The end of Sweet as Sugar
There obviously be massive spoilers ahead.
Well everyone, it's complete. Nearly two years, 32 chapters, and a novel 100,000 words longer than any modern publisher would accept...
There may be an epilogue, for the sake of cuteness...but the meaty bits have been broiled to perfection, and served up scrumptiously for my readers to enjoy.
I don't know if I ever mentioned it- this entire story was born from what was, originally, a third-person custom fic for a dear online friend of mine. After the first few chapters, she requested that I rewrite it as a reader insert...and here we are. But the idea of it, the very first scene inkling of what would become SaS (though I didn't know or plan for it at the time or in fact at any point until very recently), actually came from an imagined confrontation between Gaster and Asgore, with a glitching, broken Gaster defending his family. It was entirely unrelated to SaS- was meant to go in a different fic entirely. It's interesting then, as you'll learn in just a moment, that the two ideas were reunited again in the end, when I never fully intended them to be.
So many of my works start that way- a climactic moment that I work backwards from and find the story within. That hunt for the little details inside of what would otherwise be the single, huge moment...it's my favorite part of writing. The curve of a woman's hand, the expression on a person's face- those things are what makes a story come to life.
A fun fact- Papyrus was meant to die at the end of this story. As he tore the mage's soul free from his body, Riker shattered his with one last desperate attack. The death flags were so strong that I actually had to go back and retcon some things from previous chapters- the idea that enlightenment made a monster a glass cannon was a big one. That they could do tremendous damage, but their soul was essentially exposed and vulnerable for the duration. A lot in the last five chapters had to be 'lightened' too, tiny tweaks in vocabulary here and there to justify a happier, less severe ending.
There was a very heartbreaking scene of Gaster 'welcoming' him as Papyrus passed him by, going to a peace that Gaster couldn't follow to- literally the grim reaper pyschopomp of his family. In that ending, the reader and Sans, hysterical in their grief, instinctively entered a flawed enlightenment contract together out of pure desperation and heart break, which triggered a 'permanent' elevation of Sans into the boss monster he was meant to be. A snapped Sans, with her mentally-broken encouragement, raged through the (many more) followers of the arsonist present, who were now rabid after his fall stripped Riker's numbing magic off them. The fog of death spread through a corner of the city, with Sans hunting them using Riker's lingering magical signature, until Toriel and Asriel intervened- Asriel stopping the reader, letting her attack and scream into him instead, while Toriel kissed Sans brokenly as Asgore looked on.
The 'epilogue' was Toriel and Asgore separated, ruling as a now permanently divorced monarchy. Frisk and Asriel's relationship overcame the strain the Crown mage's deception put on it, and now took a more active leadership role as Asgore sank quietly into a sort of retirement, realizing how wrong he'd been at the end of everything. Sans and the reader lived a very quiet life in a large, empty-feeling home the crown purchased for them at the edge of the city, with her dog Cheezit and a stray cat Sans found. They weren't quite a couple, per say- there was little romance there, at least not for a long, long time -but there was a suggestion of some mutual comfort, which may have lead into one or two future sequel one shots of 'in very different ways, we both loved someone who died, and a piece of you became a fundamental piece of me during it, and now we literally share one soul permanently' explorations into what that relationship could have slowly become.
SO as you can see, big fucking difference haha.
I actually have a windings generator connected to a shitty little custom piece of code/program on my laptop, and by complete accident, pasted a sentence into it. Seeing that sort of made me stop and think...and realize that, by accident, I had set up an equally plausible alternate ending. Gaster was present in the story, was contributing to the readers success, and helping guide her down the very narrow path to victory. And as a purely sweet and romantic thing, I had included that monster Souls shared visual and physical sense memories at the point of climax with someone they loved. Also that, in the universe of this particular fic, I had written skeletons as the resurrected corpses of physical humans... which meant the monster Soul within them had to come from somewhere, since it wasn't being created by the magical union of two monster parents. Where did it come from? Well logically, it came from the human that died.
The moment I kind of put the three together, I realized that there was perhaps an alternate ending to the story that I hadn't even considered. This happened extraordinarily last minute too- barely two weeks ago. The plot unveiled itself as I wrote it...and the rest is history.
I hope you enjoyed this, my dear Readers 🩷 And I hope you enjoy what's to come...;)
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