You ever meet someone so beautiful and perfect you just hate them? Like, everyone else loves them cuz they’re super personable and friendly and they also kick butt, and it’s absolutely sickening. How dare they walk in here with perfect fucking cheekbones and hips that don’t lie and then flash that cute little smile?? And they’re mentally stable and have their life together? They’re carrying up their emotional baggage like a pro on this mountain we call life. Everyone instantly respects them like they are the coolest kid on the block. And they have a freaking significant other who just matches their spunk perfectly.
Fuck them. Fuck them and their confidence and great ass and two living, healthy parents.
me around men: you fundamentally misunderstand batman. hes not just some rich, womaniser who kicks ass, hes a guy who never got over the death of his family, and has built his own to cope. hes compassionate, has a strong moral compass, and cares deeply about his city. he will never give up on the concept of rehabilitation, especially for harvey and harley, and just wants to be a good dad for his kids
they bring in the bird cage. alphys stares in horrified silence, as does the rest of the class. they get an a+ just because alphys doesn’t know how to grade this
Neither of you are confident in your plan for the project, but something had to change. Maybe if more people knew it’d be better. It takes a few days to get through the rest of the project presentations, since Alphys neglected to set a time limit, precious days where they almost reconsider. As if by a miracle, almost nobody asks what your project is. Those who do just nod at your excuse of it being a surprise. Maybe they didn’t really expect you to have one?
When you stand in front of the class with Susie and the empty birdcage in front of you, Alphys finally asks what your project actually is, says something about you two being mysterious. There is, of course, a plan B of making up details about birds they studied in the cage, but had to release before the presentation because the rest took too long. Your final chancetemptation to call off this plan before the entity would inevitably find out. But… you’ve come so far that it’d be a shame to turn back now. You are filled with a familiar feeling as you nod to Susie and give the title of your project.
“The benefits and consequences of” - you pause as you jab your hand into your chest - “ripping a” - red light shines through the room - “still beating” - the cage casts shadows throughout the room - “human soul” - the cage is locked by Susie - “out of one’s body.”
The room is silent. Everyone’s either staring at you, or at the glowing object in the cage. Alphys looks like they’re about to have a panic attack. You take that as your cue to begin the presentation – after all, there’s no going back now. The entity, usually complacent during uninteresting school, is slamming at the bars. You hope this doesn’t get undone. There’s no way it would allow you to pull off something like this again, given how ‘well’ it tolerates Susie knowing. You’re running out of ideas.
You start by explaining the mechanics, the time limit, the emotional distance, how you can’t stray too far from it. Susie backs you up by sharing experiences of when they’ve been helping you out. The more you talk, the more the words flow. The ‘soul’ calms down, drifting to the bottom of the cage, causing a pain that you distantly felt to disappear. There are even a few genuine questions, first from the students, then from Alphys, for things that you forgot to explain. The ‘why’ and ‘how’ is saved for last, the classroom’s noise level dropping again after having slowly built up a bit after the initial reveal. This latest set of silence is filled by explaining how long this has been going on, how you came to be known as ‘creepy’, explaining that there are events that they don’t even remember, that you would not have taken on your own, but have happened nevertheless.
You’ve laid bare (most of) your cards in now. Throwing in a tale of another world, of how you and Susie became friends, would not help your cause. As it is, the best you can hope for is that they actually believe you, that they don’t think you’re trying to pull off another one of ‘your’ elaborate jokes.
Nevertheless, you can’t help but word your final sentence… inappropriately, given the circumstances. “Now that I’ve laid bare my ‘soul’, gotten it off my chest,” you gesture towards the cage, “have any additional questions?”
As much as I love Toriel and Asgore, I think a dangerous trait of theirs that remains consistent across both universes is that they have a tendency to pretend everything is okay when it really, really isn’t.
In Undertale, Chara, a human who climbs The Mountain of Disappearance and Death, only seems to have one person who inquires why they did so, and that’s Asriel. He’s the only one they confide in, and he’s also a kid, so he’s unequipped to deal with that or their later martyr complex.
An adult would have been able to step in, been better able to help them cope with their depression, and assure them that killing themselves is not the best way to “become the future of humans and monsters”, as Asgore so wanted and expected them to be.
In Deltarune, Kris and Susie are both isolated from their peers, don’t seem to be eating enough at all, and are openly criticized by people from the town to their faces (for either being “creepy” or for “having a disgusting outfit”). Susie even seems to be convinced the school is going to expel her for eating chalk, that everyone wants her to be, and wonders why anyone would want to be her friend, even though MK admits they’ve never actually seen her beat up anyone.
Toriel is nice to both of them, but no effort seems to be made to get to the bottom of these issues, i.e make sure they’re both getting 3 square meals (which neither of them are) and that the school makes a greater effort to be a non-hostile environment. And that they’re given better coping mechanisms for what seems like depression other than, like, yeeting their soul or threatening people’s faces.
Hometown seems to dress itself up as a utopian monster society, but it’s got two kids getting left completely behind, one man nearly homeless, a girl who’s too afraid to ask her mom to give her the housekey, and Alphys apparently already spending most of her time in an alleyway. And something needs to change soon, because if UT showed us anything it’s that nothing good happens when you ignore problems like that for long enough.
