Artists Of All Kinds, Especially New Artists. I Am Gripping You By The Shoulders Right Now. Listen.

Artists of all kinds, especially new artists. I am gripping you by the shoulders right now. Listen.

It is impossible to be completely original.

It simply cannot be done. No matter how hard you try, there will always be something out there at least slightly similar to what you do. And that's okay. We always stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before us, and they stand on the shoulders of the ones before them.

The first art drawn, the first song lyrics created, the first story told, were all of facts of life humanity already knew. Don't twist yourself into knots trying to create techniques, subjects or styles that have never been used before.

an addendum:

although I believe gaster is clearly a tragic character who's afraid of being seen while having an odd and extreme urge to help the world in some positive way, that does not exclude the possibility of him thinking the only way to achieve such things is through immoral acts. It is not an accident that he is so heavily depicted with devilish symbolisms all over — even a "mad scientist" could have good intentions. Maybe he has done something irreversible to the world — aka, the creation of Dark Worlds — and is trying to minimize the damage he knows his creation is about to cause.

I think he is trying to do good things through questionable means as a way to somewhat forgive at least a small part of himself for doing something unforgivable in the past.

i think one of the most telling examples of how we’ve been influenced to think about gaster is that if we say no to him after he asks if we want to continue after a chapter 1 game over, we’ll proceed to hear the absolute gentlest most heartbroken fucking unaccompanied piano arrangement of gaster’s motif any of us has ever heard and we’ll still be like "huh wonder why THAT’S there."

it’s because he’s sad!!! he’s fucking sad!!! this is the sound of an incorporeal man holding back metaphysical tears!!! WHY would the game have us linger here at a black screen instead of immediately going back to the menu like a normal RPG would? because it wants us to have this quiet moment in the dark with him, to finally catch him in a moment that’s raw and deeply vulnerable and unmarred by either cryptic mythologizing or his own mask of confident, neutral professionalism, just a black screen and a tender, melancholic song. and then he closes the fucking game himself.

it’s like, after narrating our ending, he just can’t think of anything else to say. he doesn’t want to tell us to go away because he probably doesn’t want us to, we’re both his last hope for success and the only person he’s been able to "connect" with in a very long time. he just sits there awkwardly with us while he quietly processes the situation, before he finally accepts that this is the world’s (and his) fate and he can’t force us to stay there with him any longer.

again im not trying to woobify him, what im saying is that we’re so used to seeking out spooky, vaguely sinister lore for an extraplanar entity that even when we finally meet him, it doesn’t occur to us that he could just be another character, one who’s VERY different from the other characters but a character nonetheless.

gaster is fundamentally cryptic and ambiguous, possibly in part because he intends to be hard to read. i think he hides himself between layers and behind clinical speech and trees because he’s uncomfortable with being seen, but he isn’t a perfect rational being, he’s just a guy, and he can’t connect with us without risking "pieces" of himself seeping through. just as undertale challenged us to hunt through it for pieces of gaster’s lore, deltarune is now going out of its way to give us insight into his character, but just as with his lore, we have to seek it out and consider it carefully in order to learn anything. like do you understand why im suddenly so obsessed with this guy!!! not to mention all the ways he parallels kris and chara and alphys and serves as a reflection of the player and. god. i love these fucking video james so much

berdly. this is berdly. you are talking about berdly.

shoutout to characters that you love dearly but if you dont see them get punched in the face canonically on screen by the time this media is over there will be a problem

not only that, but eventually every single student in the class — including Catti — becomes a Certified Susie Fangirl™ and does everything she remotely feels the need to do, all while Susie herself is completely oblivious to all of this.

guys i know how deltarune ends!!!!!!! toby fox doesnt want me to say anything but i will.

kris and susie get an F on the project because they never fucking did it

What if they have (toy) guns?

"no but..how do two girls...y'know"