ritual at Grandma’s farm or he’ll die. Naturally, Stevie Rae and Rephaim show up to say that no, actually, Rephaim will still be attending that ritual, because logic and survival is for chumps.

Neferet and the bull spy on Kalona and conclude that his attachment to Rephaim is a big weakness.

Stevie Rae and Rephaim discuss the same BS about Kalona again, but also argue about him attending the ritual. They conclude that he is, in fact, still going to the ritual, and also Stevie Rae says she will stop pestering him about how his dad is evil and he should stop trying to repair their relationship.

We get the scene Neferet witnessed, but from Kalona’s perspective. He realizes Neferet is watching him. Concerned for Rephaim, he flies to the depot, where he sees Rephaim transform into a bird and gets mad at Nyx for still punishing Rephaim despite supposedly forgiving him.

Day Six: Chapter 25 - Chapter 29 (Tuesday) Zoey talks to the special class about her mom’s death, which includes digressions into Islamophobia and gay stereotypes. Then Thanatos announces – in front of the entire class, including Aurox – that Zoey and co. will be helping her perform a ritual to reveal who killed Zoey’s mother at her Grandma’s farm and that they leave right after class. Naturally, Aurox goes and tells Neferet, who tells him to follow them and interfere so that the ritual can’t be completed (but not to kill a High Priestess, because we can’t have actual threats or tension for the main character). Dragon also finds out what they’re doing because he sees everyone heading in the same direction despite having different classes, and also because Thanatos cannot understand the concept of “don’t tell Dragon because he might be the one who murders Rephaim.”

We spend a very long time on exposition and set up for the ritual, including heavy emphasis on how important it is that it be performed on the fifth night – which is unfortunate, since this is canonically the sixth night in the timeline. There’s also some serious research failure regarding Grandma’s dress, and for some reason Grandma is representing spirit in this ritual despite not having an affinity for it. Everything in the ritual is going fine until – shock horror – Aurox shows up! Because Thanatos announced their plans in front of him. Darkness has forced him to take on his bull form, he charges Rephaim, but Dragon shows up and defends Rephaim, completely countering literally everything that was built up about his motivations and regrets thus far.

They complete the ritual, witness Linda’s death, but can’t close the circle because Thanatos left out one very small detail: The ritual needs a death sacrifice to be ended. ‘Cause, you know, that’s not an incredibly sinister or disturbing thing to avoid telling a bunch of kids until the last minute.

But this story is built on convenience and contrivance, so Dragon is killed by Aurox, ending the ritual while allowing our main characters to survive and keep a clean conscience. Zoey finally looks at Aurox through the seer stone, realizes he’s Heath, and uses earth (sorry, a “green glow”) to prevent Darius and Stark from killing him. Aurox runs off. Everyone sees Dragon’s spirit reunite with Anastasia. Yay, happiness.

But Rephaim is badly injured. Kalona, who Stevie Rae had called on her cell phone during the climax, has shown up and is distraught that Rephaim is dying. So he cries and tells Rephaim he loves him, asking Nyx to spare him. One or all of these things – it’s not clear – heal Rephaim.

Thanatos declares she is the new High Priestess of Tulsa, ‘cause I guess she can do that and doesn’t, like, have responsibilities she needs to get back to in Italy. For unknown reasons, Kalona swears a Warrior’s Oath to her and says he will be the school’s new Sword Master.

[basicsofislam]

ISLAM 101: Muslim Culture and Character: Morals And Manners: Hilm (Gentleness)

Hilm means being inclined to gentleness or mildness; this adjective describes a person who is quiet and peaceful, slow to anger, quick to forgive, and who is in control of their lower nature. It also encompasses good akhlaq because it embodies behavior like patience and tolerance in the face of unpleasant situations, keeping one’s cool when provoked, and remaining dignified, serious and calm in response to distressing or unkind treatment. Hilm, along with humility, is one of the charac- teristics that most pleases God. In fact, these two dispositions are the source and origin of all other good character traits.

In addition to dignity and calm, hilm also means to act with consciousness and without haste. The result is a good and moral manner which pleases God. Hilm is one of the basic elements of good morality. With hilm it is also possible to perfect the mind and to improve other aspects of one’s temperament. Just as knowledge can be gained through learning, so hilm can be attained by making an effort. In other words, it is possible to reachhilm by working.

Hilm is also closely related to controlling one’s negative re- sponses and reactions. It is much more difficult for those who can- not control or reign their temper to attain a state of hilm. Scholars consider the ability to act with hilm to be among the most virtu- ous practices.

Humans are distinguished and privileged among all creatures. God Almighty blessed people with lofty attributes that He en- dowed on no other creature, like intelligence, conscience, mercy, compassion, empathy, and the desire to help, respect, and honor. For this reason, the human being is the most valuable being in all creation.

As we can see, hilm indicates total gentleness, as well as behav- ior such as overlooking faults, forgiving others, and being open to everyone for the sake of dialogue.

THE HILM (GENTLENESS) OF THE PROPHET

Our Prophet, both before and after his prophethood, was the gen- tlest of people. This is a quality that he carried throughout his life. God Himself protected the Prophet from ever losing his hilm, and was pleased with the Prophet because of it. God spoke of this in the Qur’an: “It was by a mercy from God that (at the time of the set- back), you (O Messenger) were lenient with your followers. Had you been harsh and hard-hearted, they would surely have scattered away from about you” (Al Imran 3:159).

The Prophet never thought to avenge himself for wrongs done to his person. In addition, he was the hardest to anger, the easiest to please, and the most forgiving of all. When Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, began his prophetic mission to teach people about God’s commands, the disbelievers in the Quraysh tribe leveled every kind of insult and indignity at him. They ridi- culed the Prophet, threatened to kill him, spread thorns on his path, threw excrement at him, and even threw a noose around his neck and tried to drag him by it. Not stopping at this, they called him a conjurer and sorcerer, and said he was possessed; they tried every- thing they could think of to anger him. But the Prophet endured everything they did to him without reacting.

No one, whoever they may be, would be able to refrain from becoming angry, and thus react and try to respond in kind when insulted or attacked in such a way by others. Yet the Prophet did none of these things. He was extremely calm, patient, and toler- ant. He strove to carry out the responsibility given to him by God. Perhaps this is why he did not respond to the torments he was subjected to.

Someone who heard the Prophet explaining Islam to people in the market place in Mecca related, “Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was declaring the Oneness of God, and that those who believe in the One God would be saved. Abu Jahl started throwing rocks at him, and shouting, ‘People, do not listen to this man! He is trying to get you to abandon your religion. He wants to separate you from our idols Lat and Uzza!’ The Prophet refused to acknowledge the instigation; he did not once turn to look at Abu Jahl. He simply continued his duty.”1

Another day, the Prophet was going to visit Sa’d ibn Ubada, one of the Companions who had fallen ill. On the way, he en- countered a gathering assembled by the ringleader of the unbeliev- ers, ‘Abdullah ibn Ubayy. The Prophet stopped for a while. Ibn Ubayy began to taunt the Prophet, saying arrogantly, “Careful you, your animal is making dust. Get out of here, your animal is bothering us!” The Prophet greeted the group and then began to speak of Islam. Ibn Ubayy, seeing that the people were listening to him, was beside himself. Saying, “If anyone wants to hear some- thing from you he will come to you! Do not talk to us of Islam!”,

he hurled curses at the Prophet. But the Prophet’s adab would not let him respond in kind; he simply continued his address. On see- ing this, the great poet ‘Abdullah ibn Rawaha was moved; he stood up and said, “O Messenger of God, come here more often, and speak to us; we love you greatly!” Then a disagreement began between the Muslims and the disbelievers. They started to argue. The Prophet, calm and gentle as always, calmed them down and then departed, continuing on his way.2

The Jewish tribes living in the Arabian Peninsula at that time were among the Prophet’s most relentless enemies. Some of them had a rancorous, jealous, greedy character. It should also be noted that these Jews took great pains to separate their own education, scholarship and literature from the Arabs, whom they believed to be inferior in these areas. As a result, they knew about the prophe- cies concerning the advent of a new Messenger, and were waiting for the coming of God’s Messenger. When Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, first declared his prophetic mis- sion from God, many Jews who had thought that the Prophet would be from the Children of Israel did not believe him. These enemies created the most evil strategies against him and tried des- perately to get rid of him.

One of them cast a spell on the Prophet, who became ill and was confined to bed for several days. Finally Archangel Gabriel came and told him, “O Muhammad, one from among the Jewish people cast a spell on you by throwing a knotted string into (such and such a well). Send someone there and have him remove the string.” The Prophet sent Ali, who took out the knotted string and brought it to him. As soon as they untied the knot he was released from the illness and got well. Although he knew who had done this, the Prophet never confronted the perpetrator about it.3

However, there were, of course, good and righteous people among the People of the Book (those who had been blessed with previous Revelations; that is, the Jews and Christians); there were those who sought the truth. There were many signs and much knowledge in the earlier Scriptures regarding the unique characteris- tics and virtues of the coming Prophet, that is, Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.

One of the most easily recognizable of the signs related in the Torah about the coming Prophet was his hilm. The Torah pro- claimed that the Prophet would be of gentle spirit and show great patience and tolerance in inviting the people to God’s way. The Jewish scholars saw with their own eyes that the Prophet had many qualities which the Torah had predicted. Some of them con- tinued to search and question, and when they saw all of the signs fulfilled in the Prophet they believed him.

One of these Jewish scholars, thinking, “I have seen in him ev- ery single sign and characteristic foretold in the Torah except hilm,” decided to test this last trait. “I went and lent the Prophet thirty di- nar for a specified time. Then I went to him one day before the payment date and said, ‘O Muhammad, pay me back. You sons of Abdul Muttalib never pay your debts on time.’” Hearing this, Umar retorted, “O foul Jew, by God, if we were not in the Messenger’s house, I would slap your face.” But the Messenger said to Umar, “O Umar, God forgive you. I expected better from you. You should have said that I would gladly pay what I owe him, and you should have said that you would assist him to collect it and acted courte- ously toward him.”

The Jewish man recounts, “The Messenger responded to my ignorant, harsh, rude manner only by increasing his own gentleness. He said to me, ‘O Jewish man, I will surely pay you back tomorrow morning.’ Then he told Umar, ‘O Umar, tomorrow morning take him to whichever date grove he wishes, and give him as much as he wishes. Then give him more than he asks for. If he is not pleased with the dates in that grove, take him to another one.’

“The following day Umar brought me to the date grove of my choice. He gave me as much as the Messenger had told him to, and added even more.” The Jewish man, after being repaid in this manner by the Prophet, declared the shahada, or testimony of faith, and became a Muslim. He explained his conversion to Umar as follows: “O Umar, do you know why I acted that way to the Messenger of God? I acted thus because I saw in him all of the characteristics and morals foretold in the writings of the Torah. The only ones I had not observed were hilm and kindness. Today I tried his patience, and he responded just as the Torah said he would. With you as my witness, I hereby donate these dates and half of all my possessions to the poor among the Muslims.” This one simple demonstration of the Prophet’s patience and gentleness brought many other people to belief.4

The Prophet responded to words and actions that were turned against him with maturity, compassion, and kindness. He exhibit- ed akhlaq to a level that others could never possibly reach. Abu Said al-Khudri narrates, “The Prophet was distributing the spoils from the Battle of Hunayn to the Companions who had fought.

He gave a bit more from the captured property to some of the Companions. Among them were Aqra ibn Habis and Uyayna ibn Hisn, who each received a hundred camels. When this happened Dhu al-Khuwaysira of the house of Tamim came to him and ob- jected, saying, ‘O Messenger of God! Do not swerve from equality and justice. By God, this distribution cannot be pleasing to God!’ The Prophet was saddened and answered, ‘Shame on you, if I do not act justly, who will? For if I do not carry out justice, I will earn a terrible punishment. May God’s mercy be on Moses, he was patient in the face of worse insults than this.’”5

Another time the Prophet was in the mosque with the Companions, sitting and talking with them. A Bedouin entered and prayed two rakats of salat, then opened his hands and prayed, “O God, have mercy on me and on Muhammad. Do not have mercy on anyone else.” When the Prophet heard him praying thus, he said, “You are limiting God’s great and wide mercy,” thus cor- recting the Bedouin’s mistake.

A little later, the Bedouin got up, went to a corner of the mosque, and urinated there. When the Companions saw what he was doing they jumped up to stop him. The Prophet, however, in- tervened and told them, “Leave him alone. Let him see what he has done. Later, go and wash it with a bucket of water, for you have been sent to make the way easier, not to complicate.” Then he called the Bedouin to his side and told him, “Mosques are not for reliev- ing ourselves or for any other kind of uncleanness. They are made for the remembrance of God, praying, and reading the Qur’an.”6

This incident happened in the mosque that our Prophet had helped build with his own hands for the purpose of worship; the man had made a very great error. But the Prophet knew that the Bedouin had not done so intentionally, but rather out of ignorance.

It is only when one is confronted with repulsive behavior that a display of understanding, tolerance and gentleness can be truly meaningful; it is at such times that being forgiving and forbearing are most difficult. Indeed, anyone can be patient and calm during normal situations. Just as he was in every other way, the Prophet was extraordinary in his hilm and gentleness. In fact he was utterly unique; it would be impossible to find his equal.

Anas ibn Malik tells of another example of the hilm and gen- tleness of the Prophet: “I was walking with the Prophet. He was wearing a garment made of rough Najran fabric. A Bedouin came running up behind the Prophet, grabbed his robe and yanked it back. His garment was torn and his neck rubbed raw by this roughness.” The man had yanked it so hard and the fabric was so rough that it left an angry welt on the Prophet’s neck. Then the man said, “O Muhammad! Load my camels with grain. For the possessions you hold do not belong to you nor to your father.”

The Bedouin’s behavior was rude and uncouth, and the Prophet was troubled. He turned to the man and said, “First apologize, for you have injured me.” The Bedouin retorted, “No, I will not apolo- gize.” The Prophet was trying to guide him in the way of courtesy, but the other man was unconcerned. The Prophet then turned to the Companions and, ignoring the man’s incivility, instructed them, “Load one of this man’s camels with barley, and the other with dates.” The man, satisfied, went away. The Companions were sur- prised by the Prophet’s kind treatment of this rude Bedouin.7

Likewise, our Prophet treated all those under his authority and in his service with the utmost gentleness; he did not get angry with them or hurt their feelings. Even if they were negligent in their duties or did not do what they said they would, he would only inquire with kindness and polite consideration.

Anas ibn Malik, who was in his service for many years, spoke of the akhlaq of the Prophet: “I served the Messenger for ten years. He never once showed impatience with me, never reproved me for neglecting to do something, nor ever asked me why I had done something I was not supposed to do.”8

Anas recalled one time when the Prophet had to admonish him for neglecting his duty, “The Messenger of God sent me out one day with a task. At first I said, ‘By God, I cannot go.’ But in wardly I felt compelled to go wherever he sent me. I went out, and then I came across some children playing on the street. I for- got myself and started playing with them. Then the Prophet came up behind me, and put his hand on my head. I looked at his face, and he was smiling. ‘Dear Anas, did you go where I sent you?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I am going, O Messenger of God,’ I said.”9

The Prophet’s wife Aisha said that the Prophet once advised her, “O Aisha, be gentle. For wherever gentleness is found, its pres- ence beautifies, but wherever gentleness is absent, its absence is ugly.”10

Our Prophet’s true courage and heroism was not in the physi- cal strength to overpower, but in the knowledge and ability to stay calm when something upset him and to act gently even when he was offended.

‘Abdullah ibn Mas’ud relates, “The Messenger of God said, ‘Who among you do you call a hero?’ We answered, ‘One whom the wrestlers cannot defeat; one who cannot be overcome.’ He re- plied, ‘No, that is not a hero. The hero is one who can control himself when offended, the one who always practices self-mastery and temperance.’”11

From this perspective, Prophet Muhammad, peace and bless- ings be upon him, was a hero in the true sense of the word. He could not be defeated by his enemies in this aspect as well; those who sought to defeat his self-control, to overwhelm his restraint, could not do so. Instead, God’s Messenger responded to wrongs done against his person with forbearance.

According to a narration of Jarir ibn ‘Abdullah, the Prophet said, “Without a doubt, God rewards gentleness and kindness, not harshness and roughness. And when God loves one of His ser- vants, He grants them the blessing of gentleness. A person or household bereft of this blessing is bereft of everything.”12

The “gentleness and kindness” referred to here means a mature morality which requires, on principle, that one never loses one’s temper. To get irritated and fly into a rage at any time is totally contrary to the nature of hilm, which entails a gentle and morally up- right character. Thus, disciplining oneself in this one area—by cool- ing a quick temper and avoiding irritability—can bring a great num- ber of positive effects and make great changes in one’s morality.

Abdur Rahman ibn Awf relates, “Once someone came to our Prophet and asked, ‘O Messenger of God! Teach me words with which I can attain comfort and peace. But let them be brief, so I won’t forget.’ The Prophet replied, ‘Don’t lose your temper!’”13

Our Beloved Prophet taught us that there is also a satanic side to anger, and gave a practical solution: “Anger is from Satan, and Satan is created from fire. Fire can only be put out with water. For this reason, when you become angry, make ablutions.”14 Another helpful solution from the Prophet is, “When one of you becomes angry, if he is standing, let him immediately sit down. If his anger passes, good; if it does not, let him lie down.”15

[cetranarchives]

FFVII: Clues in the Clutter

A character analysis using environmental cues Case: Cloud Strife

So much of storytelling is done without dialogue or narration and can be especially subtle―yet telling―if done well. In a visual storytelling medium, special attention should be placed on the environments where characters live and interact with one another. Furthermore, if you want to truly understand a character, you should take a look at their clutter, at the objects they surround themselves with. 

As a passionate fan of Final Fantasy VII’s world, characters, and story, I have become increasingly interested in analyzing characters using the environments they live and interact with. Being that he is the main character and my absolute favorite, I would like to begin with Cloud Strife. 

First, let’s start with his hometown in Nibelheim. 

We are situated in a very small village, a well at the center. The population, we can assume, is rather small as there are few residential homes within view. The village is settled near mountains with a large, gated mansion looming over the people in the background. There is almost nothing but dust--the vegetation is gone. If we were to take a look inside Mt. Nibel, there is a Mako Spring. We can perhaps assume that the village was raised as a sort of Mako mining town before ShinRa arrived to build the reactor. While this information is not immediately important, we will tuck it away for later analysis. 

Next, let’s peer into Cloud’s home. 

Immediately, we can see it is all one room: the kitchen, bedroom, and living spaces are all within one space and there is no visible bathroom. One might assume, then, that Cloud was raised by a poor mother. Their home is tiny and there are nearly no luxury items―we can compare this to Tifa’s home and the Siblings’ home that both have double stories with multiple rooms.

What is rather interesting, however, is the globe tucked away in the corner near the raised landing. There also appears to be an armillary sphere tucked away next to several boxes of what may be vials (or bottles, depending on your visual interpretation. I prefer to think of them as some sort of scientific vials). 

Things we already know about Cloud is that his father died when he was very young, so he was raised by a single mother. Naturally, we can assume she couldn’t work full-time due to the limitations with raising a child alone. 

So, let us begin our analysis. We can tell from the blueprint of the house that Cloud’s family was quite poor; the space is small, dingy, with little room for belongings that aren’t necessary. With this in mind, there remains the question: Why do they own a globe, an armillary sphere, and several crates of glass vials? I hypothesize that the answer lies in who Cloud’s father was. 

The aforementioned items are all placed on the landing, the vials all kept away neatly into crates so they stay out of the way. This may indicate that they are no longer in use. What would Cloud’s mother need with these items if they haven’t any money and she has a child to worry about? I would assume these were the belongings of Cloud’s father, who may have either previously worked for ShinRa or mined the Mako Springs before the reactor was built. I believe Cloud’s father was a scholar, at the very least, who studied Mako energy to some degree. 

When we consider the globe and armillary sphere, both of which relate to astrological bodies, and how Mako is the lifeblood of planets, we can deduce these items would be used in studying the planet in some way, shape, or form. If this is true, it seems likely Cloud’s father spent his working hours on Mt. Nibel or at the Reactor when Cloud was only an infant, and if we really want to start pondering, we can guess that his death may have occurred during such an excavation of Mako or was somehow induced by Mako poisoning. 

The next question becomes, why would Claudia hold on to these items if they can be of no use to her? A simple answer would be that she can’t bring herself to part with her late husband’s possessions, that they remind her of him. I would like to make the claim that perhaps she saved them for Cloud’s own use in his education. My reason for making this claim comes from Advent Children Complete, where we’re given a clear view of his desk: 

Pictured above, we can clearly see that the top book is a Medical Science journal with the subheading: Mechanism of Human Body. Scattered around this book are images of people suffering from geostigma, presumably with scientific data collected on the illness. These books are filled with placeholders and have clearly been scoured over several times. 

You may be asking, what does medical science have to do with astrological bodies? I would argue that in Final Fantasy VII’s world, they have a lot to do with one another given that all bodies return to the Lifestream, which can be harnessed as Mako to create energy. However, my main point here is that Cloud is well-educated. Had he only received an elementary education, I would argue that his knowledge bank would likely be inadequate to comprehend the terminology and structure of these articles. 

I would also like to draw attention to the fact that, in order to cope with being excluded from the group of kids in the village, Cloud thought of the other children as stupid and immature. Again, while this is more of a coping mechanism, given that he admitted to secretly wanting their friendship, it can give us an idea of how Cloud thought of himself compared to his peers. A child with this sort of complex may, in fact, prefer to spend their time learning and talking about things for an older mind. Based on personal experience, I disliked reading books as a child that I felt were written like they were for children; I didn’t like being talked down to and wanted to be treated like an adult. 

I would like to conclude with these remarks: 

Based on the setting and environments that Cloud Strife grew up in, it appears clear that Cloud grew up possibly the poorest in his village, that his father likely worked as a Mako researcher, and that Cloud is, in fact, well-educated and intelligent despite growing up in a small, “backwater” town. 

Of course, not everything I’ve analyzed is set-in-stone truth and different interpretations are also possible. I only hope that this analysis offered inspiration or a new viewpoint into Cloud’s characterization.

[liesonthefloordramatically]

@nomettesbizzareadventure told me she’d like to see my characterization points for Jotaro and Kakyoin so...here they are...  (You can see her much more eloquent characterization points for Rohan over here.)  I think this is less...canon meta (writing straight up meta is very intimidating to me) and more the cluster of things that I tend to focus on when writing the two of them.  It’s probably obvious, but the big things I focus on for characterization are 1. narration/dialogue quirks, 2. self-perception, and 3. interaction with others.  I also tend to find it useful to figure out narrative constraints imposed by characterization, but maybe that’s just because...I like...making writing more challenging???  Don’t worry about it.

Below a cut because this got absurdly long.

Jotaro (this is mainly SDC!Jotaro):

Perceives a lot, (correctly) interprets little: I really enjoy Jotaro as an unreliable narrator because he sees a lot of details (hypervigilance will do that to you, but so will having a hyperperceptive Stand) but compartmentalizes like wild and ignores details that he doesn’t understand, can’t figure out how to interpret, or just doesn’t want to think about.

Laconic: We all know that Jotaro is not very talkative, and there are a lot of different ways to interpret why that is, but I think it’s a question of A. his verbal skills not being great (and him knowing it) plus B. his brain-to-mouth filter being...way too strong.  You can tell it’s Queenie writing Jotaro if only about ⅓ of what he thinks actually comes out of his mouth (and when he does talk, he frequently overthinks it and it comes out sounding different than he wants it to).

Self-perception: Related to the last point, Jotaro’s aware of how other people perceive him (he’s a mixed race kid growing up in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, so, uh) and has intentionally curated a public-facing persona.  Having people think that he’s this intense, edgy, scary loner is easier for him to deal with than them thinking he’s stupid or a huge dork or any number of other negative stereotypes.  There’s an extent to which his juvenile delinquent persona is because he thinks that’s how to be cool but there’s also an extent to which it’s about making himself less of an easy target.

Physical/visceral: I tend to think of and write Jotaro as a very physical  character (“you can only trust your fists,” I whisper into the void)--he occupies a lot of space; he has a Stand that attacks by punching (he’s the only member of the SDC crew who regularly attacks with his Stand’s body rather than a weapon, elemental attack, etc.); a lot of his strategy is based on just getting really close to his opponents and then beating the crap out of them; etc.  One of the rules I set for myself in writing Jotaro is that his narration has to be visceral--so, for example, almost all emotions he experiences are accompanied by or framed with a physical sensation.  Speaking of which…

Low emotional fluency: He’s not good at identifying/dealing with his own emotions or identifying/dealing with others’ emotions.  A lot of his strategy for dealing with his own emotions is either ignoring them or smothering them with anger (see: Joseph is dead --> time to get as mad as possible).  I think this is actually something that Jotaro gets worse at with time (because trauma can do that to some folks).

Smart/analytical: We know Jotaro’s a bit of a nerd, he’s a good enough scholar to make a name for himself in DIU and beyond, and consistently showcases his analytical skills in SDC.  I think Kakyoin is frequently written as “the smart one” in fanfic, but I think they’re both smart in different ways--Kakyoin has a good memory while Jotaro is good at gathering data and analyzing it (when he feels like doing so).

Stand: Jotaro sees Star Platinum as something separate from himself and maybe not entirely friendly.  (“Stands are spirit possession, or at least Jotaro understands them as such!” I scream futilely off the rooftops.)  This is another narrative constraint I decided on early on--Jotaro consistently refers to Star Platinum as though it’s a separate entity from himself.

Kakyoin:

Self-awareness: Kakyoin knows who he is and what he wants.  I imagine him as a foil to Jotaro--while Jotaro thinks that if he ignores an emotion hard enough he won’t be feeling it, Kakyoin is hyperaware of what he’s feeling.  This is sort of a double-edged sword for him, because I think he’s also aware of ways in which he’s different--he knows that a lot of bits of his personality are weird and unpalatable.  (Death 13 is fascinating if you think about it as...all of Kakyoin’s worst fears about being too weird/mentally ill for the group manifesting.)

Social flexibility/social skills: Like Jotaro, Kakyoin’s also aware of how others perceive him, but is much more socially flexible--Jotaro has the “juvenile delinquent” persona, but Kakyoin adapts himself to his conversational partner.  He’s a very different person depending on who he’s interacting with--the way he interacts with Jotaro is wildly different than how he interacts with Polnareff or Avdol or random passersby.  He’s relatively good at reading people--he certainly has an easier time reading Jotaro than most people around him.  I don’t think he’s actually that great at engaging with people beyond a superficial level (see: Kakyoin “Wikipedia moment” Noriaki), but he is good at superficial interactions.  I also think that he uses some of his social aptitude to try to disguise the bits of his personality that might be off-putting to other people (but stops putting in as much effort when he gets close enough to someone to feel like he can drop the facade).

Sharp: Kakyoin is mean, sadistic, and angry.  He can hold himself back (related to the first point, I think he is self-aware and has pretty decent self-control, which is why we never quite see him reach the levels of viciousness of fleshbud!Kakyoin), but at the end of the day, he is a kid who carries a knife on his person and kills every opponent he beats with the exception of the baby.  He has a very long fuse, but he does have a bad temper.  You won’t cut yourself with a knife if you know how to handle it, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still sharp; Kakyoin is the same way.

Reserved: I think this point is frequently depicted as being shy or quiet in fanfic, but I think it’s more that he’s hesitant to share personal information or make himself intelligible (again, see earlier points).  The fact that more or less all of our knowledge of Kakyoin’s backstory is from narration rather than Kakyoin himself is telling.  He holds himself apart from other people--we know that he has pretty severe self-imposed isolation pre-canon.  Again, I think this is a double-edged sword!

Stand: Kakyoin sees Hierophant Green as an extension of himself, and uses his Stand as such.  A lot of the qualities that Hierophant Green embodies (flexibility, versatility, not outstandingly destructive but devastating if you know how to use it, etc.) are also qualities Kakyoin has.  I could write a lot more about this here, but I’ll leave it at that for now...

(eta: apparently folks who don’t follow me are seeing this so, hey, uh, here’s a link to my fic if you’re interested)

[pocket-infinity]

Back at it again, everyone...

Well, here I am again. Theorizing. We’re still on with @corruptapostasy’s The Only Option (I’m never going to stop telling you to read it until you do). Even more massive spoiler warning than last time.

So here we are with a Grimm/Enkay/Nightmare King theory. Again, where should we start? How about with Chapter 7, where everyone who has read this probably had a “what the actual fuck just happened” moment. Though, specifically, I’d like to focus in on a two things: 1. Why the hell does Enkay’s ghost look so… mangled? 2. What do Enkay’s words mean?

Well, given that this whole scenario is a mystery wrapped in an enigma bundled up in a bouquet of lies, it would be rather helpful to determine reliability of narrator. In order from most to least reliable, I believe the three major players to fall as such: Enkay, Nightmare King, and Grimm. Now how, exactly, did I arrive at this order? The answer comes from the behaviors of each of the characters. Enkay is the simplest to answer; he literally has no reason to lie, and every reason to tell the truth. He was the Pale King’s lover, and during their brief reunion in Chapter 5, he goes so far as to say, “‘It's a name. All you need to ask of him is a name.’” to which the King responds, “‘Say it, please. Say the name.’” Enkay finally replying with the name “Shade Lord,” and in so doing he reveals information that Grimm was attempting to keep secret. The only potential way we could get misinformation from Enkay is if he himself was misinformed, which is highly unlikely, as he is part of the collective consciousness that forms the Nightmare King.

The Nightmare King places second mostly because of circumstance. Every interaction he has with the Pale King takes place in less than ideal situations, whether he’s possessing Grimm or directly communicating to the Pale King, so the bare minimum of information is communicated. The Nightmare King is also less susceptible to the misinformation situation by comparison to Enkay, given that he is a collection of who-knows-how-many people, whereas Enkay is technically just one (although the line is fairly fogged).

Placing squarely in last, Grimm. Oh dear god, Grimm. To say the least, he is so very unreliable. He has frequently lied in the past, shown when the Pale King and him converse in Chapter 3, and Grimm’s response to hearing that the Pale King hasn’t left his palace for months is, “‘Two *months*?’“ to which the King later responds, “‘…Why is this so surprising to you?’” before Grimm replies with, “‘I suppose it shouldn't. You've always been a homebody…’”. The problem in this comes with the fact that Grimm can apparently remember that the Pale King is a homebody, but later does not recognize the White Lady, Lurien, Monomon, or Herrah. He is therefore completely lying in this statement of recognition, and this is later revealed in Chapter 5. This reveal comes in two parts, the first of which is Enkay stating that Grimm “(…)does not… often converse with his heart.” The second section, which reveals another lie, comes when Grimm states, “I’ve been trying to remember it more clearly. I've been talking with my kin, trying to find answers when I'm not here helping you with every other viable option. How do you expect me to tell you something I don't understand?” As established, Enkay has no reason to lie and Grimm has a history of it, so Enkay’s word therefore overpowers Grimm’s and shows that Grimm is willfully not telling the Pale King that he can communicate with the Nightmare Heart. Lastly, and this is what hammers home the unreliability of Grimm, he has an absolute ton of gaps in memory, as later in Chapter 5 he states, “There have always been blank spots, things that I know but don't know, things that I've never seen before but feel so familiar around.” Alright, so Grimm does not often talk to the Heart, and thereby has limited memories, and due to the Nightmare King’s later suggestion that the Pale King just talk about anything relating to Enkay, including “What happened to him. How you two met. What teas he liked. Anything,” as a method of jogging Grimm’s memory, we can conclude that memorabilia or anything relating to past selves can help jog memory.

So, we’ve established an order of reliability and defined some form of a rule for Grimm’s memory. Now onto the actual questions to be answered. During Chapter 7, the entire situation around Enkay, Grimm, and the Nightmare King goes entirely off the rails when the Pale King bumps into a ghost of Enkay within the Troupe’s grounds; the peculiar part is not that Enkay exists here (it is well established that a ton of ghosts walk around there), but rather that he is described by the following, “The claws twitch, neck audible cracking, but the head stays in place. Black blood oozes from his eyes and from cracks in their throat, splattering on the ground beneath their feet. The figure says nothing, and turns away from him, walking toward the door. The golden chains that had adorned his horns hung broken and loose behind him. A massive, bleeding line traced down his spine.” This is in no capacity what was to be expected, and so the Pale King’s response in thought is, “This wasn’t even close to a proper punishment, and he knew it. This was just a slap on the wrist. There was so much more that could be done to him, especially when he was here, at the center of the Troupe’s grounds, at the mercy of the whims of the Heart. This was only the beginning, he was sure of it, and he had to face it.” An open and shut case as to why Enkay’s corpse looks the way it does, right? I sincerely wish I could agree with you. Unfortunately, in Chapter 6, with regard to the heart, Grimm states, “My powers are stored there, in a sense. The Heart holds everything that makes me the Nightmare King while also keeping separate who I am as Grimm. If that makes any sense. I have access to my powers, but in a limited sense. Imagine… a locked door, with the magic trickling from the crack underneath." Note the wording here, “Stored there.” The implication seems to be that the Heart does not necessarily act on its own. As well as this, if the Heart is acting to torment the Pale King in any way, the Nightmare King would more likely than not act in a similar manner, but he does not. Instead, after the Pale King acquires the Voidheart, the Nightmare King (lot of kings here, huh?) simply cleans the void off of his hands and lets him walk out with it. As a final proof of the Pale King’s idea not being correct, we must acknowledge that he is a second-hand account by comparison to Enkay or the Nightmare King, and so is more prone to misinterpretation. With all that being said, why does Enkay look that way? In all frank honesty, I have no fucking clue. Sorry to leave anybody hanging, but I literally have no idea where I could go from there. On to the next bit then, the whole Grimm situation (a rather grim one indeed). There are three major things to focus on here: the tapestry, the statue, and Enkay’s dialogue. Grimm’s tapestry and statue are described as, “Grimm’s face, on both sides of the statue, one side displaying the same lovely smile he had just seen stretch across his face when holding his Child in his arms, and the other holding a dark, angry glower, an arrogant and vengeful gaze that he can only recall seeing sheer vestiges of within the darkness of his workroom back in the Palace, and the sight of the weapon, the tattered, bloodied glaive still clutched tight in his claws, was enough to make his stomach twist. He takes a step back, before moving to walk around the statue, desperate to see the canvas he knew was there, what it depicted, what it showed. Death. Entire kingdoms on fire, people slaughtered. More of that unforgiving gaze, allowing unchecked chaos to reign wherever he walked. The forms of some past army melted into ghosts and ghoulish performers, a mockery of the arts standing across the hall. A circle hovered above it all, similar to Enkay's, holding the terrifying form of the Shade Lord. The lower two circles held a strange, horned face and the image of the Grimmchild wreathed in flames, eyes filled in with red.” And now for Enkay’s dialogue which, when put together, consists of, “His image... His power…”, “He lies... Difficult to see... Reconstructs past…”, “Quickly. Must show something.”, “The Heart... dislikes disobedience.... To do task... you need something.”, “Ancient artifact... from beginning days. Grimm knows not....The King hoards his treasures.”, “None of us know... how old... Millennia... ages... epochs... Too many to count... Well... only one... knows.”, “Enkay slows to a stop, body glitching again. An average, completely black statue flanked by silver, spike-topped torches stood in front of them, the entire pedestal wreathed in gnarled vines. The figure stood upright, poised with their hands on the pommel of an overturned, rusting sword. Parts of the blade were chipping away, and half of the guard was missing entirely. The tapestry, larger than all the others, depicted only the same silhouette of the statue in front of a massive, stitched together Heart. As they watch, the Heart beats, a dull, resounding pulse that sent waves of heat into the corridor. ‘The First.’ Enkay almost sighs, staring at the statue and tapestry with a look of sad reverence. ‘The Fundament.’”, “The artifact lays in the brambles. Only living hands can touch such a thing.”

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s not throw away the suitcase. Start at the beginning, with the statue and tapestry. Fairly cut and dry, even the Pale King notes that it’s an enraged Grimm just going on a multi-kingdom killing spree on one side, with this more-or-less reformed Grimm on the other. Now the dialogue… dear god the dialogue. First, “His image… His power…” is half simple. “His image…” is just Grimm hiding his past self from the Pale King and thereby protecting his image. “His power…”, however, is nowhere near as easy— not in isolation, at least. However, when joined with the first two pieces of the next one, it becomes much more clear. “His image… His power… He lies… Difficult to see…” Grimm lies about his image and power, portraying himself as different than he is. To what end is unknown, though perhaps it could be out of shame and regret? Or maybe it’s a way of keeping secrets for the sake of enemies underestimating him and Grimm thereby gaining an upper hand? Who knows, maybe he just never goes in there and forgot about it somehow. The goal of his hiding is most probably the former, but there’s no way to be certain. Before we cover the next section chronologically, let’s jump ahead to, “The Heart... dislikes disobedience.... To do task... you need something.”, “Ancient artifact... from beginning days. Grimm knows not....The King hoards his treasures.” This one is easier to break down piece by piece, so let’s do a brief speed run. The Heart disliking disobedience is most likely it being annoyed that Grimm hasn’t taken on more memories yet; “To do task… you need something.” is not in reference to the task of restoring Grimm’s memory, but rather the task of defeating the Radiance; “Ancient artifact... from beginning days.” this is the item that the Pale King needs to complete the task, also known as the Voidheart charm, which originates with the Fundament; and “Grimm knows not....The King hoards his treasures.” this one indicates that Grimm is entirely unaware of the Voidheart charm and that it is somewhat of a close-held secret by the Nightmare King. Alright, that was a lot in a short amount of time, so let’s take a breath and go back to what we didn’t cover now. “Reconstructs past…” This quote, though simple on the surface, is very, very unusual. One’s initial thought might be that Grimm is attempting to reconstruct his past, but there is no evidence for this, as, if he were trying to, a very likely action would be to try to alter the statue or tapestry, and we see no interaction with it. Given that Enkay can enter that area, and later the Nightmare King possessing Grimm, we are left to assume that there’s nothing holding him out by force. Clearly, therefore, he is not reconstructing his past, but rather lying in order to cloak it. So, then, what past is Grimm trying to reconstruct? Let’s run through some options. Firstly, the notion that Grimm is the reason Enkay looks the way he does; there is no logical basis for this assumption, as Grimm is literally guessing when he says, “Hm. I swear, if one of the ancestral spirits grabbed you and I have another haunting on my hands…” so it is unlikely that he knew Enkay was in there at all. However, Enkay’s appearance, notably the line across his neck, could be a sign that it was either Grimm or, more likely, the Pale King shaping the form, given that, while Grimm is explaining the revitalization process, the Pale King says, “..I did not realize such a process could heal a severed head,” during Chapter 3. This lines up with the cracks in Enkay’s throat, though using such as a proof seems like grasping at straws. The third option comes from a quote which was shown earlier, but not in full. In its complete form, originating from Chapter 5, the quote comes as, “’I wasn't always like this,’ he starts, slow, almost uncertain. ‘I wasn't always... trapped in all this... timelessness and renewal business. There have always been blank spots, things that I know but don't know, things that I've never seen before but feel so familiar around.’” In a first time reading, this just seems like Grimm stating that he doesn’t have all the memories, etc. etc. However, note that Grimm was Enkay’s child, as Grimm now has his own. That means that Grimm cannot be referring to himself as the “I” in the “timelessness and renewal business.” Keep in mind that, although Grimm’s memories of past selves are limited, there are still certain bits and pieces, and based on the fact that there’s always a Child for the Nightmare King, we can conclude that the only people who could be described by this “I” are the Nightmare King, the Heart, or the Fundament. Given that the Nightmare King is, to a fair extent, the culmination of past incarnations of Grimm and Enkay, it can be concluded that he has always been in the business of timelessness and renewal. As well as this, due to the fact that the Heart needs to be perpetuated by the ritual, it also needs to be intrinsically tied to the business. That can leave only one, meaning that Grimm is talking about the Fundament. So could this be the past that Grimm is attempting to reconstruct? Perhaps, but not likely, given the fact that Grimm has had an aversion to gaining memories of past selves. On the other hand, we know that Grimm is attempting to remember more about the Void, and is aware that he knows things but is uncertain of what those things are, so he may be trying to reconstruct the past of the Fundament as a method of learning about the Voidheart.

Okay. Wow. That was… a lot. So, where do we go from here? What conclusions or theoretical timeline can we draw? Sorry to disappoint, but I have absolutely zero ideas. Literally nothing. Again, apologies for the anticlimax here, but I incinerated my last two braincells with this one. Nonetheless, though, it was fun to make, and, as always, assume my theories are wrong unless they aren’t. Again, of course, this was an absolute blast to make.

Now to find another mystery or dive deeper into this one so I can keep re-reading.

[allykatsart]

Delta rune theories! (Spoilers)

Ok so I played delta rune over the weekend with my sister. There was a lot that happened, we talked a lot, and tried to make sense of what happened. I have three ideas/theories about the game. They can be seen as separate ideas on the game, but I believe all three to make the most sense when it comes to Deltarune.

Beware, Spoilers for Deltarune and Undertale ahead.

<b>Theory 1: Gaster survived the fall.</b>

-Gaster has prevalence in this game wether you realize it or not. In the beginning sequence of the game, the voice that's talking to you speaks in all caps. Thats how Gaster speaks as well, albeit he usually speaks in wing dings, but those are still all caps. So there is a certain connection between him and the game.

-Alphys and Undyne do not know eachother. At all. Our favorite lizard and fish couple have no idea who the other is. Why is this relevant? Well...Why would they be apart? What happened to make them never even have met eachother. And, including this....

-The amalgamates are dead. Or at least the monsters who made up the amalgamation are dead in Delta Rune, while in Undertale they survive to the surface under Alphys' care. They survived under her care. Under HER care. But here they are dead, so that, combined with the fact that Undyne has not even heard of Alphys (which she should have at least heard of the royal scientist if she is the royal guard) makes for a case that Alphys never took the position of royal scientist.

-Why do I assume it's Gaster? Because of what we knew of him in the original game. We knew he spoke in wing dings, that he was presumably the royal scientist before Alphys, and that he has some sort of relation to Sans and Papyrus.

-Asriel is there. Asriel is ALIVE and not Flowey the flower. Even Alphys couldn't bring Asriel back completely....but maybe Gaster could, who knows.....

-In the end, I think this is a universe where Gaster didn't dissapear/wasn't remebered, and remained the royal scientist. This means that Alphys never took the role, never met Undyne, and never gained the crippling depression from experimenting with Determination on monsters. Hense why Gaster's Twitter was the one to kick off this game, it's Toby's way of saying that there's a link between Gaster and Delta Rune.

<b>Theory 2: We are possessing Kris.

(WARNING! THIS INCLUDES MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE GAME! PLEASE SKIP OVER THIS PART UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED THE GAME ENTIRELY)</b>

-This seems pretty obvious when you combine a few clues from around the game. One of these clues happens to be the literal save file. When you get to the first checkpoint, before you save you can see someone's previous save. It's like when playing a used game, you save over the previous person's game. In Delta Rune, however, you're saving over Kris' previous save with your own. You're not Kris, at least, you're not saving as Kris.

-Dialogue in this game can come off as a lot of funny one off lines. And most of it is just funny one off lines, but there are few that have much more meaning, that reference things from the first Undertale game that only the real life player should know. Like pressing and holding X to run. Or even asking Undynr about Alphys. Kris has no reason to connect the two, as they don't even know about eachother. But we do, hense why it's an option in the first place.

-And lastly, the cherry on top, the ending. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone so please, skip the ending if you do not want to be spoiled, I beg of you. Even if you're kinda like 'meh, it's fine, it's probably not that big of a spoiler', don't read, because it is a not spoiler for the end. You have been warned.

-Alright....In the ending it's made pretty clear you're.....not Kris. In fact, Kris strait up takes out the red soul (presumably YOUR soul) and shoves it in the empty bird cage. It is presumed that Chara (or whatever you want to call them in this AU) is working with Kris or possessing them instead. But after that point, you are no longer in control of Kris' vessel.

-here's something to support this from the first game. The talk Asriel gives you at the end of the pacifist run. He asks you to let frisk be, talking to you, the player, instead of frisk. There are a lot of fourth wall breaks in this franchise and it seems to be a staple of the game's humor. But it's a theme that isn't always taken lightly. Undertale and Deltarune are about choice of the player, and how we act when we seem to have no consequences. And how the game effects us. Not in a 'oh the fandom is toxic' sort of way, but more of how we react to the game directly.

-These themes and clues, especially in Deltarune, point to us being separate from the character we play as in these games. It also seems that this may be a point of major conflict in the future, or a continuing theme at least in the next game. (If there is one)

<b>Theory 3: Gaster sent us too (or made) the Dark World.</b>

-This is the hardest to explain and the most ridiculous of my theories. But something just...didn't rub me the right way when it came to the Dark World. For one, you just...appear there. From a supply closet. With no explanation as to why. The only thing slightly odd about this is the fact that before you and Susie enter the closet, the door and hall turns grey. This is significant because of the 'mystery man' sprite, an the grey door you use to find that sprite.

-speaking of doors, lets talk about the shortcut doors. Aka, Sans doors. They let you go to another door similar to it. Their distinctive pattern is having fire come out from the bottom, which sans' bedroom door has as well. Keeping the favt that Sans and Gaster have a connection, maybe this is something that Gaster made or put down in the world for ease of access.

-When you and Susie get back, you appear in an unused classroom. The important thing about this classroom being it is COVERED in game stuff. There's a checkerboard on the floor, chess peices here and there, even cards from different suites. Why is this important? Well most characters and enemies in the dark world are BASED off of these things. Lance and his father are based off the ace of spades and the king of spades respectively, there was a tale of four kings before the king of spades took over, you fight a friggin checker peice and have to run from pawns. Even calling the place a dark world could just be a reference to the fact that the lights are out. But this doesn't seem to be a game you were playing, as Susie seemed to be surprised to be in the classroom, and not to forget about you two falling down in the first place. It seems someone else set up the world or game, and brought you and Susie into it.

-Gaster is the one narrating your story. When you die, the all caps lettering, which I assume is Gaster for reason as stated before, speak to you. He's there at the beginning when you start your journey. It's his text, and he seems to be the one watching you.

-when you try to call home in the Dark World, you find you can't, and instead your call is just these weird garbled noises, also associated with Gaster. It's almost like he is intercepting your call.

-Why would he do this? To be honest? I don't know. We don't know enough about his character to fully say if he would or wouldn't do this. But he is connected somehow to this game. It was supposedly him on Twitter that premiered this game, it's his text narrating. There's something he's doing, and I think...well, I think he made a game to play in, or at least put us into a position to play it. What this means for the rest of the story, I don't know, but we'll have to wait and see.

Now for some questions of mine that I can't figure out.

-Where is Grillby

-How are Sans/Papyrus connected to Gaster

-Why was Gerson's grave included in the graveyard?

-Is Chara still around?

Thats all for now, have a good day!