Hi harmless-pest! I just discovered this blog today and binged the whole thing. I really enjoyed reading it. So, my question for you is:
What have you been up to after this blog ended? It’s been over 3 years since you finished this story, surely you haven’t just been doing nothing like a certain flower was ;p
(( I may not have been doing nothing but I sure as hell have been posting nothing! Though that's planned to change soonish
I'm near-exclusively into Harvest Moon-type farming sims now, to the point where I've spent the past few years studying 3D modeling and game engines so I can make one myself with my partner squatlord-draws who's actually showed up on this blog a couple times I think.
I've actually been meaning to make a blog for sharing dev stuff for a while, and this ask pushed me over the edge to finally grab the url, haha. Link in the text. Nothing there yet, but there will be.
If you wanna see my other art, I post it to @steemie on significant delay!
My main blog is @stemmmm and that one's majority reblogs but I've also started posting analysis essays on Harvest Moon games
Thanks so much to you and everyone else who enjoyed reading this! It's really, truly been a joy to see the love for this blog come up so strongly after so long. I dont think it was even this popular while it was still updating! <3
I thought i didn't write down any of my plans for this blog, but it seems like I did? so here's some character bios I wrote and the synopsis of what was gonna happen in epilogue (unfortunately without visual direction)
The following content was written in 2017, only meant to be read by myself and is mostly unedited
LORE
The underground is going empty. Slowly. Mostly he stays at charas grave, bc he's a fukkin flower and would die without sunlight. The only other place with light is the palace and there's too much traffic there in and out of the underground.
He wants to avoid people after what he did. Not that anyone remembers any of it, resets or the god thing (it was kinda cool he doesn't super regret that. More later) but he feels like. Bad about it and doesn't know how to deal with THAT baloney. he'll still go out every now and then though to see the state of the UG, explore abandoned places, hear word of the surface from locals who decided it wasn't for them or just came back to visit. None of them know who he is, but some are familiar with a weird flower they've seen popping out of the ground and suddenly disappearing.
He absolutely idolizes frisk for saving the underground, doing what he and chara never could. But after a while alone with himself he realizes that frisk just coincidentally came at the right time. First he idolized chara, then frisk, and then he realized HE was the one who became a GOD and broke the barrier himself and sure frisk helped but he could have done it on his own! He's charismatic enough! Who needs frisk, they aren't even that great or cool! They had the power to reset and didn't even do anything cool with it! They went around one whole time and that was it, they weren't even interested in the experimentation and mind games... He gets very lonely without frisk. He only knew them for a day but they were kind and forgiving to him unlike anyone else has ever been. He misses them. Sometimes frisk will come back to visit but he'll hide in the other buttercups, ashamed he's a flower again and afraid to talk to them.
He's fuckin constantly monologuing he's so lonely. Without someone to cut him off he just keeeeeeps gooooooing
He kidnaps absolutely everyones mannerisms and gets so mad if you point it out
He's been around for 2-3 months in reality, which is a fuckton of time for resetting esp compared to frisks single day. He had to get real bored to stop for so long and let it all play out. He's just glad he chose to stop on a timeline where everyone was relatively happy so they could all be saved.
Where is chara? He doesn't know. He still misses them but he doesn't care much to see them again anymore. Chara wasn't that great, but they also weren't that bad. They were his best friend and he idolized them. Chara was sure they were the angel sent to free the underground and he believed them. He hates what happened but he doesn't blame chara for it. For a minute when he 180s on them he does! But he's just angry and the more he thinks about it he can't stay mad. They were just kids. They didn't know. this is what they get.
He doesn't care for humans one bit. He's only met 2 and the rest tried to kill him on sight. As a whole he doesn't hate all humans, but he certainly doesn't trust any of them. He was once obsessed with humans, its kind of like having your favorite celebrity be a jerk but worse. Part of the reason he stays underground is to avoid them, but touristy humans go down there sometimes so it doesn't always work. Many times when he goes to ask how the surface is, its to affirm his beliefs about humans. And often the bias in the underground is on his side. Grillbys is still open down there so he mostly goes there for Intel.
The vague amount of time it’s been since chara and asriel died is fairly short. Short enough for chara to know snowdrake, short enough for chara to have instigated the gyftrot thing and introduced the underground to christmas
THE GREAT ANALYSIS OF FLOWEY
Primary motivations: fear of death, fear of loneliness. Fear of death trumps all, as being with friends puts him on the surface where theres too many people and things that have killed him before.
He’s dependent, picks a favorite person and latches on. Personality is largely a construct of traits he pulled from others.
He’s self-obsessed in that he’s constantly analyzing his own behavior and thinking about what he’s doing. May be an asriel trait refined by ages of carefully shaping himself to behave in certain ways at certain times. He’s not actually that snappy and quick to anger? At least not normally. He’s in a bad mood lately but when he wants to, he can stay perfectly composed. The threats are just a mechanism to get others to fuck off.
He’s an open book who will keep going on about himself if prompted, and if he’s not trying to hide something from a specific person. Exacerbated by the fact that he’s been talking to himself for so long.
Nasty cognitive dissonance. He will carefully look at all potential issues and outcomes but will find excuses and land on the one that benefits himself/his desires. (ie, he wont admit it but he knows theres nothing really keeping him away from frisk)
He’s been living a long time “without consequences” yeah but he’s extremely critically aware of all consequences. Every action he takes is calculated, he’s just roleplaying 100% of the time. Now that he can’t reset, there are consequences, so he’s very afraid of doing things and fucking up. Part of the reason why he doesnt want to see frisk is because he can’t believe they like him and he thinks that if they learn more about him, they’ll stop. He doesnt know they know everything about him. Frisk is his special person, he cant stand to lose them.
A lot of this is devoted to him figuring out who he is as a person
Doesn’t care for life but fears death because he doesn’t know what’s going to happen without a soul: he fears the unknown
Has the patience of a god but he doesn’t like puzzles that much? He wants the story not the challenge, whereas chara and frisk enjoy the challenge (puzzle enjoyment goes chara>frisk>flowey). Like me, he’ll do the same thing over and over again for hours until it works, but if he gets stuck at a puzzle for more than 30 minutes he’s gotta leave for a while out of frustration. That isn’t to say he’s bad at puzzles, in fact spending so much time with papyrus has made him pretty good at them! At least in theory.
On the surface he has fucking AWFUL crippling panic attacks and he finds it hard to do anything or go anywhere, at least without frisk. 100% dependency and he hates it
First reaction when people do things for him is “no this is bad and I hate it” even if he likes it actually. He doesn't realize he does it until its too late and he's too stubborn to admit anything after the fact. Its a defense mechanism after being taken advantage of, developed because he's so complacent and fine with anything
Unrealistically high and vague expectations placed on him all his life (ur gonna do something big, ur gonna change the world, etc)
His feelings toward Frisk
Theyre his favorite person right now, he’s obsessed with them and loves everything they do. This will wear off and he’ll resent them for a while until he manages to get over it and stop idolizing them. The spite could come out of them having “moral highground” and gently scolding him over little things that add up over time, out of them taking care of themselves poorly because they prioritize others, and by the fact that they’re just as bad as he is as it turns out. He’s afraid theyll stop loving him since he can’t love them. Hes fairly candid about how he cant love them, even asking them if theyre aware he’s just using them for attention and being a leech. What he doesnt know is that frisk is using him as well to stop chara, so once he finds out about that there will probably be some kind of relief.
His feelings toward Chara
They were always the right one, the smart one, as much as he loved them and was fascinated by them and loved to learn things from them, he really hated that part of them deep down though he never snapped and shared it. In the future he will since he’s less tolerant.
His feelings towards the relationship those two have
He’s jealous that they’re so close and know so much about each other. They’re really closer than any two people ever could be since they’ve shared a body for so long. There’s also such a strange mix of love and hate between them that he really can’t read their relationship. He resents the idea of being the third wheel so deeply and he’s particularly spiteful of chara for this since he loves frisk.
His FEELINGS
He super do have them, eh?? He super is actually just very traumatized and lonely and confused eh?? Almost as if he absolutely can and does still love everyone, he’s just detached himself from it. Something very easy to do.
HOW THE FRISK BE
They’re kind of a little bitch and a goth. Rebellious teen days now!! They’re hard to read which can either work for or against them. They don’t really give a shit in a large part about much of anything, especially not now when they’re very concerned with themselves and their problems. They don’t get along with humans or much of anyone their own age for this reason.
Resetting was largely on their hands and they got pretty fucked up by it. Chara did encourage them to do some shit, it wasnt helped that flowey who had forgotten about them was encouraging them too. It was just a bunch of irresponsible kids playing games with peoples lives. There’s also a touch of frisk getting to points on the surface where things are new and changing which scares them into resetting for fear of the unknown future.
Frisk thought everything was fine until they got to the end of all the genocide stuff, that’s when chara lost it. In the whole “you think theres no consequences for this shit u pulled” manner and tried to hold frisk to it. It was a 2 souls one body case where they shared equal control, this was the first time neither cooperated. Frisk wasnt immediately freaked out by chara, they’re both friends and frisk knew they were a weirdo. Frisk gave in and “sold their soul” so chara would let them do anything other than sit around in an empty void. Chara played the next game like their regular old friend. Then they killed everyone. That’s when frisk freaked out and realized their friend had lost it. When frisk learned to regret what they did. They reset to a world where their friends could be alive again and fought their hardest, but Chara still had their way. This timeline, Frisk went out of their way immediately to get any kind of protection from chara. All kinds of supernatural charms and tricks to keep ghosts at bay. As a result, it’s been a while since they saw chara. And they miss chara a lot. But they know that chara watches them and is waiting for the moment when frisk lets their guard down.
Frisk pushes so hard to get flowey to come home with them because they know he’s asriel and they know he knows chara. Maybe he’ll know a way to talk some sense into them. And after everything they did, frisk feels betrayed by chara and can’t call them their best friend. Floweys the only person they know wouldn’t do that, he’s faithful to the end.
Frisk is a fixer though, they still love everyone despite what they did and feel genuinely sorry for the way they fucked up. Including chara after all theyve done. It breaks their heart that they can’t play with chara anymore
When frisk finally explains all of this to flowey, chara’s sitting there busting in loudly at every chance and every disagreement like the fucker they are and flowey’s doing everything in his power to tune them out and just watch frisk’s hands
Backstory and reasons why they climbed the mountain are unknown. They will not under any circumstances talk about their old life, which concerns some people, but prying accomplishes nothing. They try to act as though nothing bad ever happened to them to make them want to climb a mountain no one ever returns from, because life is good now and they’ve got loving friends and family. Even other humans who knew Frisk before don’t know much about them since they never really spoke. For Frisk, pretending it never happened is as good as it never happening, at least so they try to think. But they’ll have some triggers, just need to figure out what.
Frisk talks in their sleep, however it’s only very quiet nonsense gibberish. This shocks flowey, as he didn’t think they were capable of talking at all. It makes him more curious about their past too.
THE CHARA SITUATION
Are they soulless? It’s hard to say since really theyre nothing but a soul, just fractured all to hell and lingering long after they should. I still like the idea of their soul being a little infused with bits form asriels soul too
Before the underground, they were the youngest of a large family that mistreated them. They went underground after the death of their mother.
In the underground they were best friends and great siblings with asriel. They hung out with kids they shouldnt have though. They werent treated super great underground either, as a human. They and asriel both got up to shit they shouldnt have.
HOW MUCH DOES EVERYONE KNOW ABOUT FRISK AND FLOWEY
Sans: Frisk assumed he knew everything already so they told him that they and flowey could reset. Didn’t tell him that they’ve killed everyone multiple times
Papyrus, Undyne, toriel, asgore: Doesn’t know
Alphys: let in a little on the reset business
The next section of the document covers the meetings, which were all made into finished comics, and therefore will be skipped.
SURFACE
(note from present Stem: this is all way more uncooked and hard to read than i thought it might be)
Flowey has nightmares that charas coming to kill him. Notably one comic where chara in shadow approaches and then it’s revealed as frisk
The inciting action
Kids make fun of Frisk for being “dumb” and flowey for being a flower and never wanting to be outside (he needs a roof over his head). At one point he snaps back a little too much and loses it a little. Frisk, as a result, tries to stuff him in their bag but this doesn’t calm him down. He blows up the backpack with magic and hurts a bunch of kids in the crossfire, including frisk
Toriel
She walks into the room where flowey is. They say hi to each other. Then she asks if he's feeling well. He's confused, but says he's fine. She says that's good. Then she says he's been behaving strangely lately. Floweys upset by this. “Did my acting get worse or can you see straight through me?” she giggles, “I think its your acting, dear.” she asks him what's wrong, if he's not happy on the surface. He says no, he's happy and he never wants to go away again. He decides that he’s comfortable enough with toriel to tell her this, she was once his mom after all, and in a way she is again. He's confused. He doesnt know what to do while frisk is away at school, since he can't join them after he had a weird episode and threatened other kids. He can play with papyrus and that's fun, but he doesnt really want to do that. He doesnt want to leave or go anywhere without frisk really. Toriel asks if that's why he's confined himself to this little pot. He doesn't really know, and he doesn't want to admit being scared. Toriel catches on though. She sees that he really is just a regular kid in there, and a kid at that since its hard to tell with him being a flower, and hes scared of this big world. The underground has always been the same, small and hardly changing even after all the years since they were trapped down there. By contrast the surface is huge and full of new people and everything changes all the time, and it’s scary. By now she's caught on that he has issues with humans. She says that he can trust anyone in this house, but she understands if frisk is the only one he can really count on. He finally cracks. He admits that hes afraid of frisk getting sick of him since he's such a pathetic mess like this and can't do anything about it. Toriel tells him that frisk never would. They love him too much. But if he's still that afraid, then he needs to try and be better eventually. Sitting around in that pot all day waiting for frisk to come back won't do it.
Alphys
Frisk finally breaks because flowey is being so insufferable and snaps at him. They both feel extremely bad, so toriel says that flowey needs to stay somewhere else for a while (because he won’t get along with anyone else in the house lately so sending frisk away is silly). Flowey hesitantly agrees to it and requests to stay with alphys and undyne. Which means i finally have to try writing for undyne lol. He probably hung out with undyne during frisk’s gym classes since he can’t exactly exercise as a flower. But he can’t go to work with her because he isn’t allowed at the school, so if he goes to work with anyone, it’s with alphys. She might take some time off for his sake too because she wants to get to know him and while she doesn’t fully understand why he’d go out of his way to choose her to stay with, she appreciates it. They watch some anime and al finally gets a chance to pry at him scientifically with a lot of question asking. He holds back on life questions except for ones that pertain only to this timeline and are least incriminating. Watching anime on netflix one night while the autoplay is loading he suddenly says he’s asriel. Alphys chokes on her popcorn or something and jumps to stop the autoplay like “what did you just say?!” “Don’t tell toriel. Or asgore. Please. don’t tell anyone.” ‘i won’t! I promise i won’t say anything to anyone!b-b-but did you really say youre--” “prince asriel. The one who absorbed the soul of the first human to fall underground and got killed on the surface” “b-b-b-b-b-but h-how is that possible?? Y-y-y-you don’t… you d-don’t have a s-soul, i-if you were--” “the flowers in asgore’s garden were growing out of my dust. That determination brought me back to consciousness.” “o-o-oh my g-g-god, I-i…” he finally looks up at her in the eye “alphys, you’re going to take this really badly. I’m gonna tell you everything. If you’re ready. I’m warning you now because this is going to get…. Really… really dark. And it’s going to make you feel awful. But you at least deserve to know. If you aren’t ready, I’ll stop. But there’s no promise I’ll ever be willing to say this all again.” alphys centers herself and turns to face him “i’m ready”
CHARA
the first time they see chara again is shortly after frisk takes him home when chara possesses frisk and stumbles out of bed in the middle of the night.
he catches them and theyre like “so at long last you caught on to me”
f: “get out of frisk’s body”
c: “what makes you think I’m not frisk?”
f: “they don’t talk like that. no one’s as bad at roleplaying as you are, chara.”
c*leaves frisk’s body*: “Why that tone, asriel? Are you not surprised to see me? I will admit, I did not think you would take this long to figure it out.”
f: “I had my suspicions the whole time but you were always pretty well hidden.”
c:”hm,,, that doesn’t sound right… oh… Oh! You let yourself forget!”
f:”What are you talking about? why are you possessing frisk’s body”
c:”Frisk never told you? Our sweet savior of monsterkind has been bad. they reset and reset and reset until they destroyed the entire world and I was happy to let them live in the void they created, the hard earned fruits of their labor, but they would not accept it. So they sold their soul to me in order to reset once again. They tried to fix all their mistakes and make the world as if they had never done any wrong. They have forgotten that their actions have consequences, so I am here to remind them.”
f: “chara- chara. Chara. They sold their SOUL to you?”
c: “yes they-”
f:”did they sign a contract for it?”
c:”A contract? What? No, of course not. I am a ghost, I don’t have paper-”
f:”then it’s not legally binding”
c: “what?” f:”it’s not legally binding! You can’t just take people’s souls, chara!”
c:” Yes I can! I can? And I did.”
f:”you’re being ridiculous! Give frisk their soul back and leave them alone!!”
c:”no! ugh… we will continue this later” and then they leave
---
c: frisk has taken to wearing special charms and making all kinds of wards to keep me away. I don’t think they trust me anymore
f: i wonder why
---
f: frisk taught me that anyone can be a better person if they just try, so I’m trying. They want to try too!
c: frisk also went about systematically murdering every last one of their friends immediately after that
f: chara. ohmygod.
---
c: I’m not going to swear. it’s rude and unintelligent
f: it’s more fun tho
Chara makes mention of things they and flowey did in past timelines that were so fun and he can’t remember them, it makes him feel left out
Frisk’s room is covered head to toe in objects and symbols that ward off ghosts and evil spirits. They wear crosses and gemstone rings, they have objects scattered around their room and steal spices from the kitchen that supposedly help, and a circle of salt around their bed. Chara comments later that a lot of the things are meant to keep evil spirits away and therefore don’t actually do anything to them. No one really knows what to say to that
Flowey to frisk after he discovers they were just using him: so i guess… we’re even? You were no better than me all along?
Frisk shrugs
“But um… i was using you because you loved me. So.. do you really…?”
Frisk frantically shakes their hands and waves their arms to tell him no, then scoops him up in a tight hug
--
Frisk laying in bed after a bad day
“Aw, is someone grumpy because they have too many friends?”
Frisk pushes his pot off the bed to crash down onto the floor while flowey snickers
Frisk has gotten in trouble for texting flowey during class so they have to put their phone away now
*insert some kind of normal convo. Then: frisk. Frisk reply. Reply. Reply. Reply. Reply. (cont.) all with very close together timestamps*
Frisk hours later: <3
*conversation continues as normal*
TO GET BODIES BACK
chara keeps possessing frisk and it drives flowey and frisk up a wall bc they can barely do anything about it other than by being constantly vigilant. theyre both exhausted and sick of it since charas spectral and doesnt run out of energy. and theyre so obnoxious.
they go to alphys for help since she knows how to bond souls to things. she asks them why they dont like call an exorcist or something and flowey and frisk both hesitate before admitting they both love chara too much despite how shitty they are.
alphys tells them that chara has to accept the body in order to bond to it, and everyone agrees it’s unlikely that they’ll go for anything unlike their actual human body. alphys says she may know something they can do, she just has to call a friend first. she gets on the phone with a mysterious human who they can’t hear on the other side. actually she might give her opener over text and then immediately get a phonecall in response. she opens by bringing up their interest in necromancy, says that she has a ghost, no not a monster ghost, a human ghost, then has to hold the phone back bc they’re screaming on the other side. she calms them down and starts asking about any ways they can think of making a body for someone. she might just tell the two to take off and give them a thumbs up, she’ll text them later.
alphys finally gets back to them and tells them they might be able to build a type of hybrid human-monster body for chara, but they need their buried remains and powerful magic in order to do so, and it only makes sense that it be the magic of their parents used to resurrect them. she might sprinkle in that if this works, flowey might be able to get his asriel body back too. of course, nothing is possible if they can’t get chara to agree to all of it.
and of course they don’t. their lack of body is punishment, appropriately earned. for them and flowey both. they can’t go back to their bodies just as they cannot undo the wrongs they have done. they cannot escape the consequences of their actions. it would be great if chara said “thats a funny trick to play on god!”
flowey tells them that this isn’t some kind of fucked up divine punishment. what they did wasn’t so bad to warrant this. if anything, taking these forms has made them both WORSE. if it were supposed to be punishment they wouldn’t have these chances to get out. he was punishing himself for so long and it didn’t make any difference, but accepting everyone’s help and trying to do better with them DID help him. doesn’t chara want a body back? don’t they miss the ability to feel… anything? don’t they want to live the life they never got a chance to have? chara goes quiet for the first time in their life and undeath. then they agree to it.
after that, the three of them go to asgore and toriel to finally break the news that their dead kids are still here. chara doesn’t show themselves, but the point still gets across. they agree to it wholeheartedly and without hesitation
the next step is to prepare chara’s body. alphys has a small team of humans helping her out, or maybe just one very enthusiastic one. chara’s body is dug up and there are complements to how well preserved it is, this could be easier than anticipated. a mixture of science and magic is used to heal it and make its human processes function again.
just before chara’s to go in frisk tells them that they can’t wait to finally hug them and they’re like “i take it back?? i can’t do this”
once in their body chara’s just a clumsy weak little fuck and so very grouchy about having to feel things again.
When asriel gets his body back, the first thing he does is stomp out the old flower. Only frisk notices, it worries them. They try to ask him later but he gets offended like, “what you wanted me to keep it to remind me of my horrible life or something?! You think i need it in case something happens and i have to live in it again? I’d rather die!” the reality is that he thinks he’s cured and better and brand new now that he isnt a flower anymore, but that couldnt be farther from the truth. He’s now convinced hes perfect and can do no wrong which makes him do a lot of wrong
((hey so it's been like 4 years since i so much as looked at this blog and i dont know what happened to suddenly inspire asks to start coming in again.... but given the way i left off in the literal previous post, I should clarify something
I absolutely admit i said that i'd still work on this blog back then. I still had ideas for stuff, but after I posted that last update to wrap things up, I completely lost interest in working on this more and at this point I don't even remember what it was that I wanted to do here. So as a result, this blog is no longer updating. Sorry to everyone who just found this! I hope you can take solace in the fact that even without epilogue content, what already exists here still tells pretty much the full story I was trying to get across. and I'm sorry that since it's been so long, I'm not really able to answer any questions you might have about it anymore.))
ur so evil u were gone for so long and i loved this story so much and u come back and then it's all over in an instant.
ill be honest, totally understandable tho, this was going for so long, and im glad to at least get closure even if i felt like i got the rug ripped out from under me for a sec.
((Ahahahahahahahahahaaaaa got you good!
But uh, to soothe your broken heart and answer some other questions...
Not really! Let’s be clear here! Askbox is still open and ready to go, this is just the end of the story I had planned out since this blog’s inception. I have ideas for things that happen after this that I may or may not do depending how things shake out between this blog and real life, but this is the point where it was all supposed to end in the first place. This was never supposed to take so long either, I just uh, got busy lol.
More asks under the cut!
here’s some dunky donut. for all of you. for sticking around all this time. because im epic. :)
YEAHHH!!!! I DID IT IT’S OVER!!! Finally! after ages and ages of making blogs!! I finally did one that got FINISHED! I was starting to think I couldn’t do it but then out of nowhere I just got this crazy spur of motivation lol.
I’m so glad I was able to make some of you feel all of those sweet sentiments I was hoping for back when I was first writing all this :’)
Thank you all, thank you all, thank you ALL for sticking with me!
holy shit im so glad you're back !!!! your flowey is my absolute favorite ever and i think abt this blog all the time. ty for returning, and take your time w the updates <3
((i will do no such thing it is time for a feast my friends
Nice job at not being curious. Making your way all the way to New Home to see the creepy basement and totally not being curious and opening all the caskets
((reminder that you can read all 175+ posts here in chronological order! if you want to! no ones making you!
i just noticed a lot of asks today were VERY repetitive so i figured it would be good to share so yall know whats already been said rather than me leaving you hanging. not that i blame anyone for it, this blogs like 2 years old and never updates lmao
