Here you are. Let’s keep it off other threads now. Does disqus allow subscribe/unsubscribe? Ugh, we really need to get rid of disqus.
Here you are. Let’s keep it off other threads now. Does disqus allow subscribe/unsubscribe? Ugh, we really need to get rid of disqus.
One by One: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4942816/chapters/11345293
A genuinely good fic. Plot-wise, it’s a pretty standard “let’s do the time warp again and save Asriel this time” and the beginning is rather melodramatic, but once the fic gets going it becomes really enjoyable. Chara is the main villain and manages to be creepy in all the right ways. The fic culminates in a Raksha shaping battle while managing to make it meaningful, which is no small feat.
Holding Pattern: http://archiveofourown.org/series/338128
A rather unique fic in that it follows an aborted Genocide run with no resets. Frisk kills everyone in the ruins and Snowdin, gets to Papyrus’ boss battle but accepts his mercy. Things progress from there.
The most memorable part of the fic is a very well-executed mindfuck. Chara seals Frisk’s ability to recognize and remember names, resulting in cascading mental consequences. This is the stuff I read for and so should you.
(On downside, I found the ending to be a bit weak. Everything was resolved far too quickly and neatly after the long build-up.)
The Golden Quiche: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5296460/chapters/12226634
Not so much a rec as a call for mine canaries. The premise is promising: a developed magic system, Magi Association wanting to get their hands on Frisk, politics and intrigue – but the size of the fic is intimidating and I have no idea if it gets anywhere. Seems to be decently written from a technical perspective, at least.
I would recommend You’re a Dicey Situation, by our good friend Ember: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7233016/chapters/16419535
I’m not sure if it’s quite as technically well-written as One by One, and the plot is a lot less ambitious, but I feel it captures the emotional and character angles a lot better. The way it uses Chara is also very clever.
I’ll check the fic, thanks.
In One by One he could have, for example, opened the door to Gaster’s realm for Frisk to enter but not follow because of one reason or another, forcing Frisk to navigate the timeless void, find their way to Gaster and then decipher the messages.
Killing Undyne directly in front of Sans makes him disappear mid-snore but changes nothing – he just lets you! However, it seems he’ll act if you actually leave her to die of the heat. Coward.
Also, Mettaton’s first quiz is impossible to lose, which makes sense, except that you’re on 1HP when he asks the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie question. Alphys clearly accounted for the possibility you wouldn’t notice her hints by the fact your HP is halved each time, which suggests that something was supposed to happen on that question that’d stop Mettaton from attacking you if you screwed up.
Also, I’m bugged by how killing named characters overwrites the general callouts – I got this awesome rant from Undyne because I’d killed some people but not Papyrus, while if he’s dead she only talks about him. Similarly, because I was trying to recreate my demo save, I killed several monsters, then Toriel, then reloaded to spare her, locking me out of Flowey’s “haha you think just because you spared her you’re a good person even though you’re still fine murdering others” rant.
Maybe she would have revealed her super-secret and totally not made up invention that would temporally disable his attacks but required a lot of time to charge up? That way, she still achieves her goals of helping Frisk even if they ignore her.
“Also, I’m bugged by how killing named characters overwrites the general callouts”
Hm, yes, it’s thematically dubious. I get why it is the way it is narratively: like it or not, named characters carry more weight in the audience’s eyes no matter what you do. But yes, for a game dedicated to subverting the general gaming mindset it’s a serious flaw. Some kind of combined call-out would be more appropriate, especially since it’s not like Undertale is lacking in little details that most people won’t ever see, so sparing effort on it wouldn’t be a big thing, comparatively.
My guess is it was some sort of power of friendship thing she meant to pull out to go with the question about her favorite friendship anime, but there’s no direct clue of what she was expecting to happen.
I was going to say something about technically, you’re defending yourself against Undyne and she’s been persistently hunting you down. But then I remembered he knows you’re the anomaly in space-time and so you can’t be killed permanently and, therefore, self-defense itself becomes a meaningless concept.
On the other hand, since stopping you means killing you, he probably thinks that decision is also meaningless and he’ll just let events flow from the player’s choices. He won’t save Undyne until you leave her to die from the heat, because that’s the point where your choice is removed from the situation. He’ll only obstruct you at the end of the Genocide Run, where your choice ends everything.
To me, Sans is like a metaphor for the limits of choice in an RPG. He’ll let you do whatever fantastically fucked-up thing you can think of (and allowed for in the game), and only intercedes when you’re going to “break the game”. Undertale is tightly designed enough that the usual forms of sequence-breaking don’t exist, barring hacks (which he’ll call you out on). Having Sans show up to fight/intercede only at the end of a Genocide Run does kind of make sense from that perspective, in my opinion.
Well also, her death scene is just so awful and she’s shouting about how she’s doing it for everyone else’s sake and won’t give up the whole time. Even if he wasn’t going to attack me, he could’ve tried to intervene somehow.
Good point about his meta role. I guess it just annoys me – he’s willing to fight to force the player to give up out of frustration, but waits until the end. Why not try to make the game more difficult in other ways, at other points?
I believe that’s because he’s so depressed. He doesn’t see the point in stopping you before then because he knows it’ll all be reset anyway. It’s only in the absolute worst-case scenario that he works up the motivation to intervene. It’s also heavily implied that he knows the omnicide end contains permanent consequences, which means he can’t hide behind the excuse that nothing matters anymore.
I have no idea, honestly. Like, from a metagame perspective, yeah, I have a clear idea of why he won’t, for instance, stop you from killing his brother. From a character perspective, I just do not know.
So, why is it a thing? It’s pretty obvious that Frisk is a typical silent protagonist model: they do talk, people react to them talking, sometimes we even get to select the exact words they speak, it’s just normally we don’t see them talk on-screen, it’s only implied in narration and various characters monologue at them. It’s very common in the genre, on this blog Pokemon games probably would be the most known example, so where did this headcanon come from?
is just like me and if you say otherwise you’re scum!!!must be protected. People project their own issues onto characters as a weird coping mechanism. There’s nothing inherently wrong about it and I do feel kind of bad about haranguing people for it, but it really kills engagement when you can’t tell if a fic is just issuefic with no relevance to anyone but the author or a serious attempt at interpreting the characters.(is it a thing, by the way? I’m genuinely curious).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_mutism
Would they, though? SIs tend to be poorly characterized precisely because they’re projections, not actual characters who are supposed to serve a narrative function. When you just want to use a character for vicarious living, they don’t really need such inconvenient things as personality or consistent characterization, just something to mark them as you.
(What’s also meta-funny is absolutely everything getting attributed to the character who was erased from existence.)
That said, I can’t really hate Gaster even though the fandom makes it really easy. I mean, he erased Gaster, that’s admirable.
The theory seems plausible. Certainly, a lot of MCs in other fandoms serve as a host for fanfic writers, so I can see them projecting their issues along with power ups onto their favorite doll.
Oh, and partial muteness…I mean, it’s a thing, but usually it’s a thing where the character can talk in one context and not in another, and is wholly capable of being a complete chatterbox in the right one, which I don’t see here.
You’re just mad you haven’t played it;)
Give in, Act. If only you knew the power of the under side!
Also I hate everything and if I don’t like it, I’ll feel both stupid and like an asshole. The risk outweighs the reward.
Hope we don’t bother you too much with our discussions and digressions. Now at least they shouldn’t bleed into other posts so much. Feel free to tell us if there are any other problems we can fix.
The connection to Chara isn’t obvious unless you also know Feralphoenix’s very specific interpretation of Chara, which is basically identical to the protagonist of Uncommon Time.
At he end of the Genocide Route, when Frisk meets Asgore, he says he can’t tell what kind of monster they are. Since he had no problem identifying Frisk as a human being in the other routes, it seems we are supposed to read this as meaning Frisk has become so evil they seems inhuman. But “human” being synonymous with “good” and “monstrous” being synonymous with “bad” doesn’t make sense in the context of the game’s universe, especially from Asgore’s POV! Am I missing something?
In-universe, well, Chara is a demon of the “personification of your sins” type or close enough, so that may be visible. If your only frame of reference are humans and monsters, I guess it makes sense to not think of them as a human.
On a more serious note, apparently Bravely Second also did the thing where it calls the player out for JRPG stuff and gets all meta on the player. That could be fun for someone to do a comparison of or something. At the very least, it’ll be interesting. But I’d feel bad to put someone through that again. I could probably give it a look when I fix my 3DS troubles. But I haven’t played the first one. And I’d have to drag myself away from Binding of Isaac first.
Because it amuses me.
Chara’s theme song.
So since we’re apparently using these things as fanfic advertisement boards, here’s mine: Do No Harm
This is going to require some explanation: It’s based on the Underfell AU, which is basically that all the monsters are actually evil but Flowey is good. It’s mainly just an excuse to draw the skelebros in evil outfits and write a lot of torture porn; last I checked no other stories have made it past Waterfall. This was my attempt to make a full, coherent narrative out of it while also calling out all the things I disliked about it. Unfortunately, it took me over a year to finish, so I think it got drowned out in the ocean of skelebros oneshots and nobody really noticed. Don’t make the same mistake as me, kids! Stick to simple stuff for spitefics!
https://www.deltarune.com/
I know so little about Undertale I don’t even know why I should’ve heard about whatever this is.
I am a god of the internet.
So, I’ve played it. It’s quite fun and surprisingly meaty for what amounts to a demo. Like, you have an entire conflict with climax and resolution and shit, which is nice. The AU aspect is funny in the context of the Undertale fandom.
Yeah, it is kinda surprising how complete it feels. If Toby haven’t gone and said it was a demo I could have belived it was just a short special or something.
It is a good thing it is that way, at any rate, as apparently the production of the full version haven’t even begin yet.
I played it, it is lovely. It feels like it’s rather pointedly addressing the criticisms leveled at Undertale — a more cynical narrative, and more typical RPG gameplay with multiple party members and abilities. I like that Toby’s outright said it’s going to be a different thing entirely — as much as I enjoyed Undertale, there wouldn’t be much point in retreading the same ground. The “your choices don’t matter” thing is a little disappointing, but I’m interested to see where it’s going with all this.
The one thing is that I feel it’s a bit too silly — Undertale got extremely serious right from the opening and overall maintained a dark undercurrent even under its whimsical tone, but Deltarune feels like it lacks that depth. Susie and Ralsei’s constant presence as silly kids makes everything feel lighter. I also felt there was a lack of women (and no Alphyne!!! ;_;), but that could change.
also how do you dodge Jevil’s carousel attack, WTH is that even
I find it funny how fans immediately went “Gaster reference!” “Sans definitely remembers Undertale events!” “Kris is Chara!” “No, Chara is the narrator once again!” “But not the intro narrator, that’s Gaster!” and so on.
Yeah, I agree with this. The dark world is, ironically, massively lighter in tone than pretty much any part of Undertale. It kinda lacks the gravitas.
Now, I can see how it could be utilized in the finalized game, as a direct contrast to whatever’s going on with Kris at the end and such, but, well, time will tell how that will turn out.
It would be hilarious if Gaster is totally irrelevant and the references are once again just there to troll people.
If Sans is important I will be disappoint and will only forgive it if you can hook up Undyne and Alphys >_>
Yeah, I think this is where he is going for. The tone is sillier, but there is a creepy undertone, even before the ending. The “character creation”. Kris having shadows in their face, unlike Frisk. The introduction to the dark world is much more unsettling than the introdution to the underground. Overal the scenary is creepier as well. And in the “epilogue” you have all the mentions about something being wrong with Kris, before the knife scene. Not to mention that, for Undertale fans, seeing so many familiar faces in a slightly, but not completely, different context is a bit off putting.
I think it is clear there is something going on underneeth all the silliness. It is not just roses.