Ward has good parts. I can think of at least three off the top of my head. But Wildbow got caught in a negative feedback mental loop for a lot of the serial's runtime and it really shows sometimes.
OTOH, Ward being what it was lead to Pale, the best Wildbow work, existing, so I think it's worth it even if Ward itself has issues.
Its kinda funny to admit this on the Worm Website but ive never read worm. The worldbuilding ive picked up via osmosis is pretty neat but its just not something im interested in reading really
Actually yapping alert but the process of me finding this fic was really funny cause i first learnt of its existence from an offhand mention in a youtube comment on a video about library of ruina. i then looked it up on ao3 and saw it was crossposted on here and thats how i learned that sv and sb exist.
yuri's inclusion was the whole reason i was interested in this fic in the first place. apart from that i know a lot about undertale and know enough about pmmm to have dramatic irony about it. rwby and worm are my two unknown quantities here but its fun picking things up via osmosis and its cool that i can care so much about characters from a media i know nothing about
edit: this is the video i saw the comment on. i've osmosised much of pmmm from this fic as well as just generally existing in its like cultural proximity. ive picked up bits of worm from all the other conference call fics and also this fic, and much of my rwby knowledge has come from the author's other projmoon crossover fics as well as this one
This is actually so cool. As a fic writer, pretty much all of my feedback and information comes from a couple of very specific sources: comments, number of likes, people watching. These statistics are great and all, but it makes it really hard to trace the process by which people find this fic, the subset of the total population that bothers to click on it, etc. Even this little bit of information shared is so neat to me, and thanks for it.
This is actually so cool. As a fic writer, pretty much all of my feedback and information comes from a couple of very specific sources: comments, number of likes, people watching. These statistics are great and all, but it makes it really hard to trace the process by which people find this fic, the subset of the total population that bothers to click on it, etc. Even this little bit of information shared is so neat to me, and thanks for it.
Apologies for diverting from all the "which realms are the same" theorizing, but I only found this fic a few days ago.
The interjection of Undertale UI a couple of times during Undynes POV is actually really cool. I'm probably a sucker for that sort of thing since I love Fury of a Shattered Mirror.
Undyne's reaction to simply being in Yuri's presence did make me imagine how bad things would be if the Node connected a Monster to a captain or lieutenant from Bleach. I.e. the people who've spent centuries slaughtering Hollows (and occasionally other residents of Soul Society)? They might spontaneously evaporate, which would actually kinda line up with powerful people in Bleach having "spiritual pressure".
Yuri: Hello. Kyoko: Huh. Don't think we've spoken in private before. Kyoko: Problem? Yuri: …Maybe. Yuri: You are familiar with the fifth Node User? Kyoko: Emma? She reached out to you too? Yuri: In a sense. Yuri: I confronted the Moderator about our silent fifth and asked for information. Yuri: In turn, they told them about my suspicions. Yuri: At which point they, as you say, reached out. Kyoko: And? You got a point here? Yuri: I don't believe they would have spoken to me if there had not been impetus to do so. Yuri: Content to stand and watch words pass us by. Kyoko: Yeah, maybe. Kyoko: Honestly, don't see it as a big deal. Kyoko: What's she gonna do? Silence me to death? Yuri: Do you not find it worrying? Yuri: We know so little about them, yet they have been assuredly collecting information on us. Yuri: And they seem to have a worrying amount of sway over the Moderator. Kyoko: What's a 'worrying amount'? Yuri: At their request, the Moderator deliberately glossed over their presence at every opportunity. Yuri: Even when I confronted the Moderator directly about it, they still attempted to use terminology as a shield, carefully stating the truth in a way that I could have misinterpreted. Yuri: To hide Emma's presence. Kyoko: Eh. Tell you this: you think they wouldn't have done the same for you? Kyoko: Scarlet's a pretty accommodating person, far as I can tell. Yuri: They refuse to let you use the Summoning core. Kyoko: Fair, to be honest. Kyoko: Not like I haven't given them reason to be cautious. Kyoko: Most other times though, they're a pushover. Kyoko: If you're not kicking up crap in their house, they're fine with whatever. Kyoko: That's my read of things. Kyoko: Emma probably just asked, and the Mod just said 'sure'. Yuri: … Kyoko: Look, Yuri, cool off. Kyoko: What happened to not judging? Kyoko: You're the one who pushed for that, after all. Kyoko: Maybe she likes her privacy. Kyoko: Or didn't want to talk to a bunch of strangers. Shy or something. Kyoko: Not all us have to be extroverts like Undyne. Yuri: …Speaking of Undyne.
The Underground didn't have… laws, for this kind of thing. Offhanded discussions between herself, Alphys, and occasionally ASGORE, sure! Those casual thought experiments were what they of the Underground were putting into effect now. For all that they'd been morbid and depressing, Undyne was glad that they'd had them. Else they'd be really flailing now, panic and riots skyrocketing.
In theory, it was a simple two-part plan, with slight adjustments per region. Step 1: Move the residents of the region further away from the dangerous human. Step 2: Collapse the tunnels to that next region to seal the human away.
It was going more smoothly the further away they were from the human. From what Undyne had heard, New Home's barricading efforts could almost be considered orderly, especially since ASGORE was there to help personally. Mettaton was providing a similarly calming effect on Hotland—she couldn't believe she'd need to thank the entertainer soon—even if Alphys was technically in charge of the overall effort.
Waterfall wasn't as simple. The damp, winding tunnels were difficult to navigate, even if you were familiar with them. The routes to Hotland weren't intuitive. For monsters that didn't traverse them often? Heck, monsters that had never left their neighborhood? A nightmare of navigation. 01 and 02 hadn't gotten a wink of sleep the last day or so, constantly busy guiding groups of panicked monsters to and fro. Nor had Undyne. She'd been broadcasting confidence non-stop for more than twenty four hours non-stop, and while she WAS a confident person, there was only so much she could do to dispel the nagging doubts, the panicked whispers of the monsters she was trying so desperately to reassure.
Her goal, by the end of this. No monster left behind. Not a single one. They wouldn't collapse the tunnels until every. Single. Monster. Had made it through to safety.
A traitorous part of her mind tacked on: Or they'd been killed by the Fallen Child.
…Her conviction could not afford to waver. She was the hero of the Underground. THE Hero of THE Underground! She did not have time to hesitate.
Especially because someone was sabotaging the evacuation.
Not Step 1, no. That would have been bad. Like, REALLY bad. But this wasn't much better. This mysterious monster was sabotaging the tunnel-collapsing efforts!
There were multiple ways out of Waterfall. The river, for one, though the Riverperson had long left. And, more relevantly, a myriad of tunnels leading to Hotland. She'd ordered all of them ready to be collapsed on demand, commandeering some of Mettaton's explosives in various shapes and rigging them to detonate if they received a signal from Alphys' phone. All well and good. Some of Mettaton's goons had gone out and set them up. Undyne, not trusting the monster mercenaries, had gone out to check on their setup. And to their credit, as far as she could tell, the dogbomb (woof) and glass-of-water-bomb were well-positioned. Good explosions!
The issue, then. Vines, massive thorny vines. Embedded into the walls and propping up the tunnel. Undyne was CERTAIN that they hadn't been there before. She wasn't one hundred-percent sure that they'd keep the tunnel up under the force of Mettaton's explosives. But she'd bet every dollar she owned that it was the intention.
…She didn't have time for this. Monsters, as a whole, didn't have time for this. The Royal Guard was stretched impossibly thin. And while she knew that Hotland was having its own troubles, she needed help. Advice from someone smarter than her.
In a brief moment of respite, on the border between Waterfall and Hotland, Undyne talked to Alphys, asked directly about the plant monster. And like a dam, built up and cracked, words poured forth. She had a lot to say.
The crowded cave where they met was uncomfortable for the both of them. Alphys was 'cold-blooded', and preferred warmer areas, else she tended to freeze up over time. With her armor on, Undyne preferred the cool, the damp, to keep her hydrated. This cavern bordered the two extremes of the Underground. It was too hot for Undyne, too cold for Alphys.
Funny, that. By the time she'd had finished her stuttering, horrifying, yet still abbreviated explanation, Alphys was sweating bullets. And processing, coming to grips on the experiments that had taken place in the dark basement of Alphys's lab, the end product… Undyne's blood was running cold.
To make a short story shorter, she'd been experimenting with a substance called Determination, or DT. All humans possessed it naturally, and having a lot of it made them so much stronger than monsters. In a valiant attempt to manufacture someone or something that could break the Barrier, as well as an attempt to save those that had fallen down, she began to inject the substance into things. Monsters. And a golden flower in ASGORE's garden.
The Amalgamates, as Alphys called them, would almost certainly be more horrifying in person. Their mere description, fallen-down monsters unable to handle the Determination of humans and thus fused into semi-conscious monstrosities—she couldn't believe Alphys had been involved in such a creation. The flower, though, was somehow worse. She'd created a being without a soul, brought to life with the power of human Determination and nothing else. A will to persist, but no compassion, no caring.
Alphys looked like she wanted to throw herself into a lava pit by the time she finished. But as much as Undyne wanted to reassure her, to encourage her, to make all the logical arguments, there just wasn't time. Her return statement was token. 'Cause the plan needed to change.
They needed monsters to get out there, to ensure that the cave-ins happened, to chop the golden flower's vines. Everything would have to slow down. And the huddling panick-train wasn't going to move any faster.
She wasn't the first to have this idea. Gerson had promised both to stall the human and not to be a hero, and while Undyne wasn't sure how that was gonna work, she trusted in the old turtle's wisdom. Unfortunately, it seemed like it wasn't going to be enough. They would need more.
Undyne armed herself. Scarfed down some uncooked instant noodles; they were better raw.
Time to buy time.
Node1127: Private Channel with Yuri
Kyoko: Undyne? What about her? Yuri: I am slightly concerned for and about her. Yuri: She has been quiet, recently. Kyoko: We're all quiet sometimes, what of it? Yuri: Undyne tends towards boisterousness. Yuri: She enjoys conversation. Shares liberally. Yuri: She has not been doing so as of late. Kyoko: Probably just an off day. You really making a big deal outta this? Yuri: … Yuri: This is and was private, and I would like a promise that you will keep it private. Kyoko: Not gonna promise anything unless I know what the Hell you're talking about. Yuri: Fine. Yuri: A night ago, Undyne requested an in-person meeting in her Underground. Yuri: I, privately, used the Summon command. Yuri: Seconds after I had arrived, the connection was cut off. Yuri: She has not been responding to my messages since. Kyoko: Sounds like you pissed her off somehow! Kyoko: If she doesn't wanna talk to ya, leave her alone. Yuri: I didn't do anything! Yuri: I didn't even get the chance to say a word. Kyoko: Really now. Yuri: Yes! Kyoko: I dunno, this still feels kinda shady. Kyoko: But if you're really so worried, I can send her a message. See if she's alright. Yuri: Thank you. That would be wonderful.
The Echo Flower fields. Undyne liked Echo Flowers, most of the time. They were fun! They'd repeat things they heard back to you. Nobody was dumb enough to talk about sensitive topics in a field full of eavesdroppers, so most of the time, the flowers just repeated random stuff! Jokes kids wanted to share, dramatic stories meant to impress. The occasional practiced speech or confession, done by people who wanted to hear their voices played right back to them.
But right now…
"Mama! Mama! Where did you go? Mama?"
…Every Echo Flower…
"Angel save us… we're all going to die… all of us! We're all going to die here!"
…Every cadence…
"You saw it, right? That dusty tutu, those worn shoes? They killed Aaron!"
…Every refugee, monsters of all kinds…
"The Royal Guard will save us! ASGORE will save us!"
…All that was echoed…
"Thousands of people wishing together… and none of it will matter, in the end."
…was the sound of fear.
"hey."
Except that one. There was no mistaking that tone. That slackery voice. That comical font.
Undyne's head snapped to the right, only to find yet another innocuous Echo Flower. She narrowed her eye suspiciously, waited for a moment.
"hey."
When she turned back to the left, the skeleton himself was waiting for her, right in her path. Hands in his hoodie's pockets like always. Tiny pinpricks of light shining in his eye sockets like always. Still smiling, like always.
…He did the thing with the Echo Flowers! The thing she liked to do with the Echo Flowers!
"Sans. That's MY trick! And what are you doing here? I haven't seen you… at all."
Since Papyrus died, she didn't say. She didn't blame him. If she weren't the Captain of the Royal Guard, she, too, might want to hide away like he did.
She couldn't afford to. The Underground couldn't afford to. The hopes and dreams of every monster… all resting on her. Undyne REFUSED to let them down!
Any more than she already had, a treacherous part of her mind added.
"you've been acting different lately. like the end of your journey is at hand."
Did he have a point here?
"I mean, yeah! If you haven't noticed, things aren't looking too great right now! It's kinda the Underground's darkest hour! But I haven't given up! We're going to be alright."
She couldn't read his face. Undyne was a people person. But Sans' skull really didn't change at all, huh. She didn't know if he believed her. She didn't know if she believed herself.
"...y'know, if i were you, i would have thrown inna towel by now. and you still could."
"You will not be judged. You will not be judged for your inaction. You know what EXP is?"
Offended, outraged, preparing to respond with all the righteous fury she could muster—the non-sequitur caught her off-guard.
"It's an acronym. Execution Points. A way of quantifying the pain you've inflicted on others. How much pain do you think that human has inflicted so far? The more they killed, the easier it became to distance themself from us. The easier it became for them to hurt us."
His eyes were closed, Undyne realized. There was a seriousness underpinning his tone now. She remembered from the human animes, bits and pieces of human anatomy. And that skulls, skeletons, were symbols of death. Human remains. It had nothing to do with the situation, but the thought came unwanted, unbidden.
"It's that LOVE, see. Another acronym. Level of Violence. The human has gained EXP. And they've gained LOVE. You look like you know what that means"
Yeah, something was definitely off.
"But you? Undyne, you never gained any LOVE. Do you really…"
Sans opened his eyes, white pinpricks the same as always. A sheepish grin came to his face, like he'd been caught setting whoopee cushions all about again. And he let out a casual shrug. The easy transition was jarring, but whatever spellbound moment he'd enraptured her with was over. The outrage came back, flaring up in her blood.
"i dunno, you really thought this through?"
"Sans. I'm not gonna SACRIFICE myself. Not if I can help it! You think I don't know that humans are terrifying? I have a plan, y'know! The human child can't kill me if they can't hit me! What, did Alphys put you up to this? Does she even KNOW you?"
She WAS fast enough, to keep up with a human; Pyrrha had taught her that. And she was a pretty good shot with a spear! The few eyewitness accounts had said that the human never showed mercy, even to monsters that were running away, willing to chase them down and end every. single. one. She'd make them pay for that, a hundred times over. But until then, she could take advantage of that behavior.
If she engaged the human briefly, then shot off, she could keep them busy. As long as they never got a hit in, never got the chance to push her with the full force of their killing intent, she could buy time. She could last. Kyoko had taught her that.
If she ever failed, of course, she was dead.
Yuri had taught her that.
So she simply wouldn't fail.
"don't you know? i know everybody. and dodging, huh? that could work. yeah, i got nothing then. break a leg out there."
Undyne flashed him a grin. Confident, now.
"Thanks! But…"
Sans took a step backward. Ha! Realized what was coming to him, huh? Must've forgotten that she was his BOSS!
"If you've got time to mess around with Echo Flowers and lecture me, you've got time to do your job! I know that… Papyrus—"
Her voice only hitched a little bit. And she'd deny it if anyone asked!
" —he's gone. But you're quicker than you look! And we need all the help we can get! Go talk to Alphys, figure out what needs doing! Evacuate monsters with your 'shortcuts' or whatever!
"You know it's what your brother would have wanted!"
That, more than anything, seemed to get to the lazybones. He cocked his head at her, then shot her a jaunty salute with his left hand.
Moments later, he was gone. The Echo Flowers waved about lazily.
Moments later, so was she.
"...sorry, alphys. this is why i never make promises."
Node1127: Private Channel with Undyne
Kyoko: Hey! Fish-face! Kyoko: Whatcha doing? Training s'more? Undyne: Look, I'd love to shoot the breeze with you, but I'm a little busy right now! Undyne: Can we talk later? Kyoko: Busy doing what? Kyoko: You can talk and do whatever. Node's got its own magic focus, remember? Undyne: It can also be distracting! Undyne: I remember seeing the night sky of Pyrrha's world. Undyne: Froze me in place for a solid couple seconds! Undyne: Alphys even noticed! Undyne: So I'd rather not risk it right now. Kyoko: Oh? She's the scientist, right? Kyoko: You on a date? Undyne: WHAT? Undyne: NO! Undyne: I mean. Undyne: I'd… like to. Undyne: BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT! Kyoko: Then what are you doing? Kyoko: Clearly not training. Not hanging out. Undyne: FINE!!! Undyne: …A human child fell into the Underground. Kyoko: What? You didn't tell anybody. Kyoko: Ah, wait. I can guess. Kyoko: Pyrrha? Undyne: Pyrrha. Kyoko: Yeah, fair. Then this is your chance, right? Undyne: They've been killing us for fun. Undyne: I'm on the hunt. Undyne: I'm going to put an end to them. Kyoko: You monsters have been getting killed by a kid? I mean, not much of a shock if you're the best of 'em. Kyoko: For all the fight you put up against me, I imagine a toddler could kick your ass. Kyoko: Makes me wonder how weak Pyrrha has to be. Schoolgirl decked out in plastic armor? Undyne: …That doesn't matter. Undyne: You know what this child has done? Undyne: Cold-blooded murder. Undyne: No fair fights. Undyne: No mercy. Undyne: It doesn't matter if I've lost before. Undyne: All that matters is that, if I lose now, it'll be the end of us. Undyne: This is bigger than me, my pride, my power. Undyne: I'm not just Undyne, Captain of the Royal Guard. Undyne: I'm the Underground's spear of justice, the embodiment of hopes of dreams of thousands of monsters! Undyne: I'm going to bring the justice due. Undyne: For all those who've fallen down and turned to dust. Undyne: And with their soul, we'll be free! Undyne: No need to rely on Yuri's bloodied hands! Undyne: We'll see the sun, with our own power, on our own two or more feet. Kyoko: Wow, wow. Bravo. Really hyping yourself up to kill a little kid. Kyoko: I'll be damned if that wasn't the cheesiest thing I have ever heard in my life. Kyoko: You pull that from some anime again? Kyoko: NGAAHHH! Undyne: SHUT UP! Kyoko: Hit a nerve? Kyoko: Consider this payback for that rude gesture you snuck me with. Kyoko: …The kid even a Magical Girl? Got powers of any kind? Or are you guys getting sneak-attacked by some homeless street rat? Undyne: If you're just going to mock me, spit on our lives crawling in the dark here… Undyne: Just be freakin' silent! Kyoko: Ha, sure. Good luck with your "heroics!" Kyoko: If you need help, maybe I'll even pitch in! Just give me the word, and I'll set the little brat ablaze. Kyoko: If you can't do it yourself, that is.
…It didn't go so cleanly, in the end. She arrived just a bit too late.
"Hurt? I'm not hurt. This is nothing."
That kid from Snowdin. The one with no arms. The little idiot (endearing) (sorrowful) (regretful). They didn't evacuate with the rest of town. Maybe they got lost. Maybe they were just REALLY stupid. But the human child caught up to them. And for all that Undyne knew the monster kid could be pretty quick when they wanted to be, they didn't run. Stood their ground instead.
"Next time, listen when the adults tell you to leave, okay?"
It wouldn't have ended well, Undyne had known. Her first good glance at the human child had told her everything she needed to know. She didn't even think it was right to call them a human, not from what she'd seen from the Node thus far. Something else was behind those squinted eyes. A mechanical sort of drive, Determination. One that couldn't be reasoned with or diverted. The ballet shoes in their hands… they wouldn't have hesitated. Didn't hesitate, as the monster kid postured and tried their utmost to stand tall.
"Yeah. I'll take care of this! Get out of here!"
Undyne couldn't sit back and watch.
…Kid was gone now. She could drop the act. Just her and the human. That was a bored expression on their face, she was pretty sure. Looking at her like she was lower than the dirt she was kneeling in. Undyne wanted to get angry at that. All she could feel was a hollow sense of emptiness. A slashed dream, gaping across her chestplate. Her soul was dissolving to dust.
She'd failed.
…She could have let them die. Maybe she should have let 'em die. She could pull off her plan that way. Pull them away from the evacuees. Deeper into Waterfall's caverns, maybe drop the human off a rickety bridge or something. Get them to drown in a river. Instead, she was going to die here. Accomplishing nothing, watching the world fade and blur from her one good eye..
"...Heh. 'This is nothing'... what a pack of lies… Should've known."
All that bravado, all that confidence. Kyoko… was right, in the end.
This could go one of two ways, and both have the potential to be awesome:
1) Undyne experiences a RESET after a completed Genocide route; maybe she loses her memories, but has the Node as a record, and the other girls to convince her she's 'time traveled'.
2) Last minute Kyouko summon for the save, total Big Damn Hero moment for young miss "I'm not a hero", in which she (having a soft spot for kids) probably attempts to be comparatively gentle with Genocide!Frisk/Chara/However-our-author-is-interpreting-that-whole-situation until they attack her, upon which Kyouko just slaps the ever-loving crap outta them.
This could go one of two ways, and both have the potential to be awesome:
1) Undyne experiences a RESET after a completed Genocide route; maybe she loses her memories, but has the Node as a record, and the other girls to convince her she's 'time traveled'.
2) Last minute Kyouko summon for the save, total Big Damn Hero moment for young miss "I'm not a hero", in which she (having a soft spot for kids) probably attempts to be comparatively gentle with Genocide!Frisk/Chara/However-our-author-is-interpreting-that-whole-situation until they attack her, upon which Kyouko just slaps the ever-loving crap outta them.
...Sorry, soft spot for kids? Since when? Isn't Kyoko literally a middle-schooler? She didn't seem to have a problem with killing other middle-schoolers earlier on in the story. Why would she spare Frisk now?
...Sorry, soft spot for kids? Since when? Isn't Kyoko literally a middle-schooler? She didn't seem to have a problem with killing other middle-schoolers earlier on in the story. Why would she spare Frisk now?
I meant 'kids' from her perspective. Like, obviously they're all kids to us, but to a fourteen year old like Kyouko, Frisk (who seems, at least to me, coded as younger; 10-12, maybe) would be considered a 'kid', even without going into her self-image as a badass lone wolf veteran meguca. As for Kyouko having a soft spot for 'em, she teams up with Yuma Chitose in the Oriko spinoff. Ostensibly that's because they bond over their respective awful family situations, and not just because Yuma is younger, but the implication is that Kyouko probably sees her as a surrogate for her dead little sister. Admittedly I'm taking a spinoff manga as canon, here, so maybe the above isn't canon for this story.
Unlike Yuma, Frisky over here is also committing mass genocide. So you know. Kiddo points kinda drop off once your kill-count goes over a certain amount.
This could go one of two ways, and both have the potential to be awesome:
1) Undyne experiences a RESET after a completed Genocide route; maybe she loses her memories, but has the Node as a record, and the other girls to convince her she's 'time traveled'.
2) Last minute Kyouko summon for the save, total Big Damn Hero moment for young miss "I'm not a hero", in which she (having a soft spot for kids) probably attempts to be comparatively gentle with Genocide!Frisk/Chara/However-our-author-is-interpreting-that-whole-situation until they attack her, upon which Kyouko just slaps the ever-loving crap outta them.
Come on there is always at minimum a third option. Off the top of my head there is funny potential for how the time travel mechanics interact. Like Kyoko could instantly regain her past timeline memories causing her to turn into a witch with a LV of 20, killing The Child but also rampaging underground. Alternatively, since time loops canonically make magical girls stronger while it wouldn't increase Kyoko's level every LOAD from losing a fight while Kyoko is fighting in the underground would make her stronger so she would only get harder to beat since her bullet time attacks would get tighter timing due to better control. So she could stall him out.
sans is only aware due to having access to a timeline-viewing machine. Most monsters will get some vague memories or a sense of deja vu after a reset - its connected directly to determination (of which sans has none, and Undyne the Undying has plenty)
I hope you all are looking forward to this next chapter as much as I am.
In the meantime, I've been thinking about exposition! Love it, hate it, it's necessary more often than not. Common crossover fanfic writing etiquette assumes any given reader is only familiar with one source material, and subsequently provides exposition on the least frequently-known more often than the most. In this fandom space, that means a minimum of Worm exposition and extra Limbus Company exposition. I've tried pretty hard to mention any mechanic or plot point that will come up later or would be foundational to understanding a setting/character, even it's been clunky--leaving it up to Sans to exposit on how LV and EXP work in the latest chapter has been a frustration I've been trying to dodge for a little while now, but haven't worked out a good method for.
That said, I've always been curious how useful it actually is in practice, both as a general idea and in this fic specifically. I imagine there are those who know already know the basic rules of any given setting, and presumably skim. And those who don't know don't tend to read segments for works they don't know, and presumably also skim, later to ask questions down in the comments when a mechanic pops up they're not familiar with.
That said, I've always been curious how useful it actually is in practice, both as a general idea and in this fic specifically. I imagine there are those who know already know the basic rules of any given setting, and presumably skim. And those who don't know don't tend to read segments for works they don't know, and presumably also skim, later to ask questions down in the comments when a mechanic pops up they're not familiar with.
I'm honestly fine with the current pace of things, its better to explain things as foreshadowing / when they become relevant than bogging things down with unwarranted exposition. I don't expect Emma to get into the details of the Slaughterhouse Nine or their succession protocols unless they have a chance to become releant.
And I do read the parts with Kyoko despite being unfamiliar with her character.
Reading the characters do comparative metaphysics is pretty interesting, at least for me.
I feel like I've seen some random YouTube essay before that told me that exposition is sometimes necessary, but it being boring isn't.
I don't mind reading or re-learning about stuff I already know, as long as instead of an info-dump, the highlight of the scene is novel character reactions or interactions.
Time Loops are arguably not Time Travel. Sure, it is in a literal sense, but the terms are very different when it comes to their mechanics.
Specifically in the sense that when anyone uses the term Time Travel, it implies an ability to choose when you wish to go, and that the journey to the past (or future) is very much physically happening. You have to worry about paradoxes, temporal clones, a time machine, etc. Time Travel gives a character an almost ultimate level of freedom, so a writer has to finagle a way where time travel doesn't completely dominate the plot or remove all the tension.
The Time Loops that Frisk/Chara, Flowey, and Homura are in only involves their memories/mind traveling back to a set time. And there is a limit to how far back they can go, and they have a complete inability to go forward at all except through the old-fashioned way. Time Loops tend to involve a near insurmountable problem that often becomes Sisyphean in nature, and thematically are basically a prison that traps a character, unable to move forward until they complete the reason they're in the loop in the first place.
...Or maybe I'm wrong, and the author doesn't want to even deal with the Time Loop issue. Maybe they have an entirely different plan that involves Undyne getting pulled through to one of the other worlds after Chara kills everyone. Or maybe they plan on just killing Undyne off, and have her soul stuck in the Node after death.
...Or maybe I'm wrong, and the author doesn't want to even deal with the Time Loop issue. Maybe they have an entirely different plan that involves Undyne getting pulled through to one of the other worlds after Chara kills everyone.
Maybe? It's arguable that she just stocks up at the beginning of every loop. I feel like if there was the chance of her farming Grief Seeds over multiple loops to have an essentially limitless supply, that would be a major plot point.
I considered that, but I rather doubt that any reasonable version of Frisk would be able to pull off a blind deathless genocide run.
In my opinion the problem with infodumps is pacing, just shoving a huge bundle of information midchapter breaks the flow, information should always if possible have a meaning. In the undertale itself, stuff like LV or EXP isn't shoved all at once,but given piecemeal, at specific resting areas like the town,where there is nothing to distract or are the centerpoint of important fights.
In this situation,i think an explanation wouldn't be bad,Undyne's situation has received a lot of focus and foreshadowing, and we're all at the edge of our seats to see what happens.
I'm probably a sucker for that sort of thing since I love Fury of a Shattered Mirror.
