Afterword:
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I want to thank everybody that's read this story. It's been a real labor of love and I can't express how much the support I've received from reviews and comments has meant to me. Just, really, Thank you.
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For those of you interested in knowing about my next writing projects, they will be Undertale stories. My main focus will be, A Cast Shadow, the first five chapters are up already and I will be posting a new chapter weekly, starting next Wednesday, 8/31/16.
A Cast Shadow takes place in a world where Royal Scientist W.D. Gaster's creation didn't kill him. Instead...
Gaster tapped the papers with one finger, "I suspected as much... It seems the machine caused temporal instability in the nature of reality. In order to not shatter, it pulled our young Frisk to this time, which relieved pressure on the structure of the timeline and resulted in only some minor side effects."
"Your face melting is not a minor side effect, doc. You coulda died." Jack sighed.
"Very nearly!" Gaster said excitedly, "In fact of all the possible outcomes, this was the most unlikely, an astronomically small chance. The likely outcome was that the machine malfunction would have resulted in the timeline shattering and rebuilding in the moment of the explosion, likely without us in it. We all would have ceased to exist." He turned back to the previous page, rescanning the data, "Fascinating isn't it?"
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In addition to weekly updates of, A Cast Shadow. I will also be posting bi-weekly chapters of shorter stories. The first of which is called, Firelight, and I posted the first chapter today!
You all know GoatMom. Well, maybe you'd like some FireDad?
A Frisk with weak lungs, prone to sickness falls into the underground. It's fun and fascinating at first, until they begin to cough and grow ill and then... Frisk knows they don't have a lot of time. On their way out they happen to meet a fiery barkeep whose magic might be just what Frisk needs. A moment of kindness that changes both of their lives forever.
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I have another short story that will start after Firelight is done, on the same bi-weekly schedule. Blood and Dust, my mobstertale au will follow either A Cast Shadow or the second short story, whichever ends first.
No Promises! BUT I have some ideas for a sequel to Reach Out. I don't plan on working on it until after finishing the above, aforementioned stories. If I do, when I do, I'll post the first chapter of the sequel on the end of Reach Out, so you can keep following or bookmark this story to make sure you don't miss it. No spoilers but, it will take place ten years after Reach Out and have to do with the barrier.
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Below this I decided to throw in some of my writing/character notes, a sort of dvd extra. They're just notes I write to myself on the bottom of my stories to help shape the story and characters. I thought maybe a couple people might be interested.
That's it, so Thank you again! Hopefully I'll see you again!
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Notes:
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Heroes aren't fearless. Heroes are brave, bravery requires fear, and fear is born of loving something enough that its loss would break you.
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. "I'd rather you hate me a thousand times every day than have to mourn you." Frisk said. "the stars don't mean anything if it means sacrificing monsters for them. I won't do it." (never used but I loved it too much not to keep it here.)
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I thought of a lot of different reasons for Frisk not breaking the barrier but in the end I threw them all out because what I wanted most of all was for it to be a selfish choice. I wanted Frisk to take all this powerlessness and frustration from the beginning of the story, and turn it into power and control, a dangerous thing in the hands of a child. I wanted them to make a choice that wasn't right and yet wasn't wrong, not for them. A selfish choice made out of selfish desires.
The Frisk of a pacifist run is an inherently selfless person, they suffer and bleed and die for monsterkind, not just to free them but also just to not hurt them in battle. So, if you take someone so selfless and finally give them the courage and strength to be selfish, well, their selfishness might be a lot different than you think it will be. After all, selfless is to give power to others, selfish is to take control yourself, to take your own fate into you hands.
A passive child who always did everything to please others, what would such a child do when they finally decided to be selfish? I suppose this story is the answer to this question.
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Frisk is physically eight years old, and a bit small for their age. However, they've lived enough time to be actually about nine years old and they've lived through enough really trying events to be older still, ten or eleven, an old soul and a child's fear. Yet they act a lot younger and talk simply, almost verging on baby-talk when they're really upset. Is it because they were so quiet, silent even, most of their life up to the events in the underground or is it a learned defense mechanism to try and win adults over? Is it conscious or subconscious?
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The simple equation of the font household: Papyrus likes to take care of people. Sans like to make Papyrus happy. Sans facilitates Papyrus' needs. Papyrus takes care of Sans. A self contained circle. However things start to break down for Sans if Papyrus doesn't need him anymore. A huge amount of Sans identity is tied up in his brother.
Sans personality focus hc: Make his brother happy. Always take the path of least resistance. Is 100% an enabler if it follows the path of least resistance. Enable Papyrus' naivety, enables Frisk's risk taking in canon and Frisk's recklessness in this story.
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Chara's biggest weakness, completely guileless people
Morbid sense of humor
They might have loved me once but could they ever again. Could they every forgive me?
I wish I could've known you when I was alive... maybe things would have turned out differently.
I have to laugh at my own suffering so why shouldn't I laugh at the suffering of others.
Chara hates everyone in their village, it's insinuated that they were abused in someway. I've seen a lot of theories that Chara was bullied or ostracized or even that they village literally treated Chara like a demon, terrorized them or the like but my theory is simply that Chara was being hurt in some way and the people of the village knew, or gossiped about it and they did nothing. This is the worst trait a person can have, according to Chara, this apathy in the face of suffering. If you see suffering and can fix it you should. That is why they decided to break the barrier themselves, they wouldn't leave so many to suffer when they could fix it themselves.
That makes of the foundation of Chara's beliefs, If you can help someone, you should; and if you hurt someone, you should be punished.
Atop this foundation, they learned from Frisk that you can make up for your mistakes. If you hurt someone and they will not punish you, you can make things right, repay your debt.
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Frisk trusts Chara and will do anything to make their relationship work because Chara is the one person in their life who can never leave them.
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I think the most hilarious part of Sans telling Frisk to ask for help is that Frisk has absolutely no concept of how to ask people for help. They never did in the game and they don't here. It's not that they think, oh I won't bother him or he can't help me here, it just never occurs to Frisk that this is what he means, they've done everything for and by themselves for so long that they automatically try to solve everything by themselves.
Their innate power, like sans/paps bones, is their ability to sense magic? Can never form magic attacks.
Teleporting, they start out pulling, needing a point to focus on. They learn to push, they'll never be able to teleport as far as sans, mostly out of fear. Teleport with small jumps from one region to another, uses a lot more energy. As they get older they get better at stopping time. In the beginning they stop it by physically restraining time, by watching Sans they learn to step out of the time stream themselves which requires a lot less initial energy and no upkeep energy. Maybe twenty or thirty years down the line they learn the take loading to a new level. Again they start out with pulling themselves to a fixed point but may eventually learn how to push themselves back, by small increments, of course, out of fear of the accidental reset. It's the sort of skill they would learn out of necessity not desire.
Frisk and Chara's relationship, at the end of the story, should be a parallel to Chara and Asriel's relationship but this time with Frisk in the dominate position. It's all about power and selfishness again. This time though, their relationship isn't as one sided and the two are able to fight about things and argue and compromise.