~I don't have a mom my dog ate her!
Alright I gotta make a post, all this stuff is getting so backed up and blehh. Anyway, UMO first.
First one!
Ritsuka Tachibana - Chrono Trigger - Wind Scene
BACO - I wanna be the guy - I wanna be the medley
Stone McKnuckle - Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero
Sayonara Maxwell - Undertale - Megalovania Dual
I wanna be the medley is pretty long. Wind Scene is so pretty though.
Second one!
Audix - Super Metroid - Samus in the Inferno (short edit)
Audio Anomaly - Undertale - The Core
Noteblock feat. Nathaniel Platier - Undertale - Beneath the Surface
RichaadEB feat. Ace Waters - Undertale - An Evening with the Unhallowed
Beneath the Surface is also pretty long, aaa what a great ending it has though.
And third one!
Zephyr Cradle - Chrono Trigger - Singing Mountain ~ I'll reach there
ChrystalChameleon - Undertale - It's Raining Somewhere Else (Instrumental version)
RichaadEB feat. ToxicxEternity - Undertale - Oase de dans
Ace Waters - Undertale - Have You Ever Heard of a Talking Flower?
TheGreatAnansi - Undertale - Dark Darker Yet Darker
Landy R. Shambles - Undertale - Anomaly ~ Theme of Sixbones
Ace Waters - Undertale - Like Snowflakes
There was a weird distortion going on, I got most of it I think but be wary of odd hisses here and there.
As for recent news, mood continues to fluctuate randomly, stuff keeps happening, just one day at a time I guess. I dunno? At a certain point even when new bad things start happening they don't really seem to register, or matter.
I've been drawing a bunch though cause WHAT ELSE DO I DO. So I do have that! Stuff here varies wildly from incredibly sad to really goofy, depending on what was on my mind at the time. General spoiler warning! Play the game and come baack
Some comics may be squished vertically on LJ, check out the post on DW or right-click/view the image to fix it.
let's get started right away with the sadness
sans in the dustjar continues. i gave this the tag "misery" on tumblr which i meant more as a descriptive tag than a name, but some people have taken to calling it the misery series which i don't mind, really. dustjar, misery, sans is dead, papyrus is grieving, whatever.
thoughts about death. you guys probably have a better idea of where these are coming from than most. people want a beginning or an end to it or some kind of explanation or resolution and it's not really a story, it's just venting. as such i feel weirdly detached about responses to these. it's a kind of "it's not FOR you" situation i guess? i don't blame people for wanting an ending or a plot though. for most, what's the difference between these and handplates, really? it's all just angst, right? it's interesting though how feedback completely changes in tone depending on the context, though. someone going "STOP THIS IMMEDIATELY YOU SADIST WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU WHY IS EVERYTHING YOU DO SAD" feels very different when it's directed at handplates as when it's directed at this series. but again, why should anyone think of these any differently without any background information on them? i'm completely aware it's my own doing and all, it's just interesting to me.
even so, i've gotten some nice notes from people saying that they've been going through terrible losses or dealing with death in their own lives and the comics have helped them a little, so i guess some good comes out of these. which is all one can ask for really.
despite not being a story, this actually would partly explain why papyrus keeps carrying sans around. he did say he just wanted to be with him, after all.
after poor loki died. i did some other doodles of him hanging around the undertale world as the Obnoxious Cat but i never finished them.
on dev this brought on a ton of people sharing all these tragic, awful stories about cat or kitten deaths they'd endured and it's like i get why you're doing this guys really i do but man it was hard to read
drowning in a wave of grief came on recently (well technically, this cover) and this image popped into my head, so i went for it. it's similar in a sense to that one huge pic i did with the mother 3 cast to the same song a while back. drawing bubbles is really fun and soothing, i always forget that.
a few people got super concerned that papyrus was committing suicide here and that'd be the ending when i really intended the drowning to be a metaphor. it didn't even occur to me it could be taken literally. you need to make these things clear to people!
anyway around this point jaz sent me the most ADORABLE LYRICS TO BONETROUSLE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and i was taken by a fey mood and had to sing them
Muzicons.com
And then I thought, I should do some illustrations to go with it!
THE LYRICS WERE JUST SO CUTE, WHAT COULD I DO
going from the dustjar stuff to this might have been my most violent mood whiplash production ever, haha.
Someone was wondering what an Underswap version of handplates would be like and it's like... mostly the same I think? I mean if you swap their personalities it doesn't really affect the events too much since they have so little control over anything that's happening to them. What would really change things would be who'd have 1 HP - would it still be Sans, would it be Papyrus instead? I don't really know much about this AU.
Then a few people asked about an Underfell version but I gotta be honest with you guys, I'm just not into Underfell at all. I can't get into any AU where the brothers are mean to each other! It makes me too sad. And like, the most common conflict in handplates is the choices people make and believing in the good in people despite all things pointing to the contrary, which... don't seem like things anyone in UF cares about. If Gaster's super evil and the brothers are evil then like, what's the point? Where's the hope? Anyway.
People so into Sixbones but I just don't know what to do with the poor thing. So a shoddy doodle of them goopin around.
Speakin of handplates though!
After all the tension and shouting from the last one, this one must seem pretty sedate. Gaster and Papyrus tend to have these long conversations like this, it keeps happening!
Papyrus's priorities of course are fixed on whether or not he can still glow to keep his brother sane. Answer: yes! People were scared about that despite Papyrus glowing fine in the future, haha. The weird timeline of this can be comforting at times.
The flower mug was a gift from Asgore. Papyrus is sleeping in one of the beds from the True Lab which are way nicer than I remembered them being when I went to go check. Alphys really went all out down there.
Gaster was doing work in the room while waiting for Papyrus to wake up, thus why there's papers on the desk and such. He must be so behind with all the TORTURING he does in his spare time.
This originally ended at "I have to get back to work" but then a snip of a conversation came to me that could relate to this (Papyrus catching that breaking Sans's eye had been a mistake) and I went and folded that in... then in the process had to fold in the two of them walking, which meant figuring out how Papyrus could navigate, which lead to the healing panel, and the conversation just kept kind of evolving. THIS IS HOW THINGS GET OUT OF CONTROL SO EASILY
As mentioned, Gaster's pretty tired so he just picks him up once and puts him down pretty quickly. This is when Gaster starts to realize that he's losing the ability to heal. He didn't lose it all at once but gradually, so you can imagine how annoyed he is that for all the effort he's putting into healing, it's not working very well. He knows why it's happening though.
I don't know how he expected Papyrus to follow him, maybe just by tracking his footsteps but knowing him he probably didn't even think about it. The two ideas I had for guiding him were hanging onto his sleeve and the magic hands, and I went back and forth on which one would go first before he switched to the other. In the end I went with the sleeve first, figuring Gaster would probably want to avoid summoning up magic hands since he's tired, as mentioned, but then he gets so annoyed he does it anyway.
The odd thing is that while this falls first in chronological order, this isn't the first time that Papyrus has tried to reason with him in these comics. So it feels a bit like this conversation has happened before, but for the two of them it hasn't happened yet! Regardless though, Papyrus doesn't give up very easily, so no matter how many times Gaster rebuffs him, he's going to keep trying to get through to him. He always believes in you!
Gaster loves saying people need him to do this but a lot of the time that isn't true at all. But it lets him sleep at night so he's not letting go of that rationalization for anything. On some level he really believes that, and to be fair with some things that could break the barrier you could argue it's true. And even this actually is leading to something that could legitimately be an enormous scientific breakthrough, even if it came from him messing with Sans's eye just out of a desire to fix his own (although, you could ALSO spin that as him wanting to figure out how to heal more effectively to heal OTHER monsters, but that was more of a sidethought I bet). But again so much of it is just rationalizing and justifying these awful things. Shades of Omelas, haha.
One random detail I like in this is the difference between his body language and how calmly he says "you will be silent and obedient." It just always makes me read that line in an interesting way, haha.
The little tiny flashback is again the remnants of his conscience flaring up, him reading to the two of them, all one big family. Man someone did the saddest comic about that that always comes to mind for this kind of thing, just "you want a family of things" and aaaa my heart.
Gaster is of course lying to Papyrus, and to himself about it. LIAAAAR, LIAAAAR, LIIAAAARRR
I doubt Sans will be much comforted by knowing it was an accident since his eye's still busted but hey, who knows. It also amuses me that for all the grappling with his conscience Gaster does he still says a blatantly callous thing about how Papyrus's magic seizure was a really pretty light-show. GASTER WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
Someone asked if I could do a Sixbones tsum and I was super puzzled about how to do it for a while, since there are no Tsumtsums with two heads (i know, can you believe it). Eventually though I came up with this, I think it'll work.
Someone was all "Now that Sans is missing his eye, would you say his vision isn't "al-right"?"
SANS APPRECIATES THE PUN, A LITTLE
abrupt whiplash again, look out
more idle thoughts, it occurred to me that toriel would know a lot about grief, given just how many children she's lost. so many children.
this one apparently helped a few people with their own grief, at least. or accurately described the grief they felt, which was nice to hear. in some ways we're all the same. or, similar anyway.
she's sort of wearing nana's clothes.
and WHIPLASH BACK
where DO babybones come from, the world may never know. You could actually read this as handplates related but you don't have to, haha. It does give it a faintly sad tinge though if you do.
A few people were like DOES THAT MEAN GRILLBY HAS BABIES ALL THE TIME?? and i think intent plays a major part on whether a fire becomes alive or not, but that's just me, haha.
Alphys is supposed to be wearing legwarmers but it looks sort of like her pants are down. In the end I was like eh, I can live with that interpretation. Kid you're interrupting something here. Fish and lizards both DO come from eggs though.
Then someone was like "my totally serious headcanon is that skeletons grow in glasses of milk" and I absolutely had to draw that. Then i stared at it for twenty minutes like, awww.
Me and Bardic tossed around other babies in milk ideas, like someone trying to pour chocolate sauce in a glass, or someone stirring them around and them getting all @_@, but then I wondered if it was getting weird. IS IT WEIRD if you don't think so then maybe I'll finish the doodles i did of such things.
Someone wondered if the brothers could speak in each other's font, which brought this to mind. I use the pixel fonts someone made for the brothers which unfortunately do not have the appropriate cases for this, so I had to improvise by going back to Comic Sans MS and Parchment and trying to get the look right. Parchment in particular looks too thick but eh, what can you do.
This kind of teasing only ends in tears you guys.
MORE SADNESS
I don't think anything specific brought this on except the image of Papyrus lying on the floor, so I sort of ran with it, then the caption "I'd feel like garbage, but that'd require feeling anything at all" came to mind.
Asgore here a bit clueless but trying to help, as usual. Boy did this bring out Asgorelovers on devart though. also UGH three quarters from behind is THE WORST angle to draw asgore from
Someone asked what Zar's reaction to sixbones or handplates would be, and it's like, since Frisk is just an empty vessel for the player to inhabit, in any given comic you can replace Frisk with Zar without changing much. I could go more into the meta aspect of this but bleh I feel like I've been typing forever. You probably get the idea.
So there's this fic called Flowey is not a Good Life Coach that got recced to me, and I read it and was like man this is a cool interpretation of magic, this is close to how I'd interpret it in writing. :O and then the beta for it started chatting to me about handplates and such, so we'd talk about the fic, and then boom, I find out from the beta that me and the author of the fic actually knew each other way back when! Mind, blown. Who knew we'd cross paths again in such a weird way?
ANYWAY THE FIC IS REALLY SAD AND UPSETTING and unfinished so I wrote up this ending for it, which I think totally fits in with the spirit of the fic.
I did an art trade with the dude who does ask-the-skele-household and they did THE CUTEST pic of Hunter and Smoker aaaa. They wanted to hang out with Papyrus so this scene came to mind, haha. Driving a toy car on someone is one of life's little joys.
You may recognize a bunch of the toys they're playing with! All real, except the tsum tsums and the toy car, haha. It was interesting seeing how many people could identify. More people than I thought could tell that was a Fobby! (Foppy? I always forget which is which).
Unit coherence is taken from that old SomethingAwful article about Warhammer, haha. I've never actually played Warhammer though.
It really amuses me that Sans just locks himself in his room during your date with Papyrus. Papyrus probably told him to do that so he wouldn't embarrass him or something BUT WHATEVER I TOOK THIS ROUTE WITH IT
I joked about Sans being antisocial but really during the game he seems to have a lot of acquaintances who say he's the life of the party. Which doesn't necessarily preclude that but it does make it unlikely. But hey, maybe he just felt antisocial for this moment! His room IS locked when you're doing your date, and he IS in there to provide mocking music when dogs are running about.
I wonder if Papyrus plays an instrument. I asked on Tumblr and got a whole ton of suggestions! The most popular seem to be xylophone, trumpet, and violin. Though someone did suggest Papyrus freestyle rapping which is the greatest mental image ever. Sans could beatbox! If I could write freestyle rapping I would totally draw this.
A lot of people wondered if he was playing a particular song on the trombone but nah they're just random trombone sounds, I didn't have anything specific in mind.
Handplates again! I mentioned in an ask cluster that Gaster doesn't glow around the brothers, being an adult and also all emotionally stunted and such, so a few people were like but what COULD make him glow around them
So after a bit of thought I ended up with two scenarios and neither of them are around the brothers, haha. But still! I thought they'd be fun to do, so.
Better take a break before you do the other one or you're going to pass out, Gaster. Purple is fear and I'm thinking about Red for pain but I dunno, I may change my mind. Yellow is stress normally but I'm leaning towards that being Gaster's default color, so he's glowing yellow to try and calm himself down. Though he's also pretty stressed.
This is the first time he's shown up without the Lost Soul head in a comic, it was kind of fun to do, haha. Anyway, he tries to talk himself out of emotions much like he does to the brothers, so if it's any consolation he holds himself to the same insane standards he holds them up to. And he put himself through some torture to make them. Not as much as he puts them through later, but. SCIENCE COMES AT A PRICE. I WILL MAKE WHATEVER SACRIFICES I NEED TO. :| It puts how often he stares at his hands in a different light, doesn't it.
Anyway that laser cutter's some thing he jury-rigged up to do this, it normally wouldn't. I did not look into laser cutters at all, my all-purpose answer to issues with it is MAGIC. MAGIC LASERS. MAGIC CUTTERS. WHATEVER. The laser is a bit reminiscent of the one he shot into Papyrus's eyes though. He drilled in the restraints himself with his trusty electric drill. You'll never let me down will you drilly. Gaster constantly scavenging around for leather belts he can convert into restraints from the garbage. MESSED UP.
Presumably Gaster did several test runs with the laser without his hand under it to make sure it'll follow the right path and time it properly and all that, so again he's probably exhausted every avenue of doubt he has. So NO MORE PUTTING IT OFF. He's biting down on a leather wallet, I'm not sure if it's super clear but eh. I STILL am on the fence over whether or not he can open his mouth! With a fused jaw he shouldn't be able to (although, magic) like Sans, but this whole thing only works if he can open his mouth, and uuughhh. Maybe he can open his mouth in extreme situations but doesn't need to to talk or eat or something. I dunno. I GET STUCK ON THE STUPIDEST STICKING POINTS, THIS GAME ALREADY HAS AN IN-BUILT HANDWAVE FOR QUESTIONS LIKE THIS: MAGIC. I JUST NEED TO LET IT GO.
Seagoon helped me flesh out this idea, he suggested taping down the stop button to make sure he goes through with it. Which he would totally do. Gaster's all about setting up situations where he doesn't have a choice even though he should have one. It's just easier to make himself do things. Man, can you imagine how scary it'd be to hit that button and know exactly what's going to happen? And then to sit there trying to recover in hideous pain and knowing you'll have to go and set it up to do it AGAIN. Lucky for him he has those magic hands to cover for his real hands.
I thought about whether or not Gaster would use a local anesthetic on his hand to numb it, or even detach his arm entirely, but the whole point of this thing was seeing him glow in distress, so that seemed like it'd undercut the whole venture. Also this is probably the most agony (or emoting in general) you'll ever see him in so might as well make the most of it, right? Amusingly, this is probably the most graphically violent thing to happen on-screen in this comic and it happens to Gaster, hahaha.
On that same note, there's a bunch of people who really hate Gaster (particularly on devart) and have been calling for him to get killed or suffer in some way for his misdeeds, but lo and behold, when this goes up, a lot of them were like WAIT NO NOW I FEEL BAD FOR HIM I WANTED HIM TO SUFFER BUT NOT LIKE THIS, HE LOOKS LIKE HE'S IN SO MUCH PAIN
Although even more so, a lot of people were like I DIDN'T WANT HIM TO SUFFER, I JUST WANT HIM TO CHANGE AND MAKE GOOD CHOICES AND START BEING A GOOD DAD TO THEM ;_; which actually warmed my heart a little. That's the same thing that Papyrus wants! He's not alone in believing that people can change and be good, haha. I dunno, I think it's sweet in a way.
(Some people DID enjoy seeing him suffer though, haha)
A few people translated his Wingding screaming which I didn't bother doing since it's just choked gibberish. It's something like HHFGGGKKTHH or something, you can get the idea.
I thought at this point it'd be clear why he'd want the hand material (I thought about calling it magic flesh but then I thought that sounded kind of weird? So I wrote around it), but a few people were like BUT WHY IS HE DOING THIS. To make the brothers, obviously! Or maybe it's not so obvious, I dunno. Amusingly, Gaster cut up his left hand first, and Sans is left handed, while Papyrus is right handed. It all fits together.
No one brought up a question I was wondering, which was why not just use a magical attack as magic material instead of your own body? Basically I think the magic that makes up a monster's body and the magic that makes up a bullet or an attack are different things. Monster bodies don't vanish when they touch you for example. These are the stupid nitpicky things I ask myself that no one cares about. Why not use another monster then? I also asked, but Gaster very specifically wanted to create them from his own magic material. After all, does it count as torture if you're just torturing extensions of yourself?
More than a few wanted to know how Alphys and Asgore reacted to this, which I do have plans for. Who knows when I'll get to them though, haha. It's not really like Gaster can hide the holes after all, they even show up in his magic hands. Which are sort of like living shadows of his real hands, I decided while doing this, thus why their state changes with his real hands. MORE STUPID DETAILS
It feels weird slotting this into the main timeline since he has a normal head here and it would probably be jarring and confusing to go from this to the Lost Soul head without any kind of explanation. At the same time this IS what happened though, it's an actual bit of plot. It's a weird sort of grey area. So I only half-finished this to try and convey the idea that it's on a separate level than the more serious ones, like no BGs and really rough lines and such. I dunno, it was my compromise. I probably shouldn't have even done shading but eh, I went for it. I only anticipate doing one more with his normal head (the second scenario mentioned above) which will probably be likewise half-done. Anything else that comes from these events though will probably be done the normal way.
Anyway enough of that serious stuff
IT'S A HEADY REALIZATION
I added the footnote because I thought people would be like ONLY IF SHE CONSENTS and I was right, but adding it into her line sort of ruined it for me, so it's just a footnote. Still!
This could've also worked with Hunter and Smoker kind of, but I thought I might as well give this ship a bit of attention.
I love that you're this total stranger who shows up in Snowdin out of nowhere, a human stranger no less, and the brothers just IMMEDIATELY start gossiping to you about each other. You guys need more friends! Just kidding, your codependency brings me endless delight.
All the things they say are real things from the game! Well, except the birthday gift, I made that up. And paraphrased some of them. But all these little factoids are real, haha. I particularly love that Papyrus tells you about Sans's sock collection completely apropos of nothing. Like you walk in the room and go up to him and he just goes DID YOU KNOW HE HAS A SOCK COLLECTION??? Like he doesn't even say hello, he just blurts it out. Maybe Sans was asking him about socks before you showed up or something. They're pretty clearly chatting constantly whenever you're not around. You always catch them mid-conversation when they're together, haha.
Sans eating a nice cream, why not.
agh jeez my hands are tired
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!
First one!
Ritsuka Tachibana - Chrono Trigger - Wind Scene
BACO - I wanna be the guy - I wanna be the medley
Stone McKnuckle - Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero
Sayonara Maxwell - Undertale - Megalovania Dual
I wanna be the medley is pretty long. Wind Scene is so pretty though.
Second one!
Audix - Super Metroid - Samus in the Inferno (short edit)
Audio Anomaly - Undertale - The Core
Noteblock feat. Nathaniel Platier - Undertale - Beneath the Surface
RichaadEB feat. Ace Waters - Undertale - An Evening with the Unhallowed
Beneath the Surface is also pretty long, aaa what a great ending it has though.
And third one!
Zephyr Cradle - Chrono Trigger - Singing Mountain ~ I'll reach there
ChrystalChameleon - Undertale - It's Raining Somewhere Else (Instrumental version)
RichaadEB feat. ToxicxEternity - Undertale - Oase de dans
Ace Waters - Undertale - Have You Ever Heard of a Talking Flower?
TheGreatAnansi - Undertale - Dark Darker Yet Darker
Landy R. Shambles - Undertale - Anomaly ~ Theme of Sixbones
Ace Waters - Undertale - Like Snowflakes
There was a weird distortion going on, I got most of it I think but be wary of odd hisses here and there.
As for recent news, mood continues to fluctuate randomly, stuff keeps happening, just one day at a time I guess. I dunno? At a certain point even when new bad things start happening they don't really seem to register, or matter.
I've been drawing a bunch though cause WHAT ELSE DO I DO. So I do have that! Stuff here varies wildly from incredibly sad to really goofy, depending on what was on my mind at the time. General spoiler warning! Play the game and come baack
Some comics may be squished vertically on LJ, check out the post on DW or right-click/view the image to fix it.
let's get started right away with the sadness
sans in the dustjar continues. i gave this the tag "misery" on tumblr which i meant more as a descriptive tag than a name, but some people have taken to calling it the misery series which i don't mind, really. dustjar, misery, sans is dead, papyrus is grieving, whatever.
thoughts about death. you guys probably have a better idea of where these are coming from than most. people want a beginning or an end to it or some kind of explanation or resolution and it's not really a story, it's just venting. as such i feel weirdly detached about responses to these. it's a kind of "it's not FOR you" situation i guess? i don't blame people for wanting an ending or a plot though. for most, what's the difference between these and handplates, really? it's all just angst, right? it's interesting though how feedback completely changes in tone depending on the context, though. someone going "STOP THIS IMMEDIATELY YOU SADIST WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU WHY IS EVERYTHING YOU DO SAD" feels very different when it's directed at handplates as when it's directed at this series. but again, why should anyone think of these any differently without any background information on them? i'm completely aware it's my own doing and all, it's just interesting to me.
even so, i've gotten some nice notes from people saying that they've been going through terrible losses or dealing with death in their own lives and the comics have helped them a little, so i guess some good comes out of these. which is all one can ask for really.
despite not being a story, this actually would partly explain why papyrus keeps carrying sans around. he did say he just wanted to be with him, after all.
after poor loki died. i did some other doodles of him hanging around the undertale world as the Obnoxious Cat but i never finished them.
on dev this brought on a ton of people sharing all these tragic, awful stories about cat or kitten deaths they'd endured and it's like i get why you're doing this guys really i do but man it was hard to read
drowning in a wave of grief came on recently (well technically, this cover) and this image popped into my head, so i went for it. it's similar in a sense to that one huge pic i did with the mother 3 cast to the same song a while back. drawing bubbles is really fun and soothing, i always forget that.
a few people got super concerned that papyrus was committing suicide here and that'd be the ending when i really intended the drowning to be a metaphor. it didn't even occur to me it could be taken literally. you need to make these things clear to people!
anyway around this point jaz sent me the most ADORABLE LYRICS TO BONETROUSLE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and i was taken by a fey mood and had to sing them
Muzicons.com
And then I thought, I should do some illustrations to go with it!
THE LYRICS WERE JUST SO CUTE, WHAT COULD I DO
going from the dustjar stuff to this might have been my most violent mood whiplash production ever, haha.
Someone was wondering what an Underswap version of handplates would be like and it's like... mostly the same I think? I mean if you swap their personalities it doesn't really affect the events too much since they have so little control over anything that's happening to them. What would really change things would be who'd have 1 HP - would it still be Sans, would it be Papyrus instead? I don't really know much about this AU.
Then a few people asked about an Underfell version but I gotta be honest with you guys, I'm just not into Underfell at all. I can't get into any AU where the brothers are mean to each other! It makes me too sad. And like, the most common conflict in handplates is the choices people make and believing in the good in people despite all things pointing to the contrary, which... don't seem like things anyone in UF cares about. If Gaster's super evil and the brothers are evil then like, what's the point? Where's the hope? Anyway.
People so into Sixbones but I just don't know what to do with the poor thing. So a shoddy doodle of them goopin around.
Speakin of handplates though!
After all the tension and shouting from the last one, this one must seem pretty sedate. Gaster and Papyrus tend to have these long conversations like this, it keeps happening!
Papyrus's priorities of course are fixed on whether or not he can still glow to keep his brother sane. Answer: yes! People were scared about that despite Papyrus glowing fine in the future, haha. The weird timeline of this can be comforting at times.
The flower mug was a gift from Asgore. Papyrus is sleeping in one of the beds from the True Lab which are way nicer than I remembered them being when I went to go check. Alphys really went all out down there.
Gaster was doing work in the room while waiting for Papyrus to wake up, thus why there's papers on the desk and such. He must be so behind with all the TORTURING he does in his spare time.
This originally ended at "I have to get back to work" but then a snip of a conversation came to me that could relate to this (Papyrus catching that breaking Sans's eye had been a mistake) and I went and folded that in... then in the process had to fold in the two of them walking, which meant figuring out how Papyrus could navigate, which lead to the healing panel, and the conversation just kept kind of evolving. THIS IS HOW THINGS GET OUT OF CONTROL SO EASILY
As mentioned, Gaster's pretty tired so he just picks him up once and puts him down pretty quickly. This is when Gaster starts to realize that he's losing the ability to heal. He didn't lose it all at once but gradually, so you can imagine how annoyed he is that for all the effort he's putting into healing, it's not working very well. He knows why it's happening though.
I don't know how he expected Papyrus to follow him, maybe just by tracking his footsteps but knowing him he probably didn't even think about it. The two ideas I had for guiding him were hanging onto his sleeve and the magic hands, and I went back and forth on which one would go first before he switched to the other. In the end I went with the sleeve first, figuring Gaster would probably want to avoid summoning up magic hands since he's tired, as mentioned, but then he gets so annoyed he does it anyway.
The odd thing is that while this falls first in chronological order, this isn't the first time that Papyrus has tried to reason with him in these comics. So it feels a bit like this conversation has happened before, but for the two of them it hasn't happened yet! Regardless though, Papyrus doesn't give up very easily, so no matter how many times Gaster rebuffs him, he's going to keep trying to get through to him. He always believes in you!
Gaster loves saying people need him to do this but a lot of the time that isn't true at all. But it lets him sleep at night so he's not letting go of that rationalization for anything. On some level he really believes that, and to be fair with some things that could break the barrier you could argue it's true. And even this actually is leading to something that could legitimately be an enormous scientific breakthrough, even if it came from him messing with Sans's eye just out of a desire to fix his own (although, you could ALSO spin that as him wanting to figure out how to heal more effectively to heal OTHER monsters, but that was more of a sidethought I bet). But again so much of it is just rationalizing and justifying these awful things. Shades of Omelas, haha.
One random detail I like in this is the difference between his body language and how calmly he says "you will be silent and obedient." It just always makes me read that line in an interesting way, haha.
The little tiny flashback is again the remnants of his conscience flaring up, him reading to the two of them, all one big family. Man someone did the saddest comic about that that always comes to mind for this kind of thing, just "you want a family of things" and aaaa my heart.
Gaster is of course lying to Papyrus, and to himself about it. LIAAAAR, LIAAAAR, LIIAAAARRR
I doubt Sans will be much comforted by knowing it was an accident since his eye's still busted but hey, who knows. It also amuses me that for all the grappling with his conscience Gaster does he still says a blatantly callous thing about how Papyrus's magic seizure was a really pretty light-show. GASTER WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
Someone asked if I could do a Sixbones tsum and I was super puzzled about how to do it for a while, since there are no Tsumtsums with two heads (i know, can you believe it). Eventually though I came up with this, I think it'll work.
Someone was all "Now that Sans is missing his eye, would you say his vision isn't "al-right"?"
SANS APPRECIATES THE PUN, A LITTLE
abrupt whiplash again, look out
more idle thoughts, it occurred to me that toriel would know a lot about grief, given just how many children she's lost. so many children.
this one apparently helped a few people with their own grief, at least. or accurately described the grief they felt, which was nice to hear. in some ways we're all the same. or, similar anyway.
she's sort of wearing nana's clothes.
and WHIPLASH BACK
where DO babybones come from, the world may never know. You could actually read this as handplates related but you don't have to, haha. It does give it a faintly sad tinge though if you do.
A few people were like DOES THAT MEAN GRILLBY HAS BABIES ALL THE TIME?? and i think intent plays a major part on whether a fire becomes alive or not, but that's just me, haha.
Alphys is supposed to be wearing legwarmers but it looks sort of like her pants are down. In the end I was like eh, I can live with that interpretation. Kid you're interrupting something here. Fish and lizards both DO come from eggs though.
Then someone was like "my totally serious headcanon is that skeletons grow in glasses of milk" and I absolutely had to draw that. Then i stared at it for twenty minutes like, awww.
Me and Bardic tossed around other babies in milk ideas, like someone trying to pour chocolate sauce in a glass, or someone stirring them around and them getting all @_@, but then I wondered if it was getting weird. IS IT WEIRD if you don't think so then maybe I'll finish the doodles i did of such things.
Someone wondered if the brothers could speak in each other's font, which brought this to mind. I use the pixel fonts someone made for the brothers which unfortunately do not have the appropriate cases for this, so I had to improvise by going back to Comic Sans MS and Parchment and trying to get the look right. Parchment in particular looks too thick but eh, what can you do.
This kind of teasing only ends in tears you guys.
MORE SADNESS
I don't think anything specific brought this on except the image of Papyrus lying on the floor, so I sort of ran with it, then the caption "I'd feel like garbage, but that'd require feeling anything at all" came to mind.
Asgore here a bit clueless but trying to help, as usual. Boy did this bring out Asgorelovers on devart though. also UGH three quarters from behind is THE WORST angle to draw asgore from
Someone asked what Zar's reaction to sixbones or handplates would be, and it's like, since Frisk is just an empty vessel for the player to inhabit, in any given comic you can replace Frisk with Zar without changing much. I could go more into the meta aspect of this but bleh I feel like I've been typing forever. You probably get the idea.
So there's this fic called Flowey is not a Good Life Coach that got recced to me, and I read it and was like man this is a cool interpretation of magic, this is close to how I'd interpret it in writing. :O and then the beta for it started chatting to me about handplates and such, so we'd talk about the fic, and then boom, I find out from the beta that me and the author of the fic actually knew each other way back when! Mind, blown. Who knew we'd cross paths again in such a weird way?
ANYWAY THE FIC IS REALLY SAD AND UPSETTING and unfinished so I wrote up this ending for it, which I think totally fits in with the spirit of the fic.
I did an art trade with the dude who does ask-the-skele-household and they did THE CUTEST pic of Hunter and Smoker aaaa. They wanted to hang out with Papyrus so this scene came to mind, haha. Driving a toy car on someone is one of life's little joys.
You may recognize a bunch of the toys they're playing with! All real, except the tsum tsums and the toy car, haha. It was interesting seeing how many people could identify. More people than I thought could tell that was a Fobby! (Foppy? I always forget which is which).
Unit coherence is taken from that old SomethingAwful article about Warhammer, haha. I've never actually played Warhammer though.
It really amuses me that Sans just locks himself in his room during your date with Papyrus. Papyrus probably told him to do that so he wouldn't embarrass him or something BUT WHATEVER I TOOK THIS ROUTE WITH IT
I joked about Sans being antisocial but really during the game he seems to have a lot of acquaintances who say he's the life of the party. Which doesn't necessarily preclude that but it does make it unlikely. But hey, maybe he just felt antisocial for this moment! His room IS locked when you're doing your date, and he IS in there to provide mocking music when dogs are running about.
I wonder if Papyrus plays an instrument. I asked on Tumblr and got a whole ton of suggestions! The most popular seem to be xylophone, trumpet, and violin. Though someone did suggest Papyrus freestyle rapping which is the greatest mental image ever. Sans could beatbox! If I could write freestyle rapping I would totally draw this.
A lot of people wondered if he was playing a particular song on the trombone but nah they're just random trombone sounds, I didn't have anything specific in mind.
Handplates again! I mentioned in an ask cluster that Gaster doesn't glow around the brothers, being an adult and also all emotionally stunted and such, so a few people were like but what COULD make him glow around them
So after a bit of thought I ended up with two scenarios and neither of them are around the brothers, haha. But still! I thought they'd be fun to do, so.
Better take a break before you do the other one or you're going to pass out, Gaster. Purple is fear and I'm thinking about Red for pain but I dunno, I may change my mind. Yellow is stress normally but I'm leaning towards that being Gaster's default color, so he's glowing yellow to try and calm himself down. Though he's also pretty stressed.
This is the first time he's shown up without the Lost Soul head in a comic, it was kind of fun to do, haha. Anyway, he tries to talk himself out of emotions much like he does to the brothers, so if it's any consolation he holds himself to the same insane standards he holds them up to. And he put himself through some torture to make them. Not as much as he puts them through later, but. SCIENCE COMES AT A PRICE. I WILL MAKE WHATEVER SACRIFICES I NEED TO. :| It puts how often he stares at his hands in a different light, doesn't it.
Anyway that laser cutter's some thing he jury-rigged up to do this, it normally wouldn't. I did not look into laser cutters at all, my all-purpose answer to issues with it is MAGIC. MAGIC LASERS. MAGIC CUTTERS. WHATEVER. The laser is a bit reminiscent of the one he shot into Papyrus's eyes though. He drilled in the restraints himself with his trusty electric drill. You'll never let me down will you drilly. Gaster constantly scavenging around for leather belts he can convert into restraints from the garbage. MESSED UP.
Presumably Gaster did several test runs with the laser without his hand under it to make sure it'll follow the right path and time it properly and all that, so again he's probably exhausted every avenue of doubt he has. So NO MORE PUTTING IT OFF. He's biting down on a leather wallet, I'm not sure if it's super clear but eh. I STILL am on the fence over whether or not he can open his mouth! With a fused jaw he shouldn't be able to (although, magic) like Sans, but this whole thing only works if he can open his mouth, and uuughhh. Maybe he can open his mouth in extreme situations but doesn't need to to talk or eat or something. I dunno. I GET STUCK ON THE STUPIDEST STICKING POINTS, THIS GAME ALREADY HAS AN IN-BUILT HANDWAVE FOR QUESTIONS LIKE THIS: MAGIC. I JUST NEED TO LET IT GO.
Seagoon helped me flesh out this idea, he suggested taping down the stop button to make sure he goes through with it. Which he would totally do. Gaster's all about setting up situations where he doesn't have a choice even though he should have one. It's just easier to make himself do things. Man, can you imagine how scary it'd be to hit that button and know exactly what's going to happen? And then to sit there trying to recover in hideous pain and knowing you'll have to go and set it up to do it AGAIN. Lucky for him he has those magic hands to cover for his real hands.
I thought about whether or not Gaster would use a local anesthetic on his hand to numb it, or even detach his arm entirely, but the whole point of this thing was seeing him glow in distress, so that seemed like it'd undercut the whole venture. Also this is probably the most agony (or emoting in general) you'll ever see him in so might as well make the most of it, right? Amusingly, this is probably the most graphically violent thing to happen on-screen in this comic and it happens to Gaster, hahaha.
On that same note, there's a bunch of people who really hate Gaster (particularly on devart) and have been calling for him to get killed or suffer in some way for his misdeeds, but lo and behold, when this goes up, a lot of them were like WAIT NO NOW I FEEL BAD FOR HIM I WANTED HIM TO SUFFER BUT NOT LIKE THIS, HE LOOKS LIKE HE'S IN SO MUCH PAIN
Although even more so, a lot of people were like I DIDN'T WANT HIM TO SUFFER, I JUST WANT HIM TO CHANGE AND MAKE GOOD CHOICES AND START BEING A GOOD DAD TO THEM ;_; which actually warmed my heart a little. That's the same thing that Papyrus wants! He's not alone in believing that people can change and be good, haha. I dunno, I think it's sweet in a way.
(Some people DID enjoy seeing him suffer though, haha)
A few people translated his Wingding screaming which I didn't bother doing since it's just choked gibberish. It's something like HHFGGGKKTHH or something, you can get the idea.
I thought at this point it'd be clear why he'd want the hand material (I thought about calling it magic flesh but then I thought that sounded kind of weird? So I wrote around it), but a few people were like BUT WHY IS HE DOING THIS. To make the brothers, obviously! Or maybe it's not so obvious, I dunno. Amusingly, Gaster cut up his left hand first, and Sans is left handed, while Papyrus is right handed. It all fits together.
No one brought up a question I was wondering, which was why not just use a magical attack as magic material instead of your own body? Basically I think the magic that makes up a monster's body and the magic that makes up a bullet or an attack are different things. Monster bodies don't vanish when they touch you for example. These are the stupid nitpicky things I ask myself that no one cares about. Why not use another monster then? I also asked, but Gaster very specifically wanted to create them from his own magic material. After all, does it count as torture if you're just torturing extensions of yourself?
More than a few wanted to know how Alphys and Asgore reacted to this, which I do have plans for. Who knows when I'll get to them though, haha. It's not really like Gaster can hide the holes after all, they even show up in his magic hands. Which are sort of like living shadows of his real hands, I decided while doing this, thus why their state changes with his real hands. MORE STUPID DETAILS
It feels weird slotting this into the main timeline since he has a normal head here and it would probably be jarring and confusing to go from this to the Lost Soul head without any kind of explanation. At the same time this IS what happened though, it's an actual bit of plot. It's a weird sort of grey area. So I only half-finished this to try and convey the idea that it's on a separate level than the more serious ones, like no BGs and really rough lines and such. I dunno, it was my compromise. I probably shouldn't have even done shading but eh, I went for it. I only anticipate doing one more with his normal head (the second scenario mentioned above) which will probably be likewise half-done. Anything else that comes from these events though will probably be done the normal way.
Anyway enough of that serious stuff
IT'S A HEADY REALIZATION
I added the footnote because I thought people would be like ONLY IF SHE CONSENTS and I was right, but adding it into her line sort of ruined it for me, so it's just a footnote. Still!
This could've also worked with Hunter and Smoker kind of, but I thought I might as well give this ship a bit of attention.
I love that you're this total stranger who shows up in Snowdin out of nowhere, a human stranger no less, and the brothers just IMMEDIATELY start gossiping to you about each other. You guys need more friends! Just kidding, your codependency brings me endless delight.
All the things they say are real things from the game! Well, except the birthday gift, I made that up. And paraphrased some of them. But all these little factoids are real, haha. I particularly love that Papyrus tells you about Sans's sock collection completely apropos of nothing. Like you walk in the room and go up to him and he just goes DID YOU KNOW HE HAS A SOCK COLLECTION??? Like he doesn't even say hello, he just blurts it out. Maybe Sans was asking him about socks before you showed up or something. They're pretty clearly chatting constantly whenever you're not around. You always catch them mid-conversation when they're together, haha.
Sans eating a nice cream, why not.
agh jeez my hands are tired
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!