If you wouldn't mind me asking, do you have an end plan for BPC? I know you wanna add more of the skeletons so are you going to write multiple endings? Or leave it open ended? Or...?
oh i don’t mind! it might sound batshit but i’ve more or less had the ‘end beats’ (points i want to hit before the end) in the main story planned out from the beginning like. three years ago
there are going to be multiple endings! i’ve played around w the format of how exactly i’ll deliver it (using twine, making a ‘sequel’ and then making bpc a ‘series’ on ao3, etc etc) and still haven’t decided lol. we’ll..... see when it happens. it’s a little too soon to tell
trixie should read the rainbow fish and be horrified
i think she’d be less horrified by the descaling process and more by the moral of having to destroy yourself to get others to like you! reminds her of someone she knows 👁👁
Hi! I just finished reading Bones Picked Clean and I got a question. Why didn't Mars and Jupiter go to the lodge to actually ask about their rations? Did they just... assume that lodge were doing it on purpose and they are in no condition to fight their way out of this? I'm getting confused with those flashbacks to the time when they all lived in a same place, and the relationship was... well, maybe not "friendly", but good enough not to starve them for some reason.
there’s a few layers to it! metatextually it was referring to how in harem fics ht!sans and ht!papyrus were sometimes left on the back-burner for in-universe months without anyone in the fic ever interacting with them and then the characters being surprised when they’re like. hostile, but there are actual in-text reasons: (long answer below the cut)
one layer is that, before they were forced to confront it with mutt + black, mutt and black had more or less been corralling the two of them to keep them from town as part of their assigned job by the lodge; so to jupe + mars the cause of the problem was very obviously the two of them and they never thought to go to the source- and the four of them hadn’t really interacted prior to this arrangement, so on both sides it seemed like the other pair of brothers were unhinged and violent.
the next is largely that, while we see the perspective of other skeletons wrt to jupiter and mars, to jupe + mars, it seemed like they were barely tolerated when they were living in the house (which is why they moved out- **spoilers**even by the time that mars encounters frisk, they’d already moved out of the lodge **end spoilers**). they called jupe ‘crooks’ and mars ‘axe’ and, while the other skeletons think of them might think of them fondly, even papyrus notes that their appearance unsettled him and he’d get nervous, and jupe + mars picked that up. from their perspective, sure they enjoyed some nice moments with the others, but it was always understood by jupe + mars that they were guests, and not particularly welcome ones (part paranoia, part picking up the anxieties of the other skeletons interacting with them). not to mention the isolation of it- no one ever checked in on them other than black and mutt (to keep them in the forest and fight them if they tried to get out), so that reinforced the idea that, well, they were never wanted anyways.
the third being that, being two survivors of a famine and a more or less post-apocalypse world underground, mars and jupe (as bad as it is to say) were ‘broken into’ being resigned to helplessness- ‘the situation is dire and we have no food? just hunker down and try your best to survive it because there’s nothing we can do to solve it’. where other skeletons might’ve risked their lives to fight black+mutt or the lodge, mars and jupiter had tried that route and failed in their universe, and are left worse-off for it- mars is barely alive and jupiter can’t stand confrontation like he used to.
tldr; here’s an excerpt from ch33 from jupiter’s perspective:
He tries to ground himself, thinking of you, of the cooking shows he liked to watch, of the old MTT runs, and of his collectible action figures and puzzle books, but it’s as if the brilliant colors of the past months with you suddenly drain away, leaving everything stuck in black and white, betrayal and helplessness.
He knows he is panicking and he knows it’s senseless- both him and his brother are healthy enough that there’s no real threat here, even with Edge escorting Sans for whatever reason. Yet he’s still shaking, sitting at the edge of his too-small race car bed, worrying over nothing. He should check on Sans. Especially since, between the two of them, Jupiter had significantly less head trauma and he’d be more present in the situation, less confused and scattered. All he needs to do is calm down, start breathing evenly, and get up. Put one foot in front of the other.
For some reason, that seemed like the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life.
Seeing this universe’s Sans again felt like he was thrown back into those three months. The first few confused days, the instinctual rationing that followed, the panic when they couldn’t leave the forest without fighting with Black or Mutt. Finding out it wasn’t because of Black or Mutt was probably the worst of it- at least they were known to be cruel, at least they’d come to expect violence from them.
Holyy molly dude can we talk about how amazingly you write each skelebro in BPC?? Like they're not just repeats of the same person (tho technically they are), they're fleshed out and unique. It's phenomenal how you can write such believable, fluid and realistic characters and still not spend a whole page describing them. It's simple, yet tactful. I cannot wait for the next chapter. Keep being awesome :)
thank you very much! bpc is a very character-driven story, so when i hear readers love my characterizations of them, it makes me very happy!
I just wanna say i love BPC! i’m only about half way through but i’m already hooked! i’m also really grateful that you try to make reader as inclusive as possible. as a black enby its rare to find reader inserts that aren’t alienating but reading stories like yours make me feel more welcome in the fandom!
i’m really glad! i’ve been writing reader insert fics for like. an unreasonable amount of time and it’s so important to me that any reader can pick it up and not be taken out of the story by a rogue description of obviously straight hair, skin tone descriptors, or obviously gendered language. i’m glad you enjoy the story + i hope you’re ready for the slow burn to finally start producing sparks!
Hello! Sorry to bother you, I am a big fan of BPC and was drawing up some fan art of the confrontation scene when I realized I’ve got no clue what MC would be wearing that day. I tried re-reading but couldn’t quite figure out what to do. Did you have any kind of style in mind?
it’s no bother!
most (if not all) of the scenes in bpc i keep what the reader is wearing to be a bit ambiguous, and they were simply running an errand at the ranger’s station, so it’s likely they were in casual clothes! jeans, tee shirt, etc!
