#some UTI fun facts now

[silverware-is-interesting]

some undertale yellow (and undertale i guess-) doodles and other drawings

[diamonddeputy]

Okay I put this together for a buddy who couldn’t make it so I may as well put it here too now that I have it all in one place

All the dev commentary I picked up from the UTY anniversary stream

PLEASE REBLOG WITH ANYTHING I MAY HAVE MISSED

• It apparently took them FOREVER to solidify a design for Decibat. One of the early concepts was a literal baseball bat with wings and I enjoy this fact very much

• They originally had an idea that Dalv would accidentally try and move into Martlet’s house after leaving the Ruins LMAO

• They expanded on this piece of concept art that had been floating around: there were never really plans for the Feisty Five to be evil, they just made their own wanted posters to inflate their own egos LOL

• I didn’t really write any of the specifics down, but listening to them talk about the Flowey fight was so interesting because they were all chiming in about who worked on what parts and where the inspirations were from and where they sourced their materials. Some details I remember off the top of my head:

- Flowey’s voice lines were pulled from the same McDonald’s commercial as his canon ones

- The audio for the scene where Martlet melts before Meta Flowey was a combination of a stock laugh and a clip one of the devs just so happened to have, when they used to edit for a YouTube channel, and the file got corrupted and just randomly made that sound

- The heartbeat monitor sound that plays during the Organic speciman is taken from the frequency of an actual human heart. Don’t remember the story about how they acquired that one

- The graphics for the Polygonal speciman were inspired by PS1 horror, Ben Drowned and that meme that went around in the late 2010s of a gif of a bug that made it look like a bug was on your screen (in specific reference to the little Flowey gremlins that crawl down the screen)

- They originally had plans to include a spectrogram in the fight, but decided it would make them seem too tryhardy

• There were plans for an underwater segment that were scrapped extremely early in development, something about a bridge in Waterfall breaking

• The comment Starlo makes in the Wild East about there being a fourth mission that was scrapped from the regimen is a reference to a literal fourth mission that the devs cut because they felt like it killed the pacing, where Virgil would kidnap the Feisty Five and tie them up in places around town and you had to go rescue them and it was a stealth game type thing

• - The designs for the Feisty Five have a lot of funny inspirations

- Ed was originally designed to be a normal monster, but they liked his design so much they used it for something more important

- Initial concepts of Moray’s design had them in a fisherman’s cap or a paper boat hat, to show how unserious they were about this. Also, they weren’t originally designed to be Angie and Gillbert’s child, a playtester just made that assumption and they were like y’know what sure we’ll roll with it

- Mooch’s design originated from a Minecraft RP OC that one of the devs had that she never got to use. Which is iconic tbh

• Mo was inspired by this lil dude, who showed up and had babies in one of the devs’ attic. Additionally, while coding the game, there were little variables they put in for fun like a timer. One of them was a number that just incrementally increased, and was labelled “Crimes that Mo has committed”

• The fact that sparing Dalv doesn’t abort Geno, that everyone chalked up to being a genius narrative decision, was AN OVERSIGHT??????? It was a coding error caused by the fact that they were initially gonna make everything that happens in the Dark Ruins not count towards any route, like Flowey implies in his dialogue, but they went back on that decision and fixed it for everyone except Dalv. They made a comment on stream like “we should really fix that” and everyone in chat was like PLEASE don’t LOL

• There were never really concepts for a Geno Starlo fight. And a lot of it is the reasons the fandom talks about that he’s a coward before his character development and it makes more sense for him to back out in the face of real danger. But also because in terms of power level, it didn’t make sense for him to stand a chance. And also because they were making all the routes at once and designing the boss fights at equal times and this was the first chance they got to make a boss fight for Ceroba LOL. But the plan was already set by that point that it was gonna be her instead of him

• No one truly knows the origins of the super faded silhouette standing in the background of the UG Apartments shop in Geno. Apparently the dude who made the CG just. Put it there

• We got more insight into the Martlet transformation animation. It was made with SO much purpose. If you look closely, she starts to melt and the determination puddles underneath her, but then she gains control of it and the puddle ABSORBS BACK INTO HER, then shoots out in a burst when her first wing transforms. THAT’S SO COOL

• Additionally, they also canonized that Martlet took the determination before Alphys had any of the fallen-down bodies, and that she had no idea what it actually WAS, other than that it had something to do with the human SOULs. Which makes this even MORE impressive because she wasn’t intrinsically prepared to control determination, she just DID it

• Additionally, they also canonized that Martlet took the determination before Alphys had any of the fallen-down bodies, and that she had no idea what it actually WAS, other than that it had something to do with the human SOULs. Which makes this even MORE impressive because she wasn’t intrinsically prepared to control determination, she just DID it

• The dive-bomb attack Martlet does in her first-phase Zenith fight was inspired by Dyna Blade, as a Kirby fan that fact just made me happy lol

• Retribution was the last song made for the game, and was composed in just a couple days, which is WILD to me

• We got confirmation that Flowey is still in control of saves after defeating Axis in Geno, and Clover’s text in the overworld/after dying is just them being so focused on their mission that they’re drowning out everything else

• CANNOT forget The Jincident

[andreabandrea]

The AndreaBandrea UTY post

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

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

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

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

The Good

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

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

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

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

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

The Slightly Less-Good (and more disclaimers)

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

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

First of all, hi! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Undertale Yellow Plot Recap!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UTY Plot Criticism

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

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

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

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

Dalv

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martlet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starlo

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

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

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

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

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

Ceroba

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Axis…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Undertale & Meta Elements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Importance of the Player

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flowey’s Role in UTY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flowey is, of course, an unreliable narrator. 

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

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

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

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

So, how would I have changed this?

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

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

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

The Flowey Suggestions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meta Elements of Undertale 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Thanks for reading.

[junkissed]

sweet treat

member | junhui x f!reader genre | smut, a little fluff (happy valentine's day!) word count | 1.9k synopsis | jun has a tasty way to spice up your valentine's day, and not in the way you think it is. warnings | reader has a vagina and breasts, dom!jun sub!reader, food play kind of (with candy hearts), oral (reader receiving), handcuffs, making out, reader is a little bit of a brat but in a fun way, pet names (sweetheart, baby, good girl), jun is whipped for reader hehe, everyone please pretend that uti's don't exist and that eating food during sex is 100% safe notes | it's been a while but here's something finally!! i know i said this would be out like a week ago i'm so so sorry oops but it is here now :) it's way past v-day sjdfgfshj but i hope you enjoy regardless! this is very minimally edited so if you see mistakes please don't perceive them

when jun asked if he could try some new things for valentine’s day, you don’t know what you were expecting. maybe wearing a nice new set of lingerie, or going a little rougher than usual, or maybe even introducing a toy or something. you’ve never had the most incredibly exciting of sex lives, but it’s been more than enough to satisfy the both of you throughout your relationship.

what you didn’t expect is to have your hands tied to the headboard above you, completely naked, while jun hovers over you, completely clothed.

he picks up a single candy heart from the dish by the bed, holding it up between two fingers. he studies it for a second before popping it in his mouth, his lips parted just enough for you to see it sitting on his tongue before he bites down on it with an audible crunch.

you know the way you’re spread open in front of him is getting to him by the straining outline of his cock in his pants, but his eyes never leave your face as he chews on the candy, his gaze zeroed in on yours.

his adam’s apple jerks in his throat as he swallows, and your cunt clenches involuntarily at the sight.

jun sits on the bed beside you, still studying your face. “you’re so quiet, baby,” he hums. “you’re usually so loud.”

“and you’re usually doing more than just standing there watching,” you bite back with a huff. but you aren’t really mad; in fact, the long, drawn-out foreplay to your valentine’s day sexcapades is only making you more excited to see what junhui has planned next.

he furrows his bottom lip. “and you aren’t usually this bratty, either,” he says, a hint of a smirk on his face.

you grin. “that’s because i like it.”

he leans over you, grabbing your chin with one hand to tilt your head closer to his. you can’t help but moan into his mouth when he kisses you, happy to finally be touched, even if it’s only with jun’s lips and nothing else.

the way he’s sitting above you gives him the perfect angle to slide his tongue into your mouth, and his free hand begins to trail down your body as his grip on your jaw tightens, each kiss getting rougher and more desperate. your skin prickles with goosebumps at his touch; you can almost barely feel him there with how lightly he’s moving across your body, but you know he’s there

you arch your back with a whine and he pulls away, pushing your head back down onto the pillows as you inhale a deep breath.

your eyes follow him as he leans away from the bed, but with his back facing you, you can’t see what he’s doing. you pull against the fluffy pink handcuffs holding you to the bed, wanting to touch him. you want to trace your hands along his back, feel his muscles under your fingertips, feel his skin without the clothes he’s—frustratingly—still wearing. you groan under your breath, tugging at your restraints once more, but it’s no use.

he turns back around, keeping one hand behind his back out of your view, and you sit back, batting your eyelashes innocently, hoping it’ll convince him to finally do something more.

"open," jun commands, and for a second you think you’ve succeeded. automatically your mouth falls open, ready to receive whatever he's about to give you.

but what enters your mouth isn't what you're expecting. instead of fingers or spit (or maybe if you’re lucky, his cock) like you're usually used to with him, he simply places a pink candy heart on your tongue.

you start to close your lips to chew on it, but he just raises an eyebrow, tsking at you.

"did i tell you you could do that, sweetheart?" he scolds. the pun in the nickname he uses almost makes you want to laugh, but you're so focused on the way he swiftly pulls his shirt over his head that you can't even think about making jokes right now.

you shake your head in response, your tongue still hanging out of your mouth as the sugar begins to disintegrate.

he grins. “good girl,” he says, and he stands up, moving to kneel at the foot of the bed.

suddenly you cry out, and he looks up at you, his eyes a little bit softer than before. “do you need something, baby?” he asks.

you mumble out a reply, still holding the candy on your tongue, and he giggles at your persistence. “you don’t have to keep it there, baby, you can eat it if you need to. talk to me.”

you scrunch your nose, contemplating, but you bring your tongue back into your mouth, putting the candy heart against the inside of your cheek. “wanna see you, junnie,” you moan, looking down at him. “can you take your shirt off? please?”

he grins, standing up again so you can see all of him. “well, since you asked so nicely,” he smiles, pulling his shirt up and over his head faster than you can blink, and then he’s beside you again.

“everything else still okay?” he asks softly, and you start to answer, but his lips, which have started trailing down your neck, make it hard to even think. you let out a sigh when he starts sucking at your skin lightly.

“need an answer, sweetheart,” he reminds you gently, his lips leaving you for just a second before moving down to your chest, leaving wet, messy kisses all across your skin.

“yes, jun,” you moan out, and finally he moves back down to between your legs, giving you one last satisfied kiss before he kneels at the edge of the bed.

with his head so close to your cunt, you automatically reach out for him, but your restraints pull you back once more. you huff in frustration but give in, craning your neck so you can see him instead.

and just before he’s about to press his lips against your aching heat, he pulls away to look up at you. “you better put that candy heart back where it belongs, darling,” he says challengingly.

you cock an eyebrow at him. “and what if i don’t?”

he shrugs, looking way too nonchalant for how hard you imagine his cock must be— you’re not the only one that hasn’t gotten anything yet tonight. “then i’ll just leave you wet and grumpy until you wake me up in the middle of the night begging me to fuck you.”

the fact that he isn’t wrong about that is enough to make you back down. there’s been numerous slightly embarrassing occasions where you’ve accidentally-on-purpose woken jun up at 2am because you were way too flustered to sleep and your fingers just weren’t cutting it.

and although you know he’s definitely bluffing—he’s way too sweet (and insatiable) to ever leave you unsatisfied for too long—you let him win this one anyway.

you stick your tongue out for him, the half-melted candy heart dutifully in its place, and the silence that follows is more than enough of an answer for junhui.

“that’s my baby,” he says, pressing a kiss to the inside of your thigh. he looks up at you with a glint of mischief in his eye, his mouth hovering over your soaking cunt.

“that better still be there when i’m finished.”

and with that he’s diving into you, his mouth covering every inch of your pussy and sucking like his life depends on it. you groan and start to close your mouth, but you remember jun’s instructions and leave your mouth open instead.

his tongue prods at your hole, easing you open around him. he knows you like the back of his hand, and it doesn’t take long for him to bring you right up to the edge.

your moans get higher and breathier as you struggle to keep the candy from falling out of your mouth, throwing your head back with a gasp.

jun’s lips move up to wrap around your clit, simultaneously inserting one finger into you as he begins to suck harder. the stimulation from his mouth and fingers, combined with the intense focus you have to keep on your own mouth to make sure you don’t accidentally lose the candy, makes it hard to think straight.

but just when you feel yourself start to teeter on the edge of your orgasm, jun pulls his lips away, keeping his finger inside you, pumping slowly. you whine and clench around him, muttering out something that’s supposed to be “please” but ends up sounding more like “aleathe”. you raise your head to look at him, meeting his eyes.

he grins. “you wanna cum, sweetheart? all over my face, with your pretty little pussy? hm?”

you can barely manage an “uh huh” in response as jun adds another finger and increases his pace. his fingers brush against your walls over and over, making you arch your back, desperate for more as he brings you closer and closer.

he doesn’t stop as your orgasm crashes into you, his mouth moving everywhere over your cunt until overstimulation starts to set in. your thighs squeeze around his head, and he groans against your folds, making you jerk. he wraps his arms around your hips, holding you tightly against his face as you writhe against him.

when he finally pulls away from you, you lay back against the pillows, breathing heavily. he stands up and comes to sit on the bed, gently caressing your face with the back of his hand.

feeling him beside you, you pry open your tired eyes, sticking out your tongue proudly to show him how obedient you were.

he laughs. “you can eat it now,” he says, and for the first time in a while you close your mouth, finally getting to savor what’s left of the candy.

he sighs fondly, watching you slowly chew on the treat as he moves to undo the cuffs holding you down. once you’re free, you sit up and rotate your wrists, a little sore from being held up so long, and jun takes your hands, massaging them with his thumbs.

you lean over and kiss him, and his tongue slips into your mouth, letting you taste the remnants of your orgasm and letting him taste what’s left of the sweet sugar in your mouth. the kiss grows deeper, his hands letting go of yours and wrapping around your body instead, holding you tightly in his arms, his lips never leaving yours. you don’t even notice the change in positions until you’re flat on your back again with jun on top of you.

he pulls away for just a second so you both can breathe, and in that second he studies your face, still glowing from your orgasm. he grins, and leans down to give you a quick peck on the cheek. “i love you, baby. happy valentine’s day,” he says with a giggle.

and you can’t help but smile when you look up at him, seeing the excitement in his eyes. “i love you too, junnie. happy valentine’s day.”

taglist | @wonderfulshinee @noniestars @photographic-girl @onlymingyus @just-here-to-read-01 @wonuziex @enhacolor @yourfavoritefreakyhan @dkakapizzaboy @skzzooyaaa

join my taglist here!

i hope you enjoyed this!! if you did, consider reblogging or leaving a comment or an ask :) it lets me know this is something people want to see more of and it helps a ton with being motivated to write. thanks for reading!!

[snalzhttps]

IM GOING TO. ramble about an uty headcanon/theory? now SPOILERS

SO THIS is a drawing in Kanako’s room of what appears to be Axis, its meant to be Axis right! (theres an obvious drawing of Dalv too so she’s drawing other characters and we are meant to assume she knows them)

BUT something that sticks out to me is that the heart on Axis’ chest is upside down! (and there are other slight differences too - no gear, lightbulb, or ear things?)

I love the sibling dynamic Axis and Kanako headcanons and drawings they are like my favourite thing, but if Kanako had met Axis 014, how would she get these details wrong?

These could just be errors in memory or artistic ability, she seems very young after all, BUT THAT ANSWER IS WAY LESS FUN THAN RANDOM SPECULATION!!!!!!!

SO. My little headcanon theory is that this drawing is a design that Kanako came up with for a guard robot that Chujin asked her to draw, then he modelled Axis (014 at the least) off of. Kanako is a young monster who wouldn’t know humans had upward facing souls, and only ever seen/known about monsters downward facing souls, so would draw a heart shape that way (then Chujin changed this when building Axis, for some reason)

There is no *proof* for this other than the idea that Kanako is “gifted like her father too” (which is most likely supposed to be referring to the fact they are boss monsters considering the trailed off “she’s a” following), but I like to imagine its also about a creating/art talent since the accompanying picture of Kanako has her painting the mask. Implying to me that Chujin and Kanako could have drawn/created things together and one day the idea of designing a robot (since it was on Chujin’s mind from the steamworks employee reports and letters) came up.

And THAT is where Axis’ (kind of clunky and strange compared to a more sleek and smooth looking robot like guardener that was being built and designed at the same time, showing the capabilities of robot designs) design comes from (this also could explain why the other robot parts in Chujin’s office look a good bit different to how Axis 014 looks).

There is Also nothing to my memory that strictly DISPROVES this, HOWEVER consider this fun value pillar, the fun value pillars in the dark ruins tell the story of the day the integrity human attacked Dalv, Kanako was there, and Chujin sent Axis (014 as we know from his geno route confession and giving exp) after them, killing them accidentally, right?

And it was Dalv (also known to draw, and was attacked by integrity, and is now in the dark ruins) who is the one who drew on these pillars right? So that implies that Dalv saw what happened (most unlikely because Axis followed integrity to Waterfall), heard what happened (unknown from who) or figured out/imagined what happened. In any case it implies that he saw Axis at least once, enough to draw him (even abstractly like this).

I’ve seen the assumption that Axis was there in Snowdin with Chujin, Kanako, and Dalv, (which is fun to think about i think AND matches dalv seeing/knowing axis) BUT in the first Chujin tape where he discusses the event he says no one was there to protect Kanako, which you'd think Axis would be doing if he was there in Snowdin with them.

But where Axis actually was is more ambiguous. In the secret secret tape Chujin says he “should’ve stayed” implying to me that he left the scene to go get Axis from the Steamworks/his office lab basement/wherever, meaning that Dalv couldn’t have seen Axis on that occasion. I also feel like if Axis was in Snowdin it would have been mentioned at some point by someone.

So this scenario doesn’t explain how Dalv saw Axis to be able to draw him. While if Axis WAS in Snowdin that doesnt explain how Kanako would get so many details wrong drawing him, especially if they spent a lot of time/more than one time together.

FURTHERMORE the pacifist route shows that Ceroba and Axis have never seen eachother before either (Chujin also didn’t add Ceroba to Axis’ authorised list by default, implying he didn’t think they’d ever come across eachother?) So if Chujin had Axis and Kanako meet this had to somehow be without Ceroba knowing At All.

(HOWEVER since Ceroba watched Chujin’s tapes she is lying in some way during the pacifist Steamworks because she would have heard the name “Axis” and found out how Chujin got the Integrity soul, so should know more than she lets on about his robotics projects.)

This also implies that Ceroba hasn’t been in Kanako’s room in a long time, maybe even before Kanako fell down, or she would have seen the Axis drawing on the floor. It makes sense that she would avoid Kanako’s room though.

FOR MY FINAL “HOWEVER” I will say that this raises the question of Why the Axis drawing is still on the floor with a pencil, this kind of implies that it might have been the last/most recent thing that Kanako drew, or had gotten out to look at/add too. If Axis 014 is based off the drawing it would be a long time between the Initial drawing -> Chujin builds and codes 014 -> The Snowdin event -> Chujin experiments and falls down -> Kanako falls down -> the events of the game

BUT even between the Snowdin event (the latest time Kanako could have seen Axis, since after that i imagine Chujin would have kept him fully confined to the Steamworks since he was “dangerous”) and the events of the game thats still quite a long time for the drawing to be sat there, so maybe that doesn’t mean much.

THE EXPLANATION I THOUGHT OF MADE ME SO SAD but i have to include this thought, that after the Snowdin event, and especially with Chujin getting very absorbed in his work then starting to fall down, Kanako would have stopped drawing and just left all of her work around her room, and had the Axis one out as it reminded her of Chujin.

ANYWAY i would LOVE to hear what other people think about all this, its very very possible im missing something obvious im a bit silly, if so please tell me haha. Also i love both possibilities of if Axis was in Snowdin or not AND the sibling Axis and Kanako headcanons… the LAST thing i want is to discourage those hc’s they are so cute.

In any case i just think the *concept* of a scientist who wants to perfect his (so far failed) guard robot to protect people, asking his daughter (the monster who he undoubtedly would want to protect most in the world) to design that robot, then getting so lost in his grand pursuit to protect monsterkind that he fails in nearly every way (leaving Kanako at the scene to try and get Axis to apprehend integrity, Axis’ programming messing up leading to him violently killing integrity, leading then to Chujin experimenting on himself and falling down, then the daughter he wanted to protect most falling down the same way because of the work he left behind) REALLY breaks my heart.

[luesmainblog]

With those manscaped ads going around again, here is a reminder to my penis-having friends out there: Do not put anything scented on your junk. I’m serious. It sounds harmless, especially since you have a closed sexual system, but it can genuinely be a very dangerous thing to be doing for a number of reasons. 1. You never know if you’re allergic to a product until you use it. Do you REALLY want to find out you’re allergic to some super specific scent oil mix because you put it on your nuts? 2. Whatever is on your balls will end up rubbing onto your underwear, and as you move throughout the day, it will inevitably make its way to your urethra. It may only be a little bit, but if your urinary track is sensitive enough, that can lead straight to a UTI. Believe me, those are incredibly not fun. 3. But let’s say you only wear it during naked times. Totally fine, right? Nope; you’re STILL at a risk for a UTI because of how scent actually works. When you smell something, it’s because there are particles of that thing in the air, and those particles make it into your nose and your nose essentially “tastes” those particles. Now, for most stuff, that’s fine. However, those tiny particles - when there’s enough of them - can still make their way into your urethra over time if they’re close enough, and once again, that can lead to an infection because there is a foreign matter in your pee hole that doesn’t belong there. (this is the reason so many vages end up with UTIs when using scented pads, when normal pads don’t do anything to them. it’s the scent particles.) 4. This product is given to you alongside masculine grooming items, and if you think it’s difficult to shave your knees, you’re about to learn the fear of god the first time you try to shave your nuts. this goes double for especially wrinkly folks. Now, shaving is entirely your choice, but imagine getting deodorant in a bleeding nick on your NUTS. can you say Ow? and god forbid that thing get infected because you introduced a foreign entity your body didn’t like. I don’t think anyone wants infected balls. 5. The following can also apply to any partner you may have if you’ve freshly put it on, or if you’ve been wearing it around all day in a pair of underwear or pants(again, that stuff’s gonna end up rubbing onto the rest of you). So even if YOU’RE not allergic, or sensitive to UTIs, your other half might not want to suddenly get hives in her vag, or a sudden yeast infection, or a frot-induced UTI because you got yourself all deodoranted up before funtimes. none of this even gets into the possibility of irritation, the risk of spraying on one spot for too long(chemical burns on your balls, bro, never fun), the fact that scents could end up masking a change in your scent that would normally alert you to go see a doctor, there are MULTIPLE reasons to consider whether or not you REALLY need to put deodorant down there. I don’t know if this post will blaze, as the message is inherently nsfw, but I sincerely hope it will. You shouldn’t use ball deodorant for the same reasons you shouldn’t use scented pads, and you ESPECIALLY should not be putting a scented SPRAY anywhere near your pee hole. obviously this is all a personal risk thing, some people will be able to go 15 years perfuming the hell out of their sack and never face a problem, but it genuinely worries me that this is being advertised as totally normal, sexy, and risk-free. I just want the public to be informed; y’all might not be as used to the ways beauty companies will lie and hurt you for a quick buck. Be safe out there, and please, take good care of your sack.

[a-legacy-not-to-be-forgotten]

More SequenceShift Fun Facts

Decided to do another round of these until I get more asks or art out there. Hope this'll hold things over for now. Also here's the first on in case you haven't seen it

Kit the Fox (aka Kanako) acts in a similar manner to Flowey in Undertale Yellow, as in she acts as Clover's SAVE feature. However, unlike UTY, Clover himself can also SAVE on his own (albeit with a bit of guidance). And unlike Flowey, Kit absolutely loves this and sees a sort of kindred spirit with Clover.

Kit herself is something of a 'Flowey-in-Progress'. She's been experimenting with her SAVE and RESET powers but hasn't gone on rampages quite like Flowey has...not yet anyway. She's also a bit more childish and immature than him.

Instead of a bunch of scattered Monsters, the inhabitants of the Remnants (aka ruins) are a part of a small community that's helmed by Chujin. Generally, these are a mix of monsters from different backgrounds, some followers of Chujin, others who remained even after the city was abandoned.

To fit in with the mix of Western and Asian influence in SS, Clover wields both a gun and a katana in combat.

Before she was Empress, Ceroba sometimes joined in on the Feisty Five's antics in the Wild East as a way to detox a little bit from being Princess. She stopped after her mother passed and she was made Empress, but Ceroba still kept her hat to remind her of those days.

Martlet in SequenceShift is canonically an amputee and has fancy metal legs that she and Chujin worked on. Some of the flashbacks will even have her in a wheelchair prior to the prosthetics.

On a Pacifist Run, Dina's boss fight on Frostpeak will be skipped entirely. It's instead replaced with an encounter where she offers to take Clover to Frostpeak Settlement by giving them a piggyback ride.

While Dalv visits the Remnants frequently, he actually lives in Frostpeak, just a little bit outside of the Settlement itself. He still has Pops around and works on both his organ playing and making children's books. However, he's still fairly reclusive, with Starlo being perhaps the only person he's really opened up to recently, aside from Chujin.

Of all Six Rangers, Moray and Mooch have the strongest bond with eachother. Due to both being assigned to Lakeside, they generally spend time with one another and share their concerns over the Empress's orders and Starlo's undying loyalty to her.

A follow up on the last post I made, Dina occasionally joins Sans in making puns. This irritates Papyrus to no end.

If there's anything I haven't covered so far, feel free to ask me!

[weshallc]

THE SUITCASE

Alternate Title for @miss-ute Birthday: SHE WAS A NUN!

Happy Birthday Utie 🍰🎁🎉🎈🥰 Thank you for allowing me to be your beta. We have such fun and best of all I get first peak!

This one is for you. I meant to write something funny, but it didn't turn out that way. It is, however, most definitely Auld Skool Turnadette!

Hope you like it, you lovely person, you 💗

She thought Nurse Peters was never going to leave. Ten minutes must have passed since the un-rewardingly cheerful nurse had placed the suitcase on the end of the bed. Her bed. Her suitcase. 

She hadn’t been expecting this. When she had asked Sister Julienne for some clothes, she trusted her friend to sort through the charity box and find something that would fit. Wrap it up in brown paper and string and post it to Woodford Green. 

If she was honest, she hoped that her colleague would hand deliver the package to St Agnes Sanatorium. She knew she was being selfish, but she was getting accustomed to that.

Staffing levels were already depleted because of her and her unwelcome guest, her invasive intruder, her wake-up call. Chummy had returned, but she would be otherwise engaged any day now.

‘Thank the Lord’ Sister Julienne had the presence of mind not to send it with Trixie. That was a conversation she wasn’t yet ready to have, if ever. 

The stand-off was finally over and Nurse Peters admitted defeat. Nurse and patient had learned a lot about each other over the last two months. The patient had discovered that her carer was kind, compassionate, and trustworthy under her brash exterior. The Caregiver had deduced her patient was brave and resilient under the reservation and introspection. There was no way the nun was going to open that case until she left the room, so she did.

Once the bedroom door had clicked shut behind the nurse, it was time to click open the locks on the suitcase. It was definitely her suitcase. She recognised it by the discolouration of the brown leather on the lid. It had got wet stored in her parent’s airing cupboard when the old boiler had sprung a leak. It had been her father’s case then. She hadn’t really cared about the watermarks on the brown leather, but had done her utmost to dry it off for him and prevent any of the paperwork and documents he had stored inside being ruined. 

She never imagined back then that one day it would be hers and it would travel with her down the East Coast Mainline on the Flying Scotsman to Kings Cross. Ten years ago, when she had handed it over to an impatient Sister Evangelina, she didn’t think she would ever lay eyes on it again or its contents. 

She picked up the luggage label and recognised Sister Julienne’s handwriting at once. The same script she’d been familiar with for over ten years. She knew the curve of her letters, the dips and troughs of her words almost as well as her own hand. She paused for a second as another’s handwriting flashed into her mind and wrote across her heart. It was addressed to ‘Sr Bernadette’. She had put her friend in a difficult position, she knew that. The shock and disappointment written across her visitor's face, when she had made her request for something other than the habit to wear, was now eternally etched on her soul.

Her request had been answered, whatever pain it may have caused the one who had honoured it. There was no going back now. It would have been so much easier if it had been a brown paper package tied up with string. There would be a sense of curiosity, maybe even a thrill at seeing what sort of mismatched outfit had been put together for her from the jumble. The fact that it was her suitcase, the suitcase she had parted with in 1948, had dampened her excitement. She had been looking to the future, now she was going to be faced with the past.

If her mind had any doubt that it was hers, her fingers didn’t share it. Her left thumb pressed harder against the button lock than the right thumb did. Her hands had remembered the left clasp was slightly misaligned and needed a more assertive push to persuade it to open.

The lid of the suitcase sprung away from her and so did her fears. The first thing she recognised was a small cosmetics bag her mother had bought her for her thirteenth birthday. She’d told her she was too young for make-up, but it had contained a comb and hair grips, a compact mirror and a small tin of Nivea. The hand cream was long gone, but the comb and grips were still inside and the mirror. The lipstick and powder she had placed in there many years later were still snuggled alongside a tin of face cream and a bottle of Coty L'aimant. 

The hair fixings would come in handy, but she wasn’t sure about the rest. Did make-up go off? She gently twisted the lid on the scent and pulled it off, bringing the attached applicator to her nose. The pink cream had lost none of its potency and for a moment she was no longer in a hospital suite in Essex, but in her parents' bedroom in Inverurie letting her mother place a dab of the sweet liquid on her wrist whispering, “Don’t tell your father.” As they both giggled at the shared act of secret rebellion.

The sensation of the cold metal on her wrist brought her back into the present. She swiftly replaced the lid, returned the bottle to the bag, and rubbed her wrists together to distribute the scent. An action she hadn’t performed for over a decade. Would everything be as simple as this? Had her body and subconscious mind been storing all the small everyday tasks and movements of being a woman? While she had tried so hard to forget.

Opening the purse, she found it contained a few coins, hopefully enough for the bus fare to Poplar. Under her utility shoes, that smelt strongly of Cherry Blossom shoe polish, was hiding her handbag. The green two-piece and the short sleeve blouse also didn’t smell like they had been shut up in the dark for a decade, but freshly laundered. 

After dressing and checking herself in the mirror, the religious garments, which were too bulky to fit into the suitcase she had carried her nightwear in ten weeks ago, were folded carefully into her old brown suitcase. She placed the wooden crucifix on the top, stroking its comforting familiar texture for the final time. 

She then once again closed the lid on her past, remembering the tricky left fastening. In a few hours, she would deliver the suitcase back to Sister Julienne. 

Shelagh heard another click as she opened the door and walked into the sunlit corridor to find Nurse Peters and ask if she could make a telephone call.

[teammelodies]

Peak at the Toriel Dialogue for the Astrea Mod

As you can see, there's some kinks to work out. Ramble under the cut (Spoilers for UTY obviously)

OKAY SO MODDING IS SOMETHING!! But yeah, I decided to take on the task of making the silent protagonist no longer silent. Astrea isn't the quiet type, None of my soul OCs are. Which means, I gotta not only CHANGE existing dialogue, but ADD to it! add the fact that the human's dialogue is coloured (in my headcanon anyway but clover's inner thoughts in the geno route are yellow so why can astrea's outer dialogue be the same?) and that i gotta account for ALL the routes, and i have my work cut out for me.

And OH-HO-HO! Lemme tall ya, it was pretty difficult to get Astrea talking without any issues. I kept getting error after error. Mind you, i started adding dialogue in the wild east first. I did fix it, of course. I just had to make the object talking a variable in whichever script it was. Which, there's MULTIPLE 'clover' objects i had to change to make Astrea chatty. The player object itself, the sitting saloon object, the raft sit object, the 'player npc' object...

Didnt have to do much except add some things that allows it lo look like astrea is talking.

Modding is complicated. Fun, yes, but complicated.

So now I wanna talk about the coloured text. Anyone who's played or has seen someone play the UTY Geno route knows that there's some text that appears in the endgame after beating martlet. Said text is coloured yellow. I am still yet to figure out how the game determines the colour of that text so i can change it to Astrea's shade of yellow. (and maaaaybe add something else too) And once i DO figure it out, i'll be able to change the step code i currently have to that so that it'll be a little more efficient. Less likely for accidental clashes in code that way.

[stuffyflowers]

Started playing PS Outertale a few hours ago and I have, thoughts.

For the most part, geno has been a chill time. There are some tweaks I really appreciate, like the grinding being so quick and skipping dialog by holding C. Asriel was a little jarring at first, really did not like the way he talked down to Papyrus (and that bit where he's pretending Sans is still there? eugh), but once we were past not-Snowdin I really started to appreciate him. His relationship with Frisk/Chara/The Player/Whatever is really intriguing, especially how Frisk or whoever genuinely seems to reciprocate his feelings. Love the Best Friends Setting The World On Fire vibe we got going on.

I did kind of feel like the game was just, really easy? I beat Undyne the Undying without dying, and that's without knowing what the new spear attacks did. But a lot of her normal attack were just like, easier versions of her original attacks? I did like the extra attacking mechanic and how it was still loosely DDR esc like green soul mode.

Beat Mettaton on my second try. Orange soul mode was neat. A little weird to get used to but it didn't offend. Defiantly a little harder that Undyne but not a huge step up.

Alphys... I REALLY do not like this fight. As of writing this I have not beaten it and I don't thing I will. There are a just, lot of little things that just drag the whole thing down for me. For one, Screen Shake. Lasers shake the screen, the expanding rings shake the screen, hell, even the damn MUSIC shakes the screen! I can't see where I am or what I'm supposed to be dodging! Second, the obnoxious spinning background. It's distracting and bugs the hell out of me. Third, the music. It's very meh imo, gets grating after a bit and just sounds like noise now. So far my biggest issue is that her attacks are 1000 years long. Each one feels like three for four attacks in one. Sometimes I'd get most of the way through an attack and just, get fatigued and take my hands off the keyboard cause I'm so overwhelmed.

I've never felt like this before. I don't usually mind a challenge, I actually like throwing myself at a problem until I break through. I loved beating UTY geno without using any equipment (Only Rubber Bullets, the Patch and the Toy Gun. Honestly if you're looking to play UTY geno again but harder I highly recommend), and that was a grind that took weeks. But this? I have absolutely no desire to return to this. I can't honestly say the fight is even good or bad cause I just can't get into it. This is the worst time I've ever had fighting an UT boss, and I don't think that was the intention.

I don't know where I was going with this. I just had a lot of thoughts and felt the need to share them.

Fun fact u can hold alt+press left twice to open the debug menu and get temmie armour infinite hp etc etc would highly recommend using whenever a fight annoys u lol im not grinding for this game. I agree w ur alphys boss complaint so much, I almost got my ass beat WHILE using th temmie armour, the patience soul mode is just not made for a boss fight of that scale I don’t think, especially not one where it piles on what feels like 20 attacks in one turn. It’s so sad bc I was genuinely pretty hyped to see final boss alphys, seeing herself as the one to blame for everyone’s deaths in this route coulda made up for the nothingburger she was given in pacifist but it was just. Eh.

Also asriel is just very funny to me. This au really only cares abt asriel and twinkly seems to exist just to fill floweys slot which is smth I don’t care for, but I at least appreciate they let him be an edgy little shit rather than playing into the idea that having a soul would magically fix flowey/twinkly and make him a normal kid again. I like that frisk is kind of just fucking around ig, it makes a funny contrast against asriel. I wish the route used the frisk/asriel/mk trio more also. Idontknow I still haven’t fully figured out how I feel about this route it’s so weird. I did enjoy it more on average than lv0 pacifist tho so that’s. Something?

[zer0-dot-net]

Hello! This is my secret otherkin/alterhuman sideblog. muahaha.

You can call me whatever you want (or nothing at all!) Pronouns are they/them, sometimes it, occasionally he. Or ???/??? or no pronouns if you're feeling silly. Also, fun fact, I'm aroace. (Might be aroflux?)

My kintype is kinda hard to describe, but it's non-physical and can inhabit vessels (easiest to inhabit artificial vessels like robots, or even this website?!?!!).

Current kintypes:

Rotom (pokemon), Pink (Everhood)

Possible Kintypes / Possible Past/Future Kintypes/Kith?:

Alienkin, Spacekin, Ghostkin, Robotkin, Computerkin, AIkin, Malware/Viruskin, Some kind of desktop assistant, Phonodroidkin, iDogkin, Musickin (conceptkin)

Twig (Hilda), Jirachi (Pokemon), Laios (Dungeon Meshi), Ikabod (The Upturned), Dalv (UTY), Yellow Guy (DHMIS), Space Doughnut (Cookie Run), Lancer (Deltarune), Asriel (Undertale), Clyde (Pac Man ATGA)

Might add blinkies later but otherwise that's all for now!!

[justice-lives-in-the-end]

Now let's set some ground rules:

No NSFW

M!As are allowed, but no more than 2 at a time

No spam

Important info:

Clover is they/them

This blog does not necessarily follow canon, so while reminders about canon are appreciated, do not expect me to follow everything

This Clover is a bit... Unusual. Something something woven branches

Hints, fun facts, and other useful posts

Credits:

This blog is ran by @granolora

Text boxes created using a tool on demirramon.com

Clover sprites by ibiotic

Undertale Yellow by Team UTY

Undertale by Toby Fox

[bookish-monster]

RECOMMENDATION

Bees and Honey: A Swamp Monster Love Story

by Victoria Weyland

Storygraph Link contains info such as publication date, number of pages, community-created content warnings, and more.

This review has also been published in the May 2023 edition of the wonderful @monstermag (which you should definitely check out if you're a fan of monster romance; download past editions here)

Bees and Honey: A Swamp Monster Love Story is a fun little novella set in modern, rural Louisiana—specifically, it’s set in a very real place known as Honey Island Swamp, which is (according to Google) one of the least-altered river swamps in modern America. It has seen very little real estate development or other construction. It’s a wilderness that has been only lightly touched by humanity, and the fictional characters that populate it in this novella want to keep it that way!

Our story focuses on Heather, a born-and-raised Southerner who moved to Honey Island Swamp after a disastrous breakup that sent her life into a tailspin. She pulled an apiary (bee farm) up from the ground and built a business as a beekeeper selling honey and candles to the locals. Now, however, her home and business are threatened by McMasters, a white city slicker who wants to buy her and her neighbors’ properties and turn them into country clubs and homes for rich people. Heather is angry. Heather is more than angry, actually—she’s furious. But her helpless rage is turned into something much more actionable when she meets Honey, the ageless reptilian guardian of Honey Island Swamp.

I really enjoyed this story and consumed it in a single sitting! Weyland is a great storyteller with approachable prose and a writing style that’s easy to settle into and enjoy. I liked all of the Southern mannerisms and terms of speech that she peppered into Bees and Honey, and how she and her protagonist share a clear love for the flora and fauna of Louisiana. There are some nods to the realities of living in the Deep South—Heather’s neighbors, an aging, interracial gay couple, aren’t exactly welcome at the local church events—but overall, Bees and Honey focuses on the sweeter things in life such as community, friendship, and love.

This book is very LGBT+ positive, too, which is always great to see. Heather, upon meeting the swamp monster known as Honey, asks for his pronouns, which he gives her without fuss. Heather herself uses the pansexual label. 

And let me just say that I loved Honey. He came across as extremely masculine and sexy without veering into the realm of toxic masculinity at all, which was a relief—all too often with traditional human romances, the male lead is a complete dick and I end up wishing the heroine got together with someone nicer. Not so with Honey! He asks permission for various acts during a sex scene with Heather, and doesn’t attempt to take away her autonomy or control her life and happiness in any way. 

The plot with McMasters getting his comeuppance is very satisfying. If you live in a rural area that is undergoing rapid urban development the way I do, you will sympathize with Heather, Bubs, Cliff, and the rest of the fictional residents of Honey island Swamp. McMasters is an (unfortunately slight) exaggeration of an all too real breed of rich white landowners who use scare tactics to bully poor folks into selling their land, and it felt good to read about him losing his war to turn Honey Island Swamp into a playground for rich people with more money than sense. 

Lastly, I loved the Bee Facts™ that Weyland sprinkled throughout the story. They’re funny as well as educational, and as each is generally 1-2 sentences long they don’t distract from the story itself. Overall, I’d definitely recommend Bees and Honey: A Swamp Monster Love Story. It was a great way to spend an evening and I enjoyed Honey and Heather wholeheartedly. They had a bee-utiful romance and I’m very excited to read more of Weyland’s work!

buy the book on Amazon Kindle (US)

[agentsix606]

Snow Angel: A Oneshot

This is a bit of a heavy one-shot, so you've been warned. The MC is Dove, my Triple Frontier OC, but the Delta guys aren't mentioned since this is before she meets them, so it can be read as a standalone. This Oneshot is based on the song 'Snow Angel' by Renee Rapp, so be forewarned, it does talk about Sexual Assault.

This is an 18+ story.

Here is my full Masterlist if you wanna check anything out.

Trigger warning: SA mentioned (no SA scene, but it is mentioned), blood mentioned, roofie-ing mentioned, my characters need therapy. MINORS FUCK OFF

It’s jarring, the cold of the porcelain. Her body feels like static as she opens her eyes to the harsh lighting of the bathroom stall. Her senses are still dulled, still fuzzy when she tries to move her arm. Her head rolls to the side limply as she tries to check her surroundings: a bathroom stall that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since 1987, and her phone and purse are tucked in between her right wrist and her stomach. Nothing else catches her eye. 

Liv groans as she moves to grab her phone, although her eyesight is still blurry and her mind foggy, the fact that her clock reads 3 am and the last text message she received was from 7 hours ago tells her that something had happened to her and no one cared. Typical, she thought. 

As she gets up to move, a searing pain shot up through her pelvis. A sort of burning she hadn’t experienced before, almost like she tore a muscle, but in her stomach. It's almost like a UTI but infinitely worse. She’d figure that out later. She looked down and noticed a splotch of red on the crotch of her unbuttoned jeans. The dots immediately connected for her. 

I’ll deal with it later, she drunkenly decided. She crawled up against the stall door, putting as much weight on it as she could. She couldn’t feel her legs. And not in a fun way. The burning sensation increased as she moved. It brought tears to her eyes as she hissed through the pain. She unlocked the stall door and stumbled her way to the sink as if she were a young fawn on new legs. 

She reached down to her jeans, buttoned them up and pressed her hand against the bloodstain. Feeling the sticky mix of blood and random fluids was sobering. She slapped at the sink, turning it on to wash her hands and wash the blood off of her jeans. 

It wasn’t coming off. 

She took a deep breath in, a small whimper escaping her lips as she rubbed the spot with cold water and hand soap, it still wasn’t going away. In fact, it was spreading. She choked back tears as her resolve started to break. 

She was probably drugged, assaulted, left in a bathroom stall, and no one had checked on her for 7 hours. 

This was like a slap in the face. Sobering, painful and terrifying. She’d seen combat, been abandoned at a grocery store by her mother for an hour, she’d put pressure on gunshot wounds before and been shot herself. Yet this was probably the most scared and alone she’s ever felt. 

She swept her eyes to the mirror before her, hoping it would show her something different. It showed something worse. She had a black eye, her nose was twisted so far to the left that she was surprised she could still breathe out of it, and her lip was split with dried blood caked all over. How could she not feel that? 

She reached up to touch it, only to flinch as searing pain erupted from her nose. Okay, I’ll deal with that later. She wet a paper towel, dabbing it on her lip with some hand soap to clean it out. It was her only option. Finally, she looked down at her neck; her necklace was still there, but the purple and blue handprint told her that she should consider herself lucky it wasn’t broken and stolen. 

She would not cry, not right now. She did need to get the hell out of this bar, though. She knew better than to call any of those friends she’d gone out with, and she was smart enough to scroll past her parent’s contacts in her phone. The smartest thing would have probably been to call the cops, but she just wanted to be in her own bed and sleep off whatever drugs she was on, she’d go to the hospital once she had a nap. 

She settled on calling a taxi, the driver had been less than impressed with her slurred speech and shaky voice. She took a deep breath in before opening the bathroom door, only to be met with absolutely no one in sight. There were no staff or customers, and the entrance door had clearly been locked. 

She took a deep breath, sighed, unlocked the door, and walked out. She hoped the closing manager wouldn’t be fired for that. The taxi pulled up, and she crawled her way onto the grimy satin seat, fumbling with the seatbelt as she rattled off her address as clearly as she could with her tongue feeling like it was three sizes too big for her mouth. 

She stumbled to her front door, shaking as she missed the keyhole several times before she became face-to-face with her clearly annoyed roommate. Her face completely changed once she got a good look at Liv, though. 

Liv stammered as Beca stared at her like she had three heads. “I’ll- um- I’ll go to the hospital, I just wanna sleep.” 

Beca nodded, shock and concern creeping into her expression as she looped her arm around Liv’s back to help her into their apartment. “I should take you to the hospital right now, Liv. Your nose looks horrible, what did you hit it with? A sledgehammer?” 

Liv shook her head, “No idea, no help, just sleep.” she slurred as she struggled to turn her door handle, why were her hands so sweaty, she just washed them?

Beca gripped Liv by the cheeks, forcing Liv to face her as she brought the back of her hand to Liv’s forehead. “You’re burning up, you might be having a reaction to something. I should really get you to a hospital.” 

Liv sighed, “Sleep.” she slurred. 

Beca shook her head, throwing Liv’s arm around her shoulder, she guided her to the door, picking up her keys as she walked by. “Hospital, now. Your slurring is getting worse, you could have a concussion and letting you sleep might be the worst idea.”

Liv relented, allowing Beca to shove her into the passenger seat of her in desperate need of repairs 2002 Ford Focus. “Careful, might get blood on yer seat.” 

“It’s okay, Liv. We’ll worry about it after you get better, m’kay?”

“Okay, sorry,” Liv whispered, wet tears starting to streak down her cheeks. “Mmm, need a kit.”

“What kind of kit?” Beca asked.

“I dunno, something happened, need a kit thing.” Liv slurred, exhaustion slowing her thoughts.

“Hey! Stay awake, Liv. What kit? What happened?” Beca shouted, fear creeping into her tone.

“There’s blood on my pants,” Liv looked down, staring at the spot on her jeans. “It burns too, all down there. Mmm sorry.” 

Beca sighed, feeling a ghost’s hand gripping her throat as she connected the dots. “It’s gonna be okay, Liv. I’ve been there before. I promise everything will be okay.”

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What an interesting oneshot to start off with since I haven't posted writing in about a year... If you've ever gone through something like this, please know that you're not alone and that it's okay to reach out and get the help you need. You are so strong. I've linked some resources below for anyone who is struggling with this, again, you are so loved and so strong and I promise that everything is gonna be okay. You are not alone.

Word count:1158

A bunch of resources for Canada

National Sexual Violence Resource Centre

International SA Resources Page

[sisyphus-prime]

Starlo uty

First impression

I'm gonna be real i had seen screenshots of the character long before I knew it was a fan game and thought it was like. Flowey pretending to be some normal monster n that's why he had the hat. Like you take that hat off and its =). This counts as a first impression, even if i was very wrong.

Impression now

He has been occupying like 60% of my mind so this is all that but he is such a dude. Such a guy. I love how he's written, I love that hes not just silly, he's my favorite guy right now.. Im so sorry I thought you were that flower bitch you're such a fun cowboy <3.

Favorite moment

Every time he does that silly little pose. Every time.

Idea for a story

........... goofs with the feisty five. Maybe get a feisty six for a day with martlet.

Unpopular opinion

Transfem star is really fun, I agree! He wouldn't wear a dress instead of his whole cowboy thing tho. The cowboy is the point. The sheriff man.

Favorite relationship

His friendship with Ceroba is very nice and important. Very mutual "I love you. I won't love you like that. I know everything about you. No one cares about you like I do. I dont want to see you hurt and yet I have to watch you hurt yourself."

The whole feisty five thing is incredible tho.

Favorite headcanon

The slow motion thing in his fight is the only time his non attack magic showed itself. The fact that his "guard" is lowered after using it, despite not being spareable, can suggest that he isn't very practiced with his magic, and it wears him out fast. That's why he prefers physical weapons like the lasso and the gun.

[selodka-pod-shuboy]

Some fun facts and/or headcanons in this art:

> You can see parts of atack lineart in the Bravery section crossing the boarder. Originaly it was a mistake on my part, while sketching i placed Patience and Bravery too close to each other, causing their borders to awkwardly collapse, and consequently, had to fix it later on by simply redoing the boarders inside the part that was yet to be colored black (you can see similar thing on the Bravery and Integrity boarder) . Now i'd like to think that Bravery was to energetic to stay in their boarder and decided to meke room for their atacks, and similarly, Patience waited long enough to sneak a bit out of its boarrder and riun away

> I honestly felt a bit disoriented by the meaning of the color green in ut and uty. First of all, green can be asociated with the soul of Kindnes (from The Ball Game, like every other soul traint name). Then, you can say, that its healing properties may come from the place of kindnes in the opponent - green atacks heal you (in every boss fight, including floweys, where souls spawn their healing items). But then the mode you get when green (Undyne and UTU) is not "Heals you during fight", but a sheild. That leads me to a whole different thought - what if, when an opponent activates a different soul color mode for you, it partialy looses its characteristics? Like, lets say, the actual Soul Of Kindness, was able not only to sheild themselves during fight, but also to partialy or fully reatore their HP (seeing how they had a pan as a weapon, they might have had an ability to spawn their own green atacks and heal with them, or, perhaps, they were able to absorb the damage and/or transform it into HP)? In that case, same goes for Clover - where as at a certain LV, or driven by justification they can anaible certain abilities such as Dash, or Super Shot (idk its actual name), when inflicted by an oponent it only allowes you to shoot.

> i am not sure about that fact lore wise, but if we assume that Clover died with their gun having friendlies pellets (which i'm unsure if you even get them in any of the Pacififst runs), that their ammo in batle with flowey will stay the same, as it was when they gave the gun up to Starlo / When Asgore threw it away after their death (if we take neutral as the ending). Please feel fre to correct me, i would love to know more interesting facts about ammo (i hope that bird narc melts/hjk) and UTY in gen

(unadited ver)

Did a litle thingie for a comic contest