fuck

irl, i live alone. irl, i am disabled. irl, that intersection and my lack of interest in partnering actively makes life really hard. everything is expensive. i can't always cook when i want to or have fresh ingredients, because my symptoms don't care if I want to cut up vegetables and eat something homemade before they go bad. if I have a bad flareup and getting up is not in the cards, that's it. i have what's next to me. the lack of social support for single folks, for disabled folks, for folks whose family care is inadequate or damaging... it's impactful.

I talk about how i once visited a place with an ex partner. i mention how our relationship started because i was pressured into it, and i wasn't really into the level of seriousness and 'forever' she treated it with. everyone says it's weird that i agreed if i didn't want it to be serious. i remember being 16, saying no, and a chorus of people telling me i was stupid and immature, that her family was rich, that we would be cute and to listen to them, not my heart. my heart was saying nothing.

i look at my current age and life goals. for many of my peers, dating and marriage and eventual kids are common goals. i am watching my rights erode and trying to practice good mental hygeine. my five year goal is to be alive. my next major life milestone is a nebulous desire to find a life i can tolerate living.

being aromantic significantly impacts my day to day. i want to see aro people living their lives, and doing so with joy. i want to see aro adults making it, ones like me. i want aro people to thrive. i want to live, aromantically.

Undertale aus are cool, but I wish less of them revolved around the Silly Skeleton

Thus, I introduce my concepts of Ink!Chara and Ink!Asriel, based on the Planning and Executive parts of the creative process

We’re doing exactly the same thing we did with Chara. We’re making Noelle stronger.

In Asriel’s letter, he says, “If everything gets high enough, you become invincible. Nothing can hurt you anymore. Nothing can hurt anyone anymore.”

And from Chara themselves, “We eradicated the enemy, and became strong.”

That’s the conclusion Chara came to when we dragged them along the path of genocide.

And, it’s EXACTLY the same one Noelle is coming to herself.

The main difference (at least, narratively) is that we didn’t get to see Chara’s progression from apprehensive, to slight enjoyment, to participation, and finally taking the lead themselves at the end.

We are obv in the same position as before, but it’s far more.. eh, intimate, I guess you could say?

I believe this is intentional on Toby’s part, to make no mistake that it is US who is doing this. WE are leading Noelle along this path, just like we did with Chara.

And while they stayed confined to Undertale, we erased that pointless world, and moved on to the next.

PARALLELS, PEOPLE! PARALLELSSSSSSS

We are going to see Noelle’s transformation, unlike Chara.

Just like them, she’ll come to the same conclusion.

this is part 2 here is the previous part :D

I hope this comes off as more hopeful than the first part.

When Was Papyrus Born?

So, trying to figure out where exactly the skeleton brothers are from is an exercise in what seems to be futility. However, there’s one thing I haven’t seen analyzed much. And that’s Papyrus’ username. I don’t think I need to explain it, but, normally when someone ends their username with two numbers, it means that they are using the year of their birth as shorthand to make the name unique and theirs.

What ‘95′ could Papyrus be referring to, though … ? We know Chara’s fall takes place in 201X, and that Undertale takes place in the somewhat distant future. Unfortunately, we only get one reference that could imply how much time has passed.

So let’s go with that. 100 years, putting us somewhere in the ballpark of 211X.  That means that Papyrus’ birthday is either 2095 or 1995. Given this context, the easiest date to jump to is 2095. But … I’m not so sure anymore. Papyrus and Sans seem to be somehow related to Wingdin. Gaster. Father or grandfather, the fact that both brothers have blasters speaks of a connection with him.

But, moving on … Alphys, the first Royal Scientist since Gaster, made it her mission to unlock the power of the SOUL using the human SOULs and DT. And it apparently took Asgore a very long time to replace Gaster in the end. So that puts Gaster, and therefore Papyrus’ (and sans’) birthdates back. It seems 1995 is the most recent date that works.

Sans And Chara

Toby has gone on record talking about how, in a japanese translation, the word used for sans should be ‘older brother.’ During 201X, Papyrus will be … 15/24 years old, and Sans will be older. Sans, with his mysterious badge, secret lab and photo albums full of people we do not know, seems to have very likely been an adult, to have worked in an offical capacity. And his close (if secret) association with Alphys, and his love of science fiction (especially when it’s real) makes it just as likely that he worked with Gaster as a scientist, more or less.

That means that, in 201X, when Chara falls, Sans will be employed (indirectly) by the royal family. It seems startlingly likely that Chara could have met him. What would their relationship be like? Well … Let me draw up what I think like this. Sans has a whole system of childish code phrases to use when interacting with a friendly time traveler. He has a diverse and varied knoweldge of surface foods despite having never been there himself.

He likes bad jokes, to the point that he exalts those who make them …

… And the narration, which narrachara says is all Chara, is completely full of bad jokes.

And, lest we forget, Chara is the only main character who is established to draw … 

… And what do we find in Sans’ lab?

While we’re here, there are a few other links I would like to draw as well. We know Sans hates making promises, but the way he talks about the one to Toriel seems to imply that he HAS made one before, to another person like Toriel. (who shares Chara’s pun passion and ‘greetings’) And that he doesn’t like making promises because, like he says at the end of the kill-all, he ends up breaking them. It seems to me like he made a promise to Chara a long time ago.

But the way he says that a person who likes bad jokes HAS an integrity you can’t say no to tells me he never felt that Chara let him down, or he would have revised that opinion. As far as he knows, everyone he knows who likes bad jokes has been excellent. So, Chara didn’t ‘betray’ him and make him regret his promise that way. 

It seems very likely to me that Sans made a promise to Chara. And Sans, in the end, failed them. 

If you accept that Chara names the songs in the Soundtrack …

Look at the period in that song title. Undertale’s soundtrack is normally very sparse with punctuation, and the other themes that have a character name in it, Undyne, Alphys and ASGORE, lack the period. It creates the impression that, after speaking their name, the writer of the Soundtrack falls into flat, deliberate silence, or that they spit the name out like a bullet.

So, I was checking out the old Kickstarter description, and took a look at the story. Pretty typical. That’s Chara’s fall into the Underground, right there, just like the opening shows us.

… One moment, actually, let’s take a closer look …

Rain, rain … where have seen that before? Where is that important?

The song that plays during Sans’ date with you. The song that plays when you visit his workshop.