feast when you can

FALLOUT (2024— ) S1E05 The Past

FALLOUT (2024-)

resenting their humanity

(partially inspired by this! a friend agreed that chara kind of had "calvin energy" and seeing this image floating around a bunch recently, i could not help myself)

@acaciapines

Let people grow.

When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.

There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.

But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.

You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.

It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”

Purity culture tells you that once someone says or does something, they can never go back on it. That’s a goddamn lie. While it’s true that some remain unrepentant and never change their ways and continue to harm others, it’s important to allow everyone the chance to learn from their mistakes. Saying something ignorant isn’t murder. Please stop treating it that way. Let people grow.

Still call it out and question it ….

Bruh. No. Listen. Call out what people do now, absolutely. If they haven’t changed, call them out on their record. This post is explicitly not about people who HAVEN’T changed. What this post IS saying is, if someone is making an effort to be a good person, don’t go digging around in their past for evidence that they were once for what they’re now against, or once against what they’re now for, as “proof” of what they “really think,” because people’s opinions and beliefs can change. 

The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

If someone has changed for the better, don’t harass them about what they were like before they fuckin’ changed. That’s shitty and it needs to stop.

We can’t change the world if we decide people can’t change.

Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not  Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.

I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.

In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.

Folks. This shit needs to stop.

People who have changed for the better are incredibly precious to me. They’ve had a harder fight than I have in many ways, and I admire them greatly for the work they’ve done and how far they’ve come. We may not always see eye-to-eye, but I am very grateful they are here, because they remind me of two things:

First, the evidence that people are not doomed to be one way forever, but can become better than they were. That means that there is an actual, tangible goal to standing up for our rights: That, even if we can’t change everyone’s mind, we might someday be able to change enough minds that we can be safe.

And second, that if I ever mess up, that it won’t be the end; there will still be a path back for me to being the kind of person I want to be.

people always talk about leaving comments on ao3 like it's a nice thing to do, or the best way to encourage writers to keep writing, or overall like it's how you Do Your Part in fandom

and yeah, all those things are true, but having spent the past few months leaving enthusiastic comments on as many things as i can, i have a different perspective

you should leave comments on fics because it's fun

taking the time to stop and focus on what i like about a story has made me way more aware of what's going on in stories and what i like about them. there's bit more actual comprehension and appreciation and not just beaming content into my eyes to fill time

i like noticing cool little things in fics, or riffing on funny events. i've never been very good at speculating or picking apart characters, but sometimes something clicks and it rocks.

and of course it's pretty nice when you get a response and it's clear you've made another person happy

so yeah, you should leave comments for your own sake, too. it makes reading better!

^^^ Yes!!! It helps you to be a more aware and active reader, and you really start to notice the small details of things. I love it

I think the funniest possible thing to do in a low stakes situation when someone subtly insults you is to ask them to elaborate.

In Seattle I was explaining environmental DNA and a woman said it “tickled” her to hear someone with my accent (rural Appalachia) “talk about science.”

So I said, “oh! 🙂 What an interesting perspective. Can you tell me more about what you mean?”

As you can imagine it went badly for her very quickly.

they need to invent a writing that is easy. and fast also

monkey paw finger curls and another AI generative text program is born

nooo my good intentions

Damn did you see that? That was fucked up, right? Anyway I'm Rod Serling.

i think we should bring this back (with some amendments ofc) if we ever needed an "internet etiquette" for the younger generations, now is the moment to remind them. purity culture kills fandom

as well as the three laws of fandom:

Don't Like, Don't Read (DL;DR), Your Kink is not My Kink And That's OK (YKINMKATO) and Ship and Let Ship

Freud action figure?? That my partner and I may have accidentally shoplifted by putting him in the drawer of the nightstand we bought and leaving him in there at checkout.

narratively I am a fan of romances that don’t ever actually become romances

I don’t mean in an aromantic life partner way, I mean romantic tension that is never resolved or acted upon for whatever reason but by the end it’s clear that both characters experienced the love of their lives without ever acknowledging it as such. but they know. they know.

this is the post that I’ve had like five people accuse me of romanticizing fucked up and traumatizing relationships in fiction about btw

just heard a skeleton skitter past ...

bah, nasty little things.

Hello! Thanks for the tag, blestie! Let me see what I got (it's all Blaseball lol)

Hold Tightly, Hold Tightly - About my Blaseball son, Jasper Coven, how he got his teacher, Kiki Familia, and how he ended up on Valhalifax. A Short Circuits story.

Food Is An Act We Do For One Another - 3 short stories centered on Lachlan Shelton, and why we cook for the people we love

Hobbs Cain's Wednesday Night Nightmare Club - Hobbs using art therapy to help Richmond Harrison out with his nightmares. Eugenia Garbage decides to join in. A meditation on making art and what it means to be a person.

Until You Said Goodbye - Elijah Bates and Hobbs Cain get along pretty well on the bench. They're not great players, they don't have a rivalry, but they keep each other company during the games. But Elijah is pretty sure those barbed jokes are becoming less sincere and more affectionate, and it sure seems like they're making more and more excuses to talk to each other… It's a good thing nothing could happen to change that! Nothing Bad Ever Happens To The Moist Talkers! All based on a doomed ship cynda brought up, and I quote "What if you did necromancy and got your boyfriend killed about it?"

And of course, my magnum opus, EUGENIA GARBAGE FINDS SOME CAT EARS IN A DUMPSTER AND DECIDES TO MAKE IT EVERYONE’S PROBLEM

Also I'm going to cheat and throw one more in, because we're really proud of it. Me and Cynda and Kit made The Salt together. It's a lost Short Circuit in which all of the water around Halifax has disappeared, and a dedicated coven has moved out to the salt flats where the ocean once was to try to bring it back.

Thanks again for the tag! Uhhh, it's early and my brain isn't working at 100%, but take this opportunity to put your own up if you want!

hmmmmm I don't want to cheat by linking my entire Dot series but it's so hard for me to pick one! I'm proud of how much I've written about them and their character arc. However if pressed I do still have a soft spot for over and over and then over again.

eloise butterworth breaks the world was such a fun experimental piece for me, I loved playing around with the glitchy weirdness of that circuit and I think it turned out really good!

commissioner vapor's pogtastic existential crisis is one of the many fics that got out of hand and turned out way longer than I expected, but I'm really happy with it and I had an absolute blast writing CV and the teen squad. Love that emotional whiplash gamer cloud <3

Speaking of fics that got out of hand, a voice in a dream whispered a name was supposed to be ~10k words of Dot in Kit's blb-only AU, and instead it ended up eight times that long. Whoops! It's just such an incredibly cool world to play around in, and some of my absolute favourite Dot scenes I've written are in here.

And for a little variety, I'll toss in my PMD fic, Where You Belong, which is a love letter to my first-ever video game. This is where I first started experimenting more with my style and getting more descriptive, and I'm still pretty darn proud of it (though I haven't updated it in literal years, whoops, I promise I'm gonna get back to it)

also seconding The Salt, it kicks ass and we did a great job on it :)

Thanks for the tag, blestie! I'm probably technically supposed to send this as an ask to people but tagging is faster and also this way I can remind everyone that my writing blog exists lol. @cedardivine @bread--quest @postofficeofficial @thehallstara @leonstamatis show off those fics! (if you want to) (no pressure)

my top award goes, of course, to and one day i'll watch them burn with me, which is my blaseball magnum opus in so many ways. it's 77k words of navigating grief and judaism and feeling out of place, and that special kind of desperation to be seen as a person by people who will never do so. also so much meta-textual commentary and funky formatting.

swallow your guilt is another blaseball fic, set in coronation era and is one of my most criminally underrated fics in my own humble opinion. it's about the new seattle garages and the old chicago firefighters, grief and survivors guilt, and growing up after stagnating for far too long. (it also has a smutty coda if that's your jam. i posted it the day blaseball died which remains one of the funniest things i've done. imo.)

i'll see you again, next life around is a hatchetfield fic where i get back to my roots of funky weird stories with limitations. love what came out of the rules and guidelines i made for myself and is just an all around banger!

i play dead, come alive was my first hatchetfield fic, and i love it a lot. it's a lot of what i do best– succinct character studies that try and bring new perspectives to the bare bones of canon. also my most popular fic, which like hey can't argue with that.

and i'd be so remiss if i didn't include ablaze with all the people you've been, which feels less like a fic these days and more like just a really good game i made, but still is one as much as it isn't. if there's anything i've made in the past three years that i'd like people to see regardless of anything, it's this one. 35k word twine game about grief and confronting what-could-have-beens, and so much more.

not gonna tag five but @fourteenfifteen @idonthaveanyurlideas @snarky-wallflower if any of y'all want??

Thank you so much for tagging me, @thehallstara!

we must go on with the show! is the first fic I thought of when it came to this. It’s a Hatchetfield fic, an exploration of what, exactly, could have happened after the curtain closed on Emma Perkins in Inevitable. I saw the chance for a mockery of a “date”, something Emma would never get to have with this version of Paul, and leapt at it. I really enjoyed getting to play with how Infected Paul would break down Emma, and what the end of the world looked like! It even got recognized by one of my favourite Hatchetfield authors, fencecollapsed - I nearly dropped my phone when I saw that notification!

always be my favourite ghost is a Night In The Woods fic that explores grieving Casey Hartley, and what it means to lose someone for absolutely no reason. I wanted to talk about how everyone has someone that will miss them even if they're gone. It's my love letter to Night in The Woods, that it matters that you were here, even if you are forgotten eventually. For a fic I wrote mostly on a red-eye flight, I'm still so proud of it.

Wave Your World Goodbye is a Hatchetfield fic that I did NOT expect to get as long as it did - it was my first ever (and only, really) completed multi chapter fic. I've always loved the trope of damsels in distress, and it was so much fun to get to write that for the first time! In my defense, Duke Keane could have such damsel in distress energy, and getting to write him and Miss Holloway being incredibly in love even through all of that was delightful. Besides, I got to write Wiley being a bastard, and I'm disturbingly good at that, as it turns out. I think writing the ending is one of the times where I've felt actually evil.

the promises i made (just hold on) is a Madoka Magicia fic where I wrote one important conversation Homura had with each main character over her decade-and-more of looping. I really enjoyed diving deep into her character here - how she can never give up on Madoka, how that self-sacrifice has made it so that she really has nothing else, only the echoes of a friendship long-since-gone.

the present (after it’s past) is a Pulp Musicals fic that's all about broken friendships, and just what it might take to repair them. The Stratfords' relationship with Benjamin fascinates me, especially after the Great Moon Hoax! The narrative may not think about him for a while, but god knows I will. It's about the complexities of being friends with someone for years, not catching what was wrong until too late--being angry at him, justifiably, but also knowing you don't want to throw the whole friendship away. It's my favourite Pulp fic I've written, and I wrote it mostly in a hotel room at 12 am.

and for my writer mutuals (no pressure!): @acaciapines, @amethystunarmed, @markeronacomputer, @sherbetflowers and @lilacthebooklover!

thank you for tagging me!

after digging through my posted fics, i think my five favorites would have to be:

honorary mention to the dess raises kris au which would be on this list. if it existed <3

as for tags, the first five writer mutuals i see are @frill-shark, @doyouhearthunder, @wynterwulf7, @a-concert-just-for-me, and @fencesandfrogs! no pressure and if i missed anybody, you are tagged in spirit! if you wanna talk i say Talk.

Thanks for the tag! Wait hang on this is just going to be most of my bibliography -

You reading this: "It's all UTDR?"

Me, standing behind you: "Always has been."

Noelle Holiday, the Spectacular Spider-Doe: My most recent fic! As the title implies it is a Deltarune Spider-Man AU. I like recontextualizing familiar characters with a fresh twist, so this one is a lot of fun imo! Come watch how both Noelle and Kris juggle great spider-powers and great responsibilities.

Colder, Yet Colder: The first part of my Deltarune trilogy Snow Angels, and my most popular fic by a mile. This one is a post-canon Snowgrave continuation that deals with Noelle's manipulation by a cruel player-possessed Kris and her awakening to the reality of her virtual world. A very meta one with lots of gaslighting and girlbossing! Noelle goes through a lot in this fic but it does make her stronger.

Lost and Found: Part 2 of Snow Angels! This was the sequel to CYC that I never expected to write, so I took a different tack for it and made it Dess-centric. The big innovation here was sticking Chara Undertale's consciousness in Dess Holiday's body in an unlikely headmates scenario. No one is happy about this. Complications ensue.

The Possibility of Pain: The trilogy-capper! This one is a big ol' novel that wraps up the character arcs from the first two and takes them on a new adventure with new antagonists. Gets heavily into the Dess-Chara headmates concept and the lingering guilt and trauma Noelle and Kris still have from CYC. I'm very proud of this one; it's probably the most polished, carefully plotted fic I've yet written.

Ghosthuggers: Of my fics that are brief oneshots and not novels, this is my favorite. A blend of UT and DR continuity, it features Frisk, Chara and Asriel exploring the Mt. Ebbot Museum of Human-Monster History in an attempt to find a haunting for their amature ghost hunters YouTube show. A quick dose of silly kid shenanigans and Chara angst (that in retrospect was a good warm-up for the much, much more Chara angst I would later write in Snow Angels).

Hmm let's tag @noelle-holi-gay, @mythmonster, @reyathae, @kimberlyeab and @futureboy!

I'm late to posting this, since tdov was 3 days ago...but I think it looks nice so I'll post it here too.

[Image description: digital art of Kris from Deltarune in their Dark World form, wearing a trans flag as a cape with a nonbinary flag pin. They're smiling, and text next to them reads: "Happy Trans Day of Visibility!" End description.]

Yes, the 4channers were awful and they persist in misgendering me, while simultaneously complaining I don't post anymore, with zero self awareness.

4chan harassment alone isn't why I left. This is.

It's the transphobia.

online harassment campaigns are genuinely terrifying and part of why they're terrifying is that they make you feel like you're going insane—especially if they're false, frame you maliciously on purpose or blow things wayy out of proportion—because like. asides from it feeling really fucking bad due to the aforementioned tide of toxic sludge coming your way all at once, you genuinely start to doubt your perception of reality because surely this isn't... right? surely people can tell this isn't real/there's no way this kind of reaction is warranted or deserved, right?

if any of your friends ever go through that the single most helpful thing you can do is reach out to them & be like "jesus christ these people are nuts, are you okay?" PLEASE do, even privately if you're afraid of being dragged in. they'll never thank you enough, it's a literal life raft for their sanity