#chronotale

"What? Are you shocked of the own little hell you created? This is where you've been storing the nasty little thoughts they didn't want, after all."

This is Chronotale, where one little item changed the Underground for the better.

No matter the proximity to the Alpha Timeline, Frisk can show a lot more variation than us. Age. Build. Color. Assignment and presentation. Sometimes gender. Vocality. Whether they're autonomous, haunted or possessed.

One of the older Frisks to come from an AT of UNDERTALE is that of "Chronotale."

This may or may not have originally been the case, as this timeline's Alphys is also quite little, perhaps correlating with Flowey making no effort to hide himself, but the late royal foster Chara had somehow managed to reinsert themself in the timeline from wherever their will persisted after death.

At first, their influence was restricted to Frisk as a voice in the back of their mind, who was manipulated into believing their death would become permanent if they let the timeloop end. But then came an exchange in which Sans insinuated he could also remember the loops, and they couldn't bear to trap him with them.

But by then, the late royal foster had accumulated enough influence to kill Frisk for their SOUL and hijack the timeloop.

When the reconstruction was complete, their relation to the royal family had been wiped. The SOUL they relinquished to his late royal highness anonymized. Their entire tragedy mythologized.

Thus, Chara was alive again, Frisk believed them to their baby sibling, and they lived with her majesty Toriel, whom had not have taken a vow of hermitude, so they would visit Snowdin together. With Undyne and other monsters in no hurry to turn in Frisk's SOUL to his majesty Asgore.

Before I get started on the next AU (in this case, Chronotale) is typically when I catch up on anything found/posted on previous AUs since last archival, and I try to do that in the same order they were first archived in. I'd love to be able to have put them all up in the exact order of creation, but maybe if it's not too late to find all their dates, I could post a timeline at some point.

That said, thanks to recent community efforts to recover it from obscurity, the main AU I'm gonna be catching up next interlude will be Birdtale.

Which brings me to the rest of this post: the elephant in the room.

I'm still waiting to read a translation of the Evernote doc, so I don't know yet if it's supposed to be canon, but I was sent ~30 Birdtale posts, so I'm aware that the creators' art includes frans. It's not the first time I've had this conflict, and looking at the other AUs on my list, it won't be the last, so I'll address this now.

Frans is not a ship I'm comfortable with, and it's not the only ship I'd normally avoid that's shown in some of these AUs... but I also think selective omission would be irresponsible as an archival service. If utmvarchive's intended purpose is to conserve these works before they become lost media, and references to them become missing context, the blog can't always fulfill that role and still represent my own feelings.

For better and for worse, these AUs were influential in the development of utmv as its own fandom. Whatever revisions may follow, I made utmvarchive to keep a record of AUs' original versions and keep track of details that have since been forgotten or retconned. There's probably better ways I could do this, but I'm admittedly an amateur basically doing volunteer work as a hobby. Ideally, everything would be exported to an independent website in case Tumblr closes down, but I'm not an experienced web-builder and can't afford to hire anyone.

Point is, to continue, I've been having to weigh personal boundaries against archival integrity. So far, whenever I caught something in time like portrayals of frans (ex: Echotale), I'd tag posts accordingly and precede the whole AU in the queue with a bolded content warning post in case viewers also want to filter the AU before it comes up. This would be the first instance I can recall, though, in which the alternate Frisk isn't clearly older, which is why I've been especially reluctant this time.

So when I'm back from this break: If I do decide to archive every recovered Birdtale post this interlude, utmvarchive will put up a cw post beforehand, but I hope you'll understand that it does not reflect what ships I myself am comfortable with in my own spaces.

OK SO FIRST OFF I WANNA ADDRESS THIS SINCE IT JUST KINDA HAPPENED WITHOUT ANY EXPLANATION-

In the chapter “Fight On, Undyne!” Lucca mentions that they met a robot that Marle named “Tangent” (as well as Robo). I simply added this character (she’s honestly an old OC I haven’t touched since like 2016 that I decided to bring back for this) to satisfy the whole “four or more people can’t enter a time gate at once” thing since I couldn’t figure out a good way to rewrite the plot so that Frog stuck around, so quickly scrapped that and I thought it’d be inefficient if I rewrote it to be that more than two people couldn’t enter a time gate at a time. So! My only other option was to simply add another character that they met in 2300AD. So! That’s why Tangent exists lmao. I should draw her sometime to show what she looks like.

So! Another thing I wanna address. Back when the monsters still roamed the Earth, they co-existed with the humans and the mystics (in fact, in this universe, the mystics are sort of a “sub-species” of monster. They’re very similar to the monsters, but they’re also kind of their own thing? Like, they’re mostly made up of magic very much like monsters and they can use magic as well, obviously. Hence why they’re a “sub-species” of monster.) since the beginning of the Zeal era, and possibly even before that. It may make sense why the Human vs Monster war even happened when you take into consideration that Queen Zeal was ruling over Zeal (by herself) when she declared war on monster kind. The “seven magicians” that sealed the monsters underground (below even the village of the Earthbound in the winter wastelands beneath Zeal) were Queen Zeal, Schala (against her will), Dalton, Melchior, Gaspar, Belthasar, and some other seventh NPC that I could give a random name to but I haven’t dwelled too much on that lmaoo but anyway. This also explains why the monsters have more advanced technology in present day. They were around when Zeal was a thing (since Zeal in canon Chrono Trigger had WAY more advanced technology than present day Guardia) and since they were deep below the surface when Queen Zeal and all summoned Lavos in the Ocean Palace which ultimately resulted in Lavos decimating the entirety Zeal, the monsters were not effected. (Since he was physically summoned by using magic and the power of the Mammon Machine, it was almost as if he was “teleported” there, so to speak. Then he returned via the Mammon Machine, so he didn’t have to go through the underground, though they did feel some shaking, almost in an Earthquake-type fashion). I also think it’s important to note that before the kingdom sealed the monsters below the surface, Janus tended to gravitate more towards the monsters than his fellow humans. The only human he felt comfortable around was, of course, Schala. So when they all banished the monsters underground, he was more or less more lonely since Zeal always had Schala occupied with the Ocrean Palace. So really at that point he pretty much only had Alfador. Fast forward several hundred years, now! Medieval Guardia times. Chara’s time. The year they fell down MT.Ebott was roughly around 590-ish. Before Glenn was transformed into Frog and before Cyrus died. Chara personally knew Glenn and often hung around him since they knew how he felt when everyone was mean to him. (Since they were also bullied and had a rough home life.) Glenn and Cyrus were the only humans Chara trusted and liked. Glenn and Cyrus even went far enough as to train Chara in sword fighting, despite them just being around 10 or 11 at the time. Chara considered the both of them to be more parental figures than their actual parents. Of course though, even with both of their support and encouragement, it unfortunately was not enough for Chara as they did attempt to take their own life by falling down MT.Ebott. Of course though, that didn’t work as they were found by Asriel and taken in by Asgore and Toriel. They did miss Glenn and Cyrus and felt bad they kinda abandoned the both of them but they did feel more safe with the Dreemurrs and around the other monsters than on the surface. (To the point that they would come up with the plan to consume buttercups and poison themselves so Asriel could absorb their SOUL and cross the barrier to take 6 other human’s souls to break the barrier and free monster kind with Asriel). It was shortly after Chara fell into MT.Ebott that Glenn and Cyrus went up against Magus. Think about that, Glenn, Cyrus and Chara all went missing roughly around the same time. Maybe a few days-ish apart. Even several years later, Glenn still doesn’t know what happened to Chara. They never told anyone what they were gonna do so neither Glenn or Cyrus knew what happened to them.

Chara does ultimately die when they consume the buttercups for their and Asirel’s plan and then dies for good when the humans on the surface kill the fusion between them and Asriel. What wakes Chara from death, however, is Crono’s determination when he falls into the underground. Through his determination is also the reason why they’re forced to be with him and can’t go farther than a certain distance away from him and because they’re bond to him and his determination is the reason why only he can see and interact with them. However, Napstablook and Mad Dummy can also see and interact with them because they’re ghosts themselves. (Mad Dummy, tho possessing a dummy, can see and interact with them because they aren’t fully corporal, hence why Mettaton can’t see or interact with them himself because he’s fully corporal with his robot body). Chara can also see the SAVE points because Crono is able to see them.

So, now that the sort of “backstory” is established, let’s move on to Lavos and touch a bit on him! First I wanna say that I took the liberty and sort of gave him a personality and made him more sentient than he’s implied to be in Chrono Trigger. His goal is no different than it is in Chrono Trigger: to devour the Earth for his own personal gain and then send his spawn out to other planets to repeat the process. One could argue that he isn’t really so much of a “bad guy” since he’s just doing what he needs to in order to survive, but what makes Lavos undoubtly lean more so towards an antagonist in this universe is his motives and the way he’s going about doing what he needs. He’s cocky, manipulative, he knows what he wants and he’s determined to get it done no matter what or else he could die. (One could still argue that perhaps he isn’t aware that what he’s doing is bad, per se. He just knows he has to feed off the Earth or else he’ll die). The reason Lavos is awoken while Crono and Lucca are in the underground is kind of similar to how Chara is awoken. Lavos was awoken once Crono entered the CORE. Crono’s determination is what awoken Lavos. He began to stir about and then by the time the party makes it to Mettaton and starts battling him, he breaks through the ground and enters the underground, which happens to be in the back of Asgore’s castle, by the barrier. He immediately recognizes the human SOULs for what they are and realizes that he can absorb said SOULs to become God-like and speed up his planet-devouring by a lot. Lavos does have a SOUL himself. He has an alien SOUL, which is dark purple in color. Alphys actually did resource on alien souls back when she was studying human/monster souls in the True Lab. When she thought her work with the fallen monsters and golden flower she injected with Determination was a failure, she found old research and notes on a creature living beneath the Earth left behind by the previous Royal Scientist (Gaster) and she read those and thought maybe perhaps if she can’t get monster souls to last, maybe she could somehow acesss this creature and try with its soul. She knew it was risky and could potentially end badly but she was desperate since she knew everyone was counting on her. So she went through Gaster’s old notes and research several times. What actually prevented her from even trying to summon Lavos to her lab to expirement on his SOUL was that the fallen monsters she had injected with Determination had woken up. So she turned her attention to them again. But of course, anyone who knows the story of the True Lab knows how that ends. But! The reason I brought this up is that once Lavos broke into the underground, Alphys knew almost immediately what was going on due to all the research she read and did herself. She retreated to her true lab to try and find a way to stop him before he broke out of the underground, or worse.

Lavos taking the human souls means he’s now the most powerful and determined being in the underground, therefore taking Crono’s ability to SAVE, LOAD, and RESET, which means if he dies in the underground....he dies for good unless Lavos decides to reload a SAVE file to before he gets killed.

(However, the SAVE, LOAD, and RESET functions do not work out of the underground unless a monster, or alien in Lavos’ case, were to absorb several human souls then they would have enough power to use those features out of the underground. Crono, being a human, cannot absorb other human souls, so therefore cannot ever be able to use these functions out of the underground.)

Even when Lavos leaves the underground via using his and the stolen human souls to shatter the barrier, Crono still doesn’t regain his ability to SAVE, LOAD and RESET since Lavos is considered the most powerful being. (In other words, only one being may posses this power at a time).

Lavos has three forms, just like in Chrono Trigger. Lavos breaks into the underground in his first form, AKA the one you see throughout most of Chrono Trigger. Once he absorbs the human souls, however, he takes the form of the humanoid creature you see and fight at the very end of the game, except with many obvious differences.

With pods n’ all, he is able to escape the underground and start doomsday early.

And because the barrier is now destroyed monsters like Undyne, Alphys and Mettaton (and others) agree to help Crono, Lucca and the others to stop and defeat Lavos or else all life on Earth could come to an end.

So anyways I think that’s all I wanted to address at the moment, lmao. I kinda info dumped the HELL out of this but I think everything else beyond this point could either be considered a spoiler or has yet to be determined (lol no pun intended).