>emails+bike+200fic+100fic+diary

You're being really productive today, go you. : D

: D insert like a general student version of the student athlete meme here

EchoDoctor the 'a different Dreemurr is Flowey' is a cool AU, jam here/

*here?

Okay, I just meant that as a one-off joke comment, I don't have an actual AU idea?

I mean, I know I joke about it, but I don't really already have at least one AU for every possible concept, I promise. I do actually sleep sometimes.

noooo you're kidding me

although like
all that's needed is dust and DT

No, I swear, I have my head on pillows sometimes and everything. ...well, okay, near a pillow, I tend to thrash around a lot.

Aw shit, now you are giving me ideas. : D

hehehehe

Doesn't have to be a flower, either

(although given Alphys specially picked that for Asgore...)

I wonder... maybe you don't even need dust, in one case: if, perhaps, one were willing to tinker with the timeline a bit to have Alphys already Royal Scientist at the time of the Dreemurr children's deaths, and she happened to be present (visiting the castle, maybe?) during the event itself...

I could see someone grieving and desperate trying to save the potentially-salvageable sturdy human soul by using one of their new and untested experimental techniques to bind it into the nearest physical object they can grab.

(I am now picturing Asgore himself as a very politely homicidal tree. Thank you for this.)

hoooo boy

well it like
worked with mettaton

if anything Alphys would be more of an expert on this soul-grafting than DT

There's the obvious question of 'why not just absorb the soul into yourself', which is frankly also a pretty interesting potential idea, but maybe Chara would be confused/panicked after being forcibly ejected from Asriel due to him, well, dying.

So they'd refuse to merge with anyone.

It's not really the same as Flowey, though- he was a body without a soul, they'd be a soul without a body.

oh my god what if asgore or toriel absorbed chara

...wait, shit, that's canon HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THAT CHARACTER PARALLEL BEFORE OH MY GOD.

not quite knowing what they're doing

in grief

The Dreemurr kids wind up in exact opposite situations, holy shit.

(sorry here i am butting in again)

Nope, not at all. : D

I could definitely see Asgore or Toriel trying to reach out for their kid and absorbing the soul. Wouldn't even have to be after Asriel's death, either: say Chara managed to die in the one time the poor kid left to take a snack break or something, and the parents happened to be checking in on them...

i'm not sure how the circumstances of Chara's death, but i think it would be entirely in keeping with Alphys;s character to find their dead body and soul and do the butt move of not telling anybody because she's trying to set them up with a robot style body

monsters don't seem to know a lot about how souls are absorbed it probs never occured to them it could be done accidentally

Ah, fuck, yeah. The good old 'I can't show anybody anything I'm doing until I have it finished completely perfectly' mental illness feel, kicking in at a really bad time.

She's sure she can bring them back, so of course she won't say anything until she does, and then it goes wrong and no one knows...

and the longer it goes on the more she retreats in guilt in shame bc how do you tell the Royal Family you've been keeping their kid in a basement?

Toriel would be fucking rightfully livid and Asgore would be... well upset would be an understatement

the question is how exactly it goes wrong

There's also the question of how, exactly, things- dammit, jinx.

oooEEEooo we are slowly becoming one

Well shit, now we have to live in Alphys' basement.

pass the popato chisps

Do you think they have sour cream and onion flavor?

what kind of self respecting vending machine wouldn't?

what if i don't like anime can i still come

Come join the fun. It's a real get together.

i am the thing that tucks people in. i am spoon friend.

three spitballed options:
one, alphys accidentally absorbed Chara. whoopsie doodle
two, she accidentally hecking broke their soul or smth
three, Chara got bonded to something other than the body she made
maybe the entire lab, glados style
all those screens lighting up with smiles

you can absolutely come naz

Given their approach interesting approach to spelling, they might wind up as 'dour seam and noneion favor' instead, and I'm okay with that.

Yay, spoon friend. : D

it would totally eat that flavour

Also, pfft, Glados!Chara would be a trip, wow.

god Chara as some kind of AI all over the lab

Just a hilariously resentful undead child with access to the security system, no big deal.

Alphys makes friends with them tho and it is cute

sheeee doesn't go down there, anymore

honestly tbh I think Chara would not be in a friends mood

considering everything

probably not but I can dream of sweet things

true that

Yeeeeah. Like, maybe if Asgore or Toriel came down there, but even then they'd have a few words for them.

imagine a scared angry lonely pained child lashing out
now imagine a building doing that, and you're in it

(but yeah their family would have the most success)

Also, if you wanted Lab Chara being friends with Alphys, you could flip the AU so that binding them to the building/computer systems was Gaster's fuckup, not Alphys.

He unhappens so they wind up just stuck there, not knowing how they wound up like this.

hhhhhhhhhh

i kind of love Alphys fucking up, because it's the kind of fuckup that fits her so well
but on the other hand like
her being in her own personal 'something happened here' horror movie is also good

The lab's abandoned for years because no one's taken the Royal Scientist position, right? And then Alphys gets the job and comes in to set up shop. Chara's to nervous to approach at first, with a bunch of monsters fixing things up all over the place, but once she's alone they go Full Haunting for a while, until she finally makes friends.

i think about the machine in the True Labs with the heart and the smile, a lot

d...do you like anime, computer ghost

a soul, unaccounted for

...Hmmm, I wonder if we can have our cake and eat it too, here? Maybe Alphys does it because of something that Gaster said/did/asked of her while she was working for him, so everyone forgot she'd accidentally done that to them afterward, including her.

hmm well that's how the DT extractor happened... it's plausible

Talking to Chara about their memory issues reveals some gaps in her own memories, so she starts researching it, trying to help her new friend figure out what happened to them, and they wind up really wishing they hadn't solved that particular mystery.

: D hoo boy

god i love that sort of piecemeal examination of erasure

they'd make a great team

Thinking about it, I feel like this would be the kind of thing that would be good as, like... some kind of mini-game, a little point-and-click mystery/horror/exploration adventure with metaphysical themes.

If only I were good at programming.

yussss
first person, claustrophobic corridors

Chara unknowingly reprising their role as the Voice With An Internet Connection

'something happened here. you hope it was a miracle. but probably not.'

Yes.

Like, I would totally buy that as actual Chara narration? (Charration.)

god tho maybe with the same seeping realisation of 'the "prerecorded messages" are a person'

(it's a great line)

Ooh, maybe later on Alphys repurposes a smaller beta-test version of Mettaton's humanoid body for them to inhabit, and Chara gets to add 'creepy doll' to the list of horror tropes they fit.

yesssss

Chara has joined your party

Let's see... creepy doll, creepy child, unquiet ghost, undead murder victim, sinister royalty, killer robot, and haunted house, all in one go.

Good job, kid, you win horror movie bingo.

heck yess

i love how in undertale like. almost everyone seems scary at first

similar thing here

Yep. Sure, they can be dangerous, but they're really just lashing out because they're unhappy and scared, they're not truly malevolent.

nodnod

and they're probably actively trying to help Alphys, at least for a while

Yeah. I think they'd play up the 'scary creepy haunting' angle for a while because they want to scare her off to keep from getting hurt, then when she consistently refuses to leave and is still nice to them despite being visibly frightened they start to open up to her and befriend her, and when she eventually starts trying to solve their mystery they help.

yusss. because they want to know too

they def bicker about MMKC2

Absolutely, yes. ...Ooh, I just had an idea/image I like: one of Chara's very early conversations with Alphys, back when they're still trying to scare her, involves them turning on a TV and warping/remixing a bunch of Mettaton's reruns to say things 'verbal equivalent of a cut-out-and-paste letters ransom note' style.

oh my god they totally would

Like, 'to all my loyal fans' 'there is' 'no' 'hope, darlings' 'you can't just' 'leave now' 'so stay tuned, we'll be right back after these messages~'.

asdfghj

they have a nose for the dramatic

Just picturing Mettaton being all hilariously perky and sounding super disturbing in sinister in context, I love it. : D

Honestly, he might even be flattered, in a weird way.

Chara playing with the pitch and distortion controls

maybe some reverb

pfft
if he's still good friends with Alph of course he'd want in

Do that record-skip stutter thing. 'there is- there is- there is no' 'hope' and then they drop the bass.

they are pulling out all the stops

somewhere, a door slams

anyway, i need to go to bed

There's no party like a Chara party 'cause a Chara party don't stop until we erase this pointless world, and move on to the next.

Good night, Lint. Sleep well. : D