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vgfm · 4 months

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A Lily Gilded: A Review and Analysis of Undertale Yellow

The Short, Spoiler-Free Review (TL;DR)

Any Undertale fan who owns a PC should play Undertale Yellow, even if they previously weren’t interested or have any doubts or reservations.

No criticism that I levy at Undertale Yellow, big or small, is intended to dissuade anyone who hasn’t played it from trying it: you should play it and there is no reason not to aside from a lack of free time or not owning a PC.

Although I have some criticisms of Undertale Yellow, my overall opinion of it is still very positive. I’m glad to have experienced this game.

If you haven’t played the game yet, then I recommend starting with the neutral route. Pacifist is much harder in this game and there are story segments exclusive to the neutral route that make it worth the time investment.

My analysis from this point forward will include spoilers for all three major routes of Undertale Yellow. It will also be very long (close to 60 pages), so be warned.

My Background

I’ve completed all routes of Undertale, Deltarune (Ch 1-2), and Undertale Yellow

I primarily engage with UTDR fandom by reading and writing theories. I like to think that I’m decently knowledgeable about the series, at least

I have no professional background in game development

I’m usually a purist when it comes to games and the topic of fangames and mods. I’m a “picky eater” in particular when it comes to UT/DR fan content:

I’ve never played an Undertale fangame prior to Yellow

Most UT and DR fangames have either not appealed to me personally or have not been finished

I don’t engage with most story-driven Undertale/Deltarune Aus or fanworks if I feel they don’t capture the spirit of the original games

Saying Something Nice

Undertale Yellow is the best fangame that I’ve played in recent memory. I think it’s very likely that Undertale Yellow is not only the best Undertale fangame ever made but that it will remain the best Undertale fangame of its kind for the foreseeable future. It’s not just a good fangame but a good game in general--had Undertale Yellow been a completely original game with no ties to Undertale, it very likely would have become a cult classic in its own right.

Of the long-form fan content I’ve seen, Undertale Yellow is among those that come the closest to replicating the style and tone of the original game without feeling like it’s simply cribbing the story or jokes.

It goes without saying that Undertale Yellow’s spritework and animations far surpass those of Undertale in sheer effort, and at times they rival and surpass those of Deltarune as well. There are some stylistic differences between Yellow and the canon games, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say Yellow’s visuals are always better in every conceivable aspect, but the general quality difference is night and day.

Yellow’s music comes close to rivaling Toby’s work, though frankly I think this is a barrier that no fangame will ever overcome for me. It’s a better impression of Toby’s style than most who’ve tried, but it’s still noticeably an impression. One thing that I immensely appreciate is that Yellow has battle theme variants for each major area in the game. “Enemy Approaching” is a fine song, but I always start to get sick of it by the time I reach the end of Waterfall in the original game.

Most of all, what I respect about Undertale Yellow is when it shows restraint: the restraint to largely omit cameos and callbacks to Undertale’s characters except when it feels warranted to do so. I respect that the game doesn’t try to smuggle in characters or worldbuilding elements from Deltarune and instead sticks to its guns as an Undertale prequel. I also appreciate that, for the most part, it sidesteps the trap that most prequels fall into of trying to tell a bigger story than the original—the story of Undertale Yellow still feels impactful and meaningful, but it does not overshadow or diminish the events of Undertale.

I wanted to frontload my praises for this game because a lot of my more detailed analyses to follow will come across more negative and nitpicky. Admittedly, it’s much easier to point out something that doesn’t work in a story or game that’s otherwise good because it sticks out like a sore thumb and takes you out of the experience. Additionally, so many things are done well in this game that I’d be here all day if I listed every single thing that worked. If there’s an aspect of the game that I don’t comment on then just assume that I found it at least serviceable, if not great.

My Criteria

Since Undertale Yellow is based on the world of Undertale and borrows many gameplay elements from it, it’s virtually impossible to review or analyze the game without inviting at least some comparisons to Undertale.

Having said that, I’m going to avoid criticizing differences between Yellow and the original game if the criticism would boil down to “it’s different from Undertale, therefore it’s bad.” There are things that Yellow does differently that I find worse, but I’ll argue those on their own merit rather than pointing solely to the fact that they’re different. On the flip side, there are a few places where Yellow differs from the original game because Yellow does something better—I’ll be sure to point out these instances as well.

Overall, I’m grading Undertale Yellow on a curve because I can’t help but compare it to the original game. I don’t feel it’s unfair for me to do so, since Yellow relies on Undertale not only for its conceit but also for some of its story beats—Yellow would not make sense or feel complete as an experience if Undertale did not exist.

If Undertale Yellow had been a completely original game, with whatever tweaks or rewrites would have been necessary to make it such, my overall tone would probably be more positive, since I’d be comparing it to the average game experience rather than to one of my favorite games of all time. This is not to say that Yellow would have necessarily been better as an original game, nor am I saying that it should have been—it just would have made the comparisons to Undertale less warranted.

Lastly, I’m going to try to avoid comparing Undertale Yellow to Deltarune. I feel like this is a less fair comparison since Deltarune is not a finished game and Yellow lifts very little from Deltarune beyond a run button and the charge shot.

Bosses

Undertale Yellow’s bosses were the most contentious issue for me during my initial playthroughs. Subsequent playthroughs caused me to warm up a bit to some of the problematic ones, but most of my gameplay-related gripes are tied to its bosses.

My three biggest issues with this game’s bosses are the strategies for sparing bosses, the telegraphing of their attacks, and the attack variety that each boss has.

Sparing Strategies

To start with the simpler complaint, half the bosses and minibosses in this game have pacifist fights that consist of waiting for the boss’s dialogue and attacks to run out before you can spare them, sometimes requiring a token act only at the very end of the fight.

This is a problem because it reduces these fights to waiting games that can be brute-forced with a full supply of healing items. Annoyingly, these same fights also come with 2-3 options in the ACT menu that often do nothing and in most cases don’t even prompt any reaction or different dialogue from the boss.

By comparison, Undertale’s pacifist route only has two (and a half) bosses that require waiting out the opponent: Papyrus and Muffet, and both of these fights have alternate completion conditions that can be used to bypass the wait.

Conversely, Napstablook’s fight requires acting, Toriel requires constant sparing, the Snowdin dogs all have unique acts, Mad Dummy requires redirecting her attacks back at her, Undyne requires running away, the Royal Guards require acting, Mettaton must pass a ratings threshold tied to unique acts, Asgore and Flowey require fighting; Asriel’s fight is half waiting but the second phase requires the lost soul segments to be completed.

Every Undertale boss felt like a puzzle on pacifist and some like Undyne and Mad Dummy were genuine brain-teasers. None of Yellow’s fights ever quite scratch that itch, though a couple come close like Guardener and Axis.

It baffles me a little that this issue is even present because the common enemy encounters in Yellow don’t fall prey to this. In fact, a few enemy encounters in Yellow cleverly require using multiple different acts in a specific (and usually intuitive) order to achieve victory—something that even Undertale seldom did.

It seems that most bosses in Yellow were designed around distinguishing themselves via their attack patterns rather than their spare method, though this leads into anther major issue: how these attacks are conveyed, paced, and telegraphed to the player.

Attack Telegraphing

Undertale Yellow is meant to have harder combat than Undertale, which had me a bit wary going in. The average enemy encounter in Yellow feels harder than Undertale, and the same is certainly true of the bosses. However, I’m not sure if I’d say any of Yellow’s hardest bosses quite rival the Sans fight in terms of sheer difficulty, at least in terms of the number of attempts it took me to complete them.

This could be chalked up to me coming into Undertale Yellow with more experience than when I first played Undertale, or Yellow’s 1.1 patch toning down a few of the harder fights. For the record, I’ve beaten all fights in Yellow without the use of the game’s “easy mode” option—I used it for certain bosses in my very first pacifist and no mercy runs, but I later replayed those runs with the setting disabled in order to have a “proper” experience.

Many fights in Yellow, big and small, feel less “fair” than the fights in Undertale and even now I’m not 100% sure I can nail down why. A lot of this boils down to the “feel” of the fights, but part of this could be due to me already being familiar with Undertale’s attack patterns and not Yellow’s. OG Undertale does have a handful of battle moments that feel “unfair” or not designed as optimally for new players as they could have been, which is easy for a player like me to gloss over after I’ve become familiar with the game. One such example is the Lemon Bread amalgamate, which (imo) is one of the hardest fights in the pacifist route.

Still, I noticed many instances in Yellow where incoming attacks would give little or seemingly no warning before they were able to hurt you. Some examples off the top of my head would be Mooch’s moneybag attack, Guardener’s triple stomp attack that fills the whole box, Starlo’s horseshoe attack that blends into his head before it drops, and Ceroba’s paralyzing diamond attack.

The only consistent way I found to avoid attacks like these was either to know in advance where they were going to enter the bullet box or to already be moving before they appear. It doesn’t help that often attacks that come from outside the bullet box will spawn in immediately outside the box, minimizing the travel time where players could see them coming and act accordingly.

Another common issue I found is the frequent use of blue and orange attacks, often paired with each other and/or with regular attacks, and often without properly telegraphing which will be used until they’re already onscreen. In contrast, Undertale generally used these types of attacks one at a time or, in Asgore’s case, clearly telegraphed them before they were used in tandem.

Yellow’s approach presents a problem because dodging orange and blue attacks demands either movement or lack of movement, which can force the player to take a hit if there’s already another attack onscreen that demands the opposite. In my experience the solution was either to know in advance where the blue and orange attacks would come from (and when) to get into optimal position, or simply tank the hit and hope you make up for it later.

Speaking from my own personal experience, I struggled for a time with Ceroba’s No Mercy fight when I went in blind—she has multiple deadly attacks with little to no telegraphing as well as color attacks that can overlap each other if you’re not already in an optimal position. I was only able to complete this fight on normal after I watched a no-hit run so that I could memorize her patterns. This is something I’ve never had to do for any Undertale or Deltarune fight, including Sans, and it doesn’t really feel like it’s in the spirit of the franchise. I always try to go into each of these games blind and I don’t think it’s unreasonable that a new player, even on a harder route, should be able to intuit what is expected of them in a fight. A few attacks might be challenging or counter-intuitive at first, but having to rely on rote memorization or a guide just doesn’t feel fun or organic to me.

On that note, some of you may be nodding toward the Sans fight as an example of some of the things I’m complaining about, particularly the lack of proper telegraphing and a reliance on memorization. Well, let’s unpack that.

To start, I’ll say that the Sans fight is not my favorite fight in Undertale from a pure gameplay perspective and that I don’t fully agree with some of its design choices. One reason I don’t play fan battles in general is because many of them seem to emulate the style of the Sans fight or double down on it without understanding it.

Despite my minor issues with it, I find the “unfair” aspects of the Sans fight to be more justified and acceptable within the context of Undertale than I find the seeming “unfairness” of Yellow’s harder fights to be in the context of that game. One reason is that the Sans fight is the only fight in Undertale (or Deltarune) that works the way that it does, whereas Yellow has several, even if they’re overall less hard than the Sans fight.

More importantly, the Sans fight has proper buildup, feels appropriate for the character and story, and (most important of all) the game itself acknowledges the fact that it’s unfair and the fight is designed around that admission. Sans literally has over a dozen different dialogue variations depending on how many times you die in his fight and when.

The game is even aware of the fact that most new players won’t survive Sans’ first attack and creates multiple variants of just the dialogue before and after that attack. Undertale fully anticipates your deaths and cultivates a unique experience for you along the way as you learn Sans’ patterns.

To put it simply, the Sans fight is the exception that proves the rule: it makes you realize how much fairer the other fights in Undertale are and how easy it is to take those design principles for granted. Conversely, the attack patterns in the hardest Yellow fights didn’t feel radically different or radically “less fair” in philosophy from Yellow’s moderately difficult boss fights—both feel varying degrees of “unfair,” but the harder fights are just “more” with the occasional twist added on top.

My platonic ideal of a challenging boss fight in an Undertale game would be Undyne the Undying. Undyne the Undying is a massive difficulty spike in her respective run, at times she requires ridiculous reaction time, and it’s easy to psych yourself out and get double-tapped by her barrages and die quickly. Nonetheless, her fight feels fair—it’s a culmination of the rules you’ve been taught and it doesn’t needlessly subvert them. Even though she has her dreaded reverse-arrow attacks that trip up new players, these are still properly telegraphed and manageable. Looking at footage of it now, it’s surprising how this fight looks more honest and straightforward than many of Yellow’s later boss fights.

Attack Variety

Another contributing factor to my issues with Yellow’s boss fights is the sheer number and variety of attacks that some bosses have, particularly in the latter half of the game. To wit, most bosses in Undertale have about 4-5 unique attacks that are repeated with variations, while Undertale Yellow’s bosses can have upwards of 9-10 unique types of attacks, not including variations. Ceroba alone has ten completely different unique attack patterns in just the first phase of her pacifist fight—every single turn is a completely different attack requiring different dodging strategies and none are repeated.

Some may be asking why this is a problem. Isn’t more variety a good thing? This just shows that the Yellow team put more effort in, right? My issue here is that many of these attacks don’t seem to exist for any reason except for the sake of artificial variety and because the devs (presumably) thought they’d be a cool-looking thing to dodge. If you’re confused as to the point I’m trying to make, let’s look at how Undertale utilized its attack patterns with Mettaton EX.

The Mettaton EX fight is a favorite of fans and mine, and one reason I like it so much is for how it uses eclectic and seemingly chaotic attacks to teach the player new mechanics while offering a spare mechanic that relies on strategic thinking to optimize. The fight offers the following types of attacks: moving legs, bombs, boxes, miniature mettatons, gates, a disco ball, and Mettaton’s heart. Not counting the joke/gimmick turns like the essay or break time, this is seven main attack archetypes, each with their own variations and crossover with each other.

Note that all seven of these attack types interact with the fight’s core mechanic: the yellow soul mode. More importantly, each of these attacks teaches the player something about how the soul mode works with no need for an onscreen prompt. Boxes and bombs teach you that there are some attacks you should shoot and some that you should not. The hand gates initially teach you that some bullets are unaffected by your shots, but later you’re given gates with yellow buttons that will open them, teaching you that some targets require precision. The miniature mettatons teach you that some attacks will become a bigger problem for you if you don’t take them out right away. The moving legs teach you that shooting can stop certain attacks from moving and that the timing of your shots is important. The disco ball builds on this lesson, requiring the need to plan your next movements when shooting the ball. The heart serves as the culmination, featuring the bombs and mini-mettatons from before while also giving you a precise moving target to hit repeatedly.

All of Mettaton EX’s attacks tie into a common theme and reinforce one another—learning to dodge and utilize the mechanics of one attack will make you better-equipped to deal with the others. It’s by no means a perfect fight, nor does it teach all of its lessons perfectly—I remember it taking me several attempts to complete and some mechanics like the disco ball and legs didn’t “click” with me immediately, but there’s clear intent behind every attack and it’s remarkable how utilitarian the whole thing is structured, despite its reputation for being one of the game’s longer and more self-indulgent fights.

Let’s bring things back to Ceroba for comparison. Her first phase has 10 unique attacks, only half of which feature mechanics that appear in the later phases: her paralyzing diamonds, her spinning bullets that circle around you, her bells that create colored shockwaves, and the vortex that opens in the center of the arena.

The other attacks are only used once, have little-to-no pattern commonality with each other or with her later attacks, and teach nothing other than how to dodge each of these one-off attacks. At most, a few attacks share a flower motif but move with completely different behaviors (straight line, fanning out, circling, homing in). While this isn’t horrible design, I can’t help but find it a bit wasteful considering what other fights have done with less and how chaotic the later phases of Ceroba’s fight get—something that players could have been eased into by having her first phase present more of her later attacks in a more controlled environment.

In the end, I remember being frustrated with the Ceroba pacifist fight when I first played it. Part of this was due to my own mistake of going past the point of no return without a full stock of items, but the lack of cohesion in the first phase and its lacking relevance to the mechanics of the second phase made it hard for me to “gel” with the gameplay and, as a result of my own frustration and confusion, I had a harder time getting invested in the narrative. I’ve seen some fans label the Ceroba fight the best fight in the series, but I wouldn’t even put it in my top 25, despite the overwhelming effort on display from the developers.

To bring the comparison home, I cried the first time I saw Mettaton say goodbye to his call-in viewers, but not once did I cry during Ceroba’s fight. A flamboyant robot making a single pained expression leaves a bigger impact when his attacks are unintrusive to the experience, and a lovingly-animated grieving fox’s backstory doesn’t hit as hard when I’m distracted by a hodgepodge of visually stunning but incoherent bullet hells. Less is more.

I realize I’ve been a bit mean to Yellow during this segment. In fairness, I did replay the pacifist route and tried the Ceroba fight in a more prepared state. I enjoyed the fight more my second time around, but I still would not rank it among my favorites in the franchise. And to be clear, I don’t hate this fight at all—I just think it represents the excesses in Yellow’s battle design and how they can sour a first-time experience, which is the most important experience for a narrative-driven game. Even the weaker aspects of Yellow’s design are, by and large, serviceable by the standards of typical game design. Compared to Undertale, though, I was disappointed in the areas where it lacked or, more accurately, overstepped.

Having fewer types of attacks is not a result of less effort—it allows more room for variations on each type of attack and it can make difficult or poorly-telegraphed attacks more forgivable if the attack is used multiple times with the first instance training the player for the future variations. I feel that having too many unique attacks for each boss resulted in each attack not receiving the necessary polish and balancing that it should have, and it also made each fight feel less instructive and lacking in a clear design goal.

To close this off, I’d like to give a positive example of a boss fight from Undertale Yellow: Axis. For the most part, Axis successfully walks the tightrope of Yellow’s more complex late-game fights while still maintaining a consistent theme and introducing concepts to the player gradually. The whole fight revolves around blocking Axis’ attacks with a trashcan lid—first with a ground-based lid, then with a lid that rotates around an axis (get it?). As the fight progresses, new types of projectiles and hazards are introduced, usually first using the ground-based lid to avoid overwhelming the player.

As if that weren’t enough, the fight comes with its own unique sparing strategy where players fill a meter by blocking attacks and then attempt to reflect an orb back at Axis once the meter is full. The fight’s not perfect—there’s still the occasional one-off attack that doesn’t really teach any relevant lesson to the player, the orb reflection mechanic is finicky, and the fight is perhaps slightly more difficult than I’d prefer from a typical boss fight, but if all Yellow bosses had been of a similar caliber then I wouldn’t have needed to go on this massive detour about boss design in the first place.

Since some might ask, I might as well weigh in on Yellow’s most controversial boss: El Bailador. I initially had difficulty with this fight due to my lack of experience with rhythm games (and the lack of preparation that the game gives you). I also found the need to press a direction key and the Z key for each note to be a tad clunky. Beyond that? I actually didn’t mind the fight all that much. It introduces a simple concept and builds upon it gradually in a way that felt satisfying to me as I began to master it. The last turn maybe goes on for too long, but I can’t say that I hated it. I promise I’m not trying to piss off the Undertale Yellow fandom (who, if memes are anything to go by, seem to despise this fight), but I found the simplicity of Bailador refreshing considering how chaotic the later fights get. That said, I turned on the auto-rhythm setting in future playthroughs to make this fight less of a difficulty spike.

Themes

To start off, I’d like to acknowledge the fact that Undertale Yellow largely avoids most of the “meta” themes that Undertale and Deltarune touch upon, nor does the game try to go in its own direction in regards to metatextual concepts. Undertale Yellow generally leaves the topic untouched, aside from continuing to use in-universe mechanics established in Undertale such as saving and EXP/LV. Some fans might view this as disappointing or even a betrayal of the tones and themes previously established in Toby’s work. Me? I don’t mind at all, honestly. If anything, it’s refreshing to see an Undertale fan project that takes the setting of Undertale at face value rather than trying to outsmart it or put their own meta spin on it. Far too often have I seen fanworks that swing the pendulum in the other direction and have characters just flat out address the player and shatter the verisimilitude of the setting with no buildup.

None of this is to say that Undertale Yellow is lacking in themes. The most prominent theme I noticed, unsurprisingly, is that of justice. Undertale strongly implies that the yellow human soul is the soul that represents justice, and fanworks ever since have ran with the idea. Undertale Yellow represents the culmination of this concept by turning each of its routes into differing interpretations of what justice means.

As a refresher, Undertale Yellow has three main routes with four endings: true pacifist, “false” pacifist, neutral, and no mercy. I see each ending as its own realization of and commentary on the concept of justice.

Neutral

In Undertale Yellow, the neutral ending acts as something of a “bad ending” from classic video games. These are the kind of endings you get when you fail to 100% complete a game and you’re told to go back and do it again, complete with Flowey’s laugh imposed over the “Thank you for playing!” end credits message.

Who wore it better?

Thematically, the neutral route represents justice as subjective and personal—Clover can spare or kill whoever they wish. It’s hard to argue that any one monster in Undertale Yellow is more guilty than any other in this route, so killing monsters in neutral largely comes off as the capricious whims of Clover rather than being based on any consistent law or greater principle.

This outlook ultimately blows up in Clover’s face when they come to a head with their foil in this route: Flowey, who exercises his own form of justice, or “judgment” as he prefers. Flowey only cares about freeing himself from his current situation and will use any means to achieve this goal. In his eyes, your failure to follow his directions or be of further use of him is a slight against him that demands punishment as he sees fit.

Fitting this individualistic outlook, Flowey takes “might makes right” to its logical conclusion by trapping you in his own personal hell while he acts as a wannabe-God looking down on high. Ultimately Clover can only escape when Flowey wills it, cementing Clover’s status as a pawn subject to the whims of the powerful despite their illusions of independence. Without laws to protect them, the weak will be trampled by the powerful.

Pacifist

Pacifist presents two outlooks depending on whether Clover spares or kills Ceroba in the final battle. Of all the monsters Clover meets, Ceroba is the most culpable for a serious real-world crime other than Asgore and Axis (the latter of whom may not meet the definition of culpability or competence to stand trial).

Clover lacks the fore-knowledge that Ceroba’s daughter will likely survive thanks to Alphys’ efforts, so Clover would view Ceroba’s actions toward Kanako as manslaughter, or at least reckless endangerment. Unlike the neutral route, Clover’s choice can’t solely be chalked up to their own personal whims—actual harm has been done by Ceroba, but more harm may yet be done if she’s killed.

False Pacifist

If Clover kills Ceroba, then this choice seems to represent justice as following the law to the letter, for good or ill. Starlo, who’s most upset by Ceroba’s passing, reluctantly echoes this sentiment:

Even if Clover stands by their choice deep down, it’s reasonable to assume that hurting Starlo this way left a bitter taste in their mouth. Not long after this, Clover reaps what they’ve sewn as they come face to face with their foil for this ending: Asgore.

Initially I thought it was strange that Asgore doesn’t appear if you spare Ceroba, but this ending illustrates why Asgore’s entrance is most appropriate here. Asgore finds himself in a similar situation as Clover. Asgore is keeping his word to his people for good or ill, and a king’s word is law. In all likelihood, Clover probably hated killing Ceroba in much the same way that Asgore hates killing humans. But both are trapped within the confines of their own rigid principles.

Martlet, who acts as an onlooker, first argues on behalf of Clover’s killing of Ceroba on the basis of the law, but just as quickly turns around to plead that Asgore bend the rules of his kingdom to spare Clover. In the end, she can’t have it both ways. No one is happy with how things turn out and the only thing served is the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of justice.

True Pacifist

If Clover spares Ceroba, it might be for her own sake or because killing her will benefit no one and will only serve to harm Starlo. In much the same way, killing the monsters who harmed the five humans won’t bring any benefit to monster or human alike and will instead only fan the flames of war.

Clover came to the Underground armed in search of five humans, no doubt willing to enact justice on anyone or anything that harmed them. Instead they find a world of good-hearted people who have ample reason to distrust humans. Through acts of kindness, this distrust is cast aside and many friendships are made.

In the Wild East, Clover is presented with the classic trolley problem. Starlo emphasizes that Clover could let a large group of monsters die while incurring no personal responsibility. Clover didn’t tie those monsters to the tracks in much the same way that Clover is not personally responsible for monsters being trapped Underground. However, Clover can save them by sacrificing a single life—an anonymous other, but eventually Clover is faced with the possibility of becoming that sacrifice willingly.

Clover choosing to give up their soul is not only an ultimate act of selflessness but also interprets justice as a principle higher than any mere law or person’s whim—laws should not exist solely for their own sake because laws should be a means for the betterment of all. Any “justice” that loses sight of this higher principle has no meaning or value, so one must act in service to the greater good.

Clover doesn’t deserve to die, but sitting on the sidelines so that monsters or the next fallen human can suffer in their place would be a greater injustice in their eyes. Ultimately they decide that their own sacrifice, while tragic, will create the best outcome for everyone and act as a step towards restorative justice for monsterkind.

No Mercy

No mercy was a bit of an enigma for me initially. It starts off largely the same as Undertale’s no mercy route, only without the one-shot kills and commentary on completionism. It’s not until Steamworks when the aim of this run starts to come together. We see a role reversal where Clover chases down Axis, and Flowey of all people questions Clover’s craving for destruction.

When fighting Axis, we see him admit that he had killed a previous fallen human. Although this information can be uncovered through a hidden tape in the pacifist route, here we see this revelation enrage Clover to the point that their LV increases on the spot. Normally I’d nitpick something like this, since Undertale states that cruel intentions can make a human’s individual attacks stronger but their LV is tied to their EXP. However, I can overlook this since the rules are bent in service of a good character moment that defines the run for me.

This moment and the ending recontextualize the whole run up until now: Clover isn’t killing indiscriminately like Frisk was. On the contrary, Clover is quite discriminate with their killing: they specifically want monsters (and their creations) destroyed, but not humans. Up until now we haven’t had an Undertale protagonist who is unabashedly pro-human. Chara was very much the opposite and some lines in Deltarune imply Kris may feel similarly. Frisk seems ambivalent, but from the beginning Clover has been acting for the sake of the five missing humans.

In neutral and pacifist, Clover judges monsters on an individual basis, but in no mercy all monsters are deemed guilty. What distinguishes this run from the others, besides the brutality of Clover’s actions, is that their actions can’t solely be chalked up to dogmatic obedience of the law or their own selfish desires.

Throughout the run, Clover can choose to steal from shops, commit armed robbery against Mo, and even cheat in their “dual” with Starlo—all of these indicate some degree of underhandedness or dishonor, but Clover’s outlook is seemingly that monsters don’t deserve fair play or the benefit of the doubt.

Conversely, we see from the ending that Clover goes out of their way to free the five human souls—they don’t leave them behind or try to go on a power trip and use them for their own ends (as far as we’re aware). No mercy is a dark reflection of true pacifist, where “justice” has transcended the letter of the law as well as personal desires. Instead of “justice” being in service to the greater good of all, it’s in service to division, tribalism, and vengeance.

Even so, one can debate whether Clover’s actions are motivated more by a love of humanity or purely by a hatred of monsters. Asgore points out that Clover’s actions will only worsen the conflict between humans and monsters, and more humans will die in the future as a result.

This doesn’t seem to give Clover any pause, so one can assume they either don’t believe Asgore or they don’t care—they’re here to make monsterkind pay, and if more conflict arises then that means more opportunities for payback in the future. Make them pay and never stop making them pay.

Characters

Character writing is a crucial component of any Undertale-adjacent game and it’s often the biggest stumbling block I encounter when I’ve tried to get into fanworks. I mean that in no way as a slight against fan creators, but rather to illustrate how high the bar has been set by Toby. This is a bar that’s set just as high, if not higher than Toby’s musical abilities, imo. In all the ways that I would describe myself as a “picky eater” when it comes to Undertale content, I’d say character writing is where I’m by far the pickiest.

To give Undertale Yellow a fair and thorough analysis, I’ll be going over all of the major characters one by one to give my impressions of them as well as what I feel works and what doesn’t, starting from the top:

Clover

There isn’t a ton to say about Clover compared to the other characters, but this isn’t a bad thing. What’s apparent is that Clover has more personality and initiative on display throughout the game than Frisk did, though in some ways not as much as Kris—Clover is something of a middleground between the two canon protags. At several points we’re only given a single dialogue “choice,” meant to illustrate when Clover has made a decision on their own.

We’re told Clover’s surface-level motivation: to find the five humans who disappeared, but we’re not given any context as to what connection (if any) Clover has to these humans or what their own history is beyond one or two vague bits of flavor text.

Clover’s motivations can evolve or outright change course depending on which choices the player makes throughout the game. I already went over this in the themes section, but the fact that Yellow largely eschews the broader metatextual commentary found in Undertale means that Clover’s actions are much easier to attribute as their own in-universe decisions, rather than something imposed on them by a controlling entity.

Beyond this, we also see Clover display various quirks via their character animations, such as kicking their feet while seated, tugging on Ceroba’s sleeve, or standing on their tippy-toes when handing their hat to Martlet. We ultimately can’t say much about Clover’s overall personality or interests outside the context of game events, but these little flourishes help to make the character memorable.

By default I’d argue that Clover’s “better written” as a character than Frisk was, barring the metatextual baggage attached to the latter. Overall, not a bad start.

Dalv

I wasn’t sure what to make of Dalv initially. Confession time: Dalv was the deciding factor that led to me not checking out the Undertale Yellow demo when it first dropped. I’ve got nothing against the guy, but at the time I didn’t really “get” his character—I wasn’t sure what his motives were and I couldn’t even understand what his first lines of dialogue were meant to convey.

Even now I’m still not 100% sure whether his first line of dialogue is him rehearsing a conversation with another Ruins monster, with the monster that used to leave him corn, or with the previous human that he encountered. The fact that Dalv is known by the other monsters for talking to himself and having imaginary friends only blurs the lines further, though this doesn’t feel intentional.

This is part of a broader, though minor, issue with some of Yellow’s writing where characters will allude to events and other characters that a first-time player wouldn’t be familiar with. To be fair, Undertale does this as well early on but usually with enough context clues to help you figure things out—Papyrus namedrops Undyne and Alphys in Snowdin, but we learn from context clues within Snowdin that Undyne is a monster of authority that Papyrus knows and Alphys is a doctor and apparent inventor.

To draw a more direct comparison, we know early on that Toriel is a motherly figure and we see in her house that she has taken in other children who’ve met an unknown fate—this mystery leads to some first-timers speculating whether Toriel is the one responsible for said fate. Right before her boss fight she explains her motives more clearly--her actions, though overbearing, have been to protect Frisk. You can also infer, though not stated directly, that her actions towards Frisk may be some attempt on her part to recreate or make up for her past experiences with children that she’s lost. Later on we learn that she’s Asgore’s ex-wife and lost her two children tragically, but this is not something that needs to be spelled out in order to get a basic grasp on Toriel as a character.

Dalv, on the other hand, has an implied backstory that is never outright stated but instead needs to be pieced together from context clues given much later in the game, some of which are tied to optional secrets and randomly-generated fun events. In short, Dalv was a monster living in Snowdin who met Kanako when she and Chujin came to visit. During that visit, Dalv was attacked by a human (implied to be the one carrying the blue soul), who was later killed by Axis. It’s implied that this experience was so traumatic that Dalv retreated into the Ruins and cut off all contact with those around him. Conceptually? This is a solid backstory. No notes. It’s a shame, then, that most players don’t even seem to be aware of it after finishing the game.

Now, a character doesn’t need a tragic backstory in order to be likable or compelling. In fairness, I do enjoy the aspects of Dalv’s character that are given upfront in his house—his neatness, his social awkwardness, his creative side, and his “imaginary” friends. The problem is that we don’t see these sides of him until after his boss fight, when most players likely won’t see him again for the rest of the game.

Characters don’t need to front-load their entire personality or backstory into their first encounter, but doing the opposite isn’t helpful either. First impressions matter in fiction, and unfortunately Dalv gave very little for me to latch onto for most of his screentime. It’s really only through hindsight that I began to appreciate Dalv as a character, but even then he isn’t one of my favorites in Yellow, let alone comparable to Undertale’s core cast.

Martlet

Martlet is the most recurring character in the game aside from Flowey. Although her personality is quite different, I get the sense that her role is meant to be analogous to that of Sans and Papyrus, namely as a comic relief character that drops into your adventure regularly and presents a crucial turning point right before the game’s ending.

Martlet’s introduction gave me flashbacks of Dalv—namely that she never even interacts with Clover until the end of Snowdin, making me fear that once again a new character’s story was going to be backloaded into their final appearance before they disappear from the narrative. Thankfully this wasn’t the case. Martlet’s in it for the long haul and her boss fight is more of an introduction to her character than a conclusion.

So what do I think of Martlet? I’d say that I like her more than Dalv, or at least she’s better utilized than Dalv. Still, it took a while for Martlet to “click” with me. I think what I got hung up on was that a lot of her early gags revolve around royal guard protocol and the handbook that she keeps around. In many ways this feels at odds with what’s later established about her character, namely that she’s scatterbrained, wishy-washy, and lacks long-term goals or planning skills.

Martlet doesn’t seem like the type of person who’d follow a handbook in the first place, given how often she disregards it anyway. Perhaps the intent was for Martlet’s “arc” to be her unlearning what she’s learned from other monsters regarding humans and for her increasing disregard of the handbook to symbolize this. While I think the former is true—she says as much on the apartment rooftop at the end of the game, she seems to waffle back and forth on following her royal guard duties as the plot demands—ignoring them when it means accompanying Clover but following them when it means having to be separated from Clover.

I think this ties into a bigger issue that I have with Martlet, which is that at times she feels like she’s a character of convenience for the story rather than a character acting on a clear want or need. I think this is most blatant when viewing the various “abort” points in a no mercy run.

No matter how badly you beat Martlet in Snowdin and how resolute she is at stopping you, she’ll turn on a dime if you’ve aborted a run prior to Oasis or Hotland just so that she can play out her allotted part.

Other times it feels like she’ll show up just so that there’s someone for Clover to talk to and someone to react to what Clover sees. Now, it would be reductive of me to write off Martlet as a mere plot device—she isn’t, and any appearance otherwise is more so a flaw of the narrative than of her as a character.

You’ll notice I haven’t said much about how I feel about Martlet’s personality, her dynamic with other characters, or her overall “vibe” and honestly she’s just… fine? It’s hard for me to say anything because she feels a bit lukewarm to me—she’s not undercooked like Dalv, but she’s not as memorable as many of the other characters either. She says some funny things, but she’s not the funniest. She has some great and heartfelt lines during the pacifist ending, particularly this one:

But as a whole? She’s just fine. She's competently written, no major complaints.

I think maybe what Martlet lacks is a “larger than life” quality to her character. I’m not saying that her role within the setting should be larger than life, but rather she could use at least one exaggerated trait to help her stand out from the pack—Papyrus has his bravado, Sans has laziness and jokes, Undyne has intensity, Alphys has awkwardness, and Mettaton has his showmanship. Not every Undertale character is like this, but I feel like Martlet was intended to fit a similar mold—we catch glimpses of it, like her overly long “P.S.” messages amended to her first puzzle, but imo she doesn’t go far enough consistently enough (assuming that was the intent).

One last thing that I want to touch on is Martlet’s contingency plan for Clover that comes into play in the No Mercy run, where she injects herself and becomes “Zenith Martlet,” as fans have dubbed her. Conceptually I’m fine with the idea of Martlet having an ace up her sleeve that she’s too indecisive to actually use in most scenarios.

This feels in-character for her and I can even look past a scatterbrained character with no planning skills having a plan like this since it’s largely Martlet appropriating another character’s plan. The main thing that I find questionable about Martlet’s plan is that it relies on Alphys’ determination extraction experiments.

We the audience know what that is, but how does Martlet know about them or even what to look for? We do know that underground residents were asked to donate fallen down monsters to the lab, but seemingly nothing is revealed to the public about the nature of the experiments. Even Ceroba, who had a vested interest in learning all she could, seems to be completely in the dark. In the pacifist ending, Martlet offers to investigate the experiment for Ceroba, implying she didn’t know the full story either. I also question how Martlet would’ve been able to venture into the true lab seemingly without running into a single amalgamate, given that she never brings them up in pacifist.

Now, my issue here is not the supposed “plothole” that this creates. My main issue is that a more reasonable solution was sitting right there: Chujin’s monster serum. I legitimately wonder if earlier drafts of this game’s story had Martlet using Chujin’s serum instead of Alphys’ extract, because the former would bring everything full-circle and it would tie in more naturally with the flashback scene of Martlet with Chujin.

Now, the obvious answer is that Chujin’s serum was never completed, but I can’t help but wonder if perhaps this wasn’t always the case. During Ceroba’s flashback, we can see a case with two syringes—one full and the other seemingly empty.

This is just my own speculation, but I can’t help but wonder if it was once intended for Ceroba to use one syringe on Kanako and for Martlet to have taken the other. Obviously this doesn’t jive with the story as it’s currently written—Martlet is clearly taken aback when she learns of the experiments that Chujin conducted. Still, part of me wonders if an earlier draft had Chujin entrust Martlet with a prototype of the serum to keep her safe.

I think it’d be fitting if the no mercy route were to reveal that Martlet was a lot more privy to Chujin’s less savory actions than she let on, and that even in pacifist she kept this knowledge to herself of self-preservation or shame. This would fit with a line of hers in the no mercy fight after her flashback of Chujin:

It would be fitting for the NM run if we were to learn that there was always a seed of doubt and mistrust between Martlet and Clover, even during the best of times.

The Feisty Five

I’ll be brief, but when these guys first showed up my first thought was “great, I’ll never remember all these new characters” and I’m glad I was wrong. While they don’t have quite the depth that the main characters do, they’re all memorable in their own way. They’re also the first characters in the game to get a serious chuckle out of me and I wish we got more of them. If we’re comparing quirky miniboss squads, these guys clear the Snowdin canine unit and Sweet Cap’n Cakes. There, I said it.

Starlo

This is the coldest take ever and I won’t even try to bury the lede: Starlo is the best Undertale Yellow character. He’s funny, he’s charming, he’s flawed, he has layers, he has great moments of pathos with Ceroba, and he has a backstory that isn’t tragic yet still feels necessary to his character.

Here’s another cold take: Dunes/Wild East is the best part of the game. Dark Ruins and Snowdin, while not bad, still feel very much like typical fare for a romhack or fangame. Wild East is the first area that truly feels like Undertale, which is ironic since it’s also the first completely-original area.

By extension, Starlo is the one original character who feels most like he could be an Undertale character. It’s easy to take for granted all the little nuances that Toby injects into his characters to make them stand out, which is probably why I felt so lukewarm towards Yellow’s cast up until Starlo’s introduction.

One thing I admire about Undertale’s core cast is that each character has their own unique manner of speaking, to the point where you can identify a character’s dialogue without needing a dialogue portrait or typer sound. Starlo shares this trait, speaking in a semi-stereotypical drawl while occasionally misspelling words (FEISTYJ, dual vs duel). It’s a small touch but it goes a long way to endearing me to the characters in these games.

Although Starlo is mostly a comedic character, he still has plenty of depth. Another hallmark trait of Toby Fox characters is that they have multiple sides to them that seem contradictory at first glance but actually tell you something profound about the character (Papyrus’ bravado masking his loneliness, Sans’ joking to cope with his harsh outlook, Alphys’ awkwardness stemming from her guilt).

Starlo also fits this trend, first presented as a dashing and charismatic lawman that is nothing more than the mask of a nerdy and immature farmboy. And I would say Starlo’s fatal flaw is immaturity—not because of his interests, but because of his attitude. Starlo treats his friends like playthings, takes what he wants from Clover and Martlet when he first meets them, and he acts utterly irresponsible with his (or rather, Blackjack’s) firearms.

We learn from Starlo’s mom that he once pined after Ceroba and that he took a long time to move on.

It’s also implied that Starlo had a grudge against Chujin, which could have been due to the two having differing opinions on human culture or Starlo’s own jealousy over Ceroba.

We can also see this immaturity reach an ugly conclusion if Ceroba is killed in the so-called false or “flawed” pacifist ending. Starlo previously trained Clover to carry the weight of taking a life and also taught them the value of sacrificing one life to save many, but Starlo immediately throws this out the window as soon as Clover acts (as far as he’s aware) in self-defense.

This is a case where I’d argue that Starlo is right but for the wrong reasons. Starlo’s not so much recanting his earlier philosophy as he’s simply upset because someone he cared about was sacrificed this time—had it been a stranger or a ne’er-do-well like Vengeful Virgil then I doubt Starlo would’ve parted ways with Clover so bitterly. That’s just my interpretation, anyway.

None of this is to say that Starlo is always immature. When it comes to his interactions with Ceroba he’s often the most sensitive and emotionally-mature person in the room, which is a trait that we only see grow in him after he gets a reality check in the Wild East. When trying to talk Ceroba down we see Starlo give his respect to Chujin, despite their past differences, and he’s patient and understanding to the utmost once the fight is finally over.

This doesn’t mean that Starlo is a doormat for Ceroba either, as we earlier see him confront her and call her out when he suspects foul play involving Kanako—he clearly cares for Ceroba a lot but won’t sit idly by while she ruins her life or the lives of others.

Honestly, Starlo’s bond with Ceroba is a contender for the most wholesome relationship (platonic or otherwise) in the entire franchise—yes, I’m actually saying that there’s an aspect of this game’s writing that rivals and perhaps even surpasses Undertale and Deltarune.

I realize a lot of my analysis of Yellow’s writing has skewed negative, but as a reminder I am grading this game on a curve because it’s a companion piece to one of the best-written games of all time. To give Yellow a bit more praise, I think it might actually do a better job than Undertale at portraying characters’ moments of vulnerability and allowing them to cut to the emotional core of an issue, as seen with Starlo and Ceroba’s late-game interactions as well as Clover’s ultimate fate and its aftermath.

Unlike Undertale, there was no moment in Yellow that quite made me cry, but moments in the pacifist ending came close. I consider this quite the feat because the final outcome of Yellow’s pacifist ending is easily predicted from the start and the way that it plays out is a concept that would be difficult for any writer to sell. Yellow was backed into a corner by being a prequel, whereas Undertale had free reign to tell whatever story it wanted. In many ways I feel Yellow’s ending did just about the best job it could with the hand that it was dealt—it’s not perfect, and in one or two areas I feel it overplays its hand (which I’ll cover shortly), but the writing succeeds far more than I would’ve thought it would have with such a concept.

Axis

This’ll be another brief entry, but I wanted to include Axis since he always seems to get left out of fanworks. I enjoy Axis but I’m not sure I fully understand him. His overall arc and goals are very straightforward, but for the life of me I can’t really nail down what his personality is. He’s funny and memorable, which goes a long way for me, but I can’t really wax poetic about him beyond saying that he’s your stock quirky robot. It is a bit of a shame that, like Dalv, he’s largely isolated to one area and has little to no interaction with the rest of the cast.

I suppose one thing that bothers me is how robots in this game aren’t treated as people, which feels at odds with the broader themes of Undertale. We’re taught that amalgamates and even a soulless flower are still people, so having robots that lack free will and don’t even count as EXP kinda rubs me the wrong way. I generally don’t like when fictional works treat sentient robots as less than human or “soulless.” In my view, the true point behind sentient robot stories isn’t to debate whether robots have souls, but rather to question what a soul is and who gets to decide who has one and who doesn’t, or whether they exist at all.

Robots in fiction are meant to be a reflection of humans, and the robots in Yellow could have been presented as a reflection of video game characters as a whole—can free will exist when you’re programmed to fulfill a function? Unlike in our world, souls are a scientifically measurable quantity in Undertale’s universe, so I guess Yellow’s portrayal of “soulless” robots works on a technicality, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Ceroba

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Ceroba is the most controversial character in the game, and I find my own opinions of her (and her family) to be polarized as well. In a neutral run she’s barely noticeable but in pacifist she eventually becomes the main focus of the story. I’ve seen some people criticize Ceroba’s level of focus, but I’d liken it to Alphys and Flowey’s elevated level of focus in Undertale’s true pacifist ending. In other words, it doesn’t bother me.

Ceroba’s personality is a bit of an anomaly for me in the sense that she’s not quirky like a typical Undertale character, and yet I feel that aspect of her works for the story that Yellow tells. Previously I mentioned how Martlet didn’t really “wow” me as a character in part due to her lacking a sufficiently “larger than life” personality, but I feel Ceroba succeeds where Martlet didn’t for me because (1) Ceroba is clearly not intended to be a comic relief character and (2) Ceroba often acts as the straight man to other characters like Starlo and the Steamworks machines, whereas Martlet often feels like she has no one to work off of her besides Clover (for whatever that’s worth). In many cases, Ceroba’s understated reaction to things or her attempts to parse or explain them rationally end up making scenes funnier, such as when Starlo cuts off her piece on the ethical quandary of his trolley problem.

Having said that, I do think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity that the game doesn’t expand more on Ceroba’s own interests or quirks outside of her family. While showcasing a character’s hobbies can sometimes feel like checking an item off of a list, it helps add a bit of texture to a character that makes them that much more believable.

Not knowing this information doesn’t “ruin” Ceroba or anything, but it’s a bit disappointing that most of her “talk” dialogue in the steamworks, while interesting, pertains to her immediate surroundings or her family and friends instead of herself. The most we get is that she used to have a gym membership and (if I recall) she was once a waitress. We later get to see her room and all that’s in there is a bed, a photo, and her clothes. After seeing all the loving detail put into Papyrus and Alphys’ living areas in Undertale, it’s such a shame to see Ceroba’s opportunity squandered.

Oddly enough, if there’s one existing bit of characterization that I think could’ve been retooled sightly, it’d be Ceroba’s dynamic with Clover. Ceroba is a mother who lost a child around Clover’s age (or younger) but she’s also distrustful of humans and had a husband who hated them. You’d think that Ceroba would react strongly to Clover one way or the other, either distrusting them as a human or having a soft spot for them due to Clover being a child, or feeling conflicted between these two outlooks. Instead Ceroba seems utterly casual around Clover.

Initially her laid back attitude served as a nice contrast to the overbearing wackiness of Starlo and the Feisty Five and helped endear Ceroba to me as a character, but it begins to feel a bit out of place when she says things like "I respect the hell out of you" to a child.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but the way Ceroba treats Clover makes sense for how she’d treat a stranger who was a monster, given what we see of her personality, but I’m just not sure it makes sense that she’d treat Clover that way specifically. I’d be fine with it if the narrative unpacked the idea—maybe she’s casual around Clover because she’s too world-weary to muster a strong reaction, or maybe she’s forcing herself to act casual to hide her true plans for Clover, or maybe she never fully agreed with Chujin’s rhetoric on humans and is acting against them out of pragmatism, or maybe she never liked kids until she had one of her own, etc.

Speaking of kids, I guess there’s no avoiding the elephant in the room: Ceroba’s backstory. If I had to guess, I’d wager this is probably the most controversial portion of Undertale Yellow’s entire narrative, and I have a lot to say about it.

To start, I’ll say that I really like the way that (most) of Ceroba’s backstory is doled out to the player piece by piece over the course of a playthrough. As early as Snowdin you hear mention of Chujin, then in Wild East you can piece together from various bits of dialogue that Ceroba had a family that she’s reluctant to speak about. Steamworks fleshes out Ceroba and Chujin’s pasts considerably, albeit mostly hidden behind optional talk dialogue.

Steamworks also has one of my favorite scenes in the game when Ceroba learns why Chujin got fired—it technically doesn’t contribute anything major to the main plot, but it helps illustrate Chujin’s flawed methods that Ceroba willfully overlooks so that she can double down on furthering his “legacy.”

Right before Hotland is when the other shoe drops and Starlo confronts Ceroba—this was the moment that had me hooked on uncovering the mystery of Ceroba’s past. This leads right into the abandoned Ketsukane estate, which is another of my favorite sequences in the game. I was always a huge fan of Undertale’s True Lab and Ceroba’s house scratches that itch for me. The two locations have a very different tone and style of gameplay (or lack of), but both are dripping with unsettling atmosphere and environmental storytelling. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always been creeped out by abandoned houses—not decrepit haunted mansions per se, but places that were abandoned so recently that you’re not sure whether someone might still be lurking inside.

Unfortunately, I start to run out of nice things to say about this storyline as soon as Clover and Martlet enter the estate’s basement. Before we descend into that chasm, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I am not a “Cinema Sins” kind of guy. I do not go into a work of fiction looking for inconsistencies to complain about. My philosophy is that I can overlook the occasional plothole or retcon or bending of the rules if it’s done in service to a good story or memorable character moment.

If anything, I find it annoying when a story tries too hard to cover all its bases with exposition out of fear that some smartass is going to find some plot detail to complain about—this just draws more attention to potential “plotholes” that could’ve easily been ignored. I don’t care if the eagles could’ve carried the ring to Mordor and I don’t care whether the ark of the covenant would’ve killed the bad guys in Raiders if Indy wasn’t there. At the end of the day, if a story is well told then I can overlook things like that, and if it’s not well told then my mind wanders and I begin to notice those sorts of things, but those nitpicks (more often than not) are not the underlying cause of the problem—lack of a compelling story or believable characters is.

So, getting back to the basement. Here we see Chujin’s tapes and the plot begins to lose me. Chujin wants to create a serum that will strengthen monsterkind and give normal monsters the power of a boss monster. All well and good. Where I start to take issue is the convoluted method of creating this serum and what it means for the story.

As a point of comparison, I always thought that the rule in Undertale of requiring a human soul plus a monster soul to pass through the barrier felt a little convoluted and contrived, but it seems to exist for the sake of forcing a “kill or be killed” confrontation between Frisk and Asgore as well as explaining why Asriel passed through the barrier with Chara’s soul but (presumably) Chara alone couldn’t. In this way, the rule acts in service to the story and creates memorable character moments with Alphys and Asgore and gives Frisk a stronger temptation to kill Asgore during their fight. The two soul rule is a bit clunky, but I can begrudgingly accept it. Chujin’s serum fulfills a similar purpose but is clumsier in its execution.

To start, Chujin’s serum also requires a human soul and a boss monster soul—this makes sense, as the goal is to turn monsters into boss monsters and one can assume that human souls have some kind of preserving property that would keep the serum stable.

On top of that, the human soul must also be “pure of heart, uncorrupted.” I thought nothing of this line initially until it was reiterated during Ceroba’s flashback and I realized why it was in the story.

This concept bothers me for a number of reasons and it’s technically not even a plothole or inconsistency. It feels out of character for Chujin to frame things this way given how he views all humans as evil, and this purity rule seems to exist solely as a plot device to explain why Ceroba enacts her plan in pacifist but not in neutral runs. I feel like the story could’ve come up with a more organic method of explaining why Ceroba couldn’t be present or was otherwise occupied during the steamworks section in a neutral run, plus I feel like she wouldn’t let something like “purity” get in the way of attempting her plan if she was that dead-set on it, given how rarely humans appear in the Underground.

Lastly, we learn that Chujin and Kanako are both boss monsters, or at least “carry the boss monster gene,” which is an odd concept to me. You could argue that this revelation technically doesn’t contradict anything established in Undertale, but like the pure soul rule it just bugs me. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of the early days when the fandom thought that all bosses in Undertale were boss monsters instead of just the Dreemurr family. I won’t waste time rambling about the particulars of boss monster lore, but I think what bothers me with Chujin and Kanako is that it feels like yet another contrivance to explain why Ceroba’s actions had to involve Kanako specifically.

I’ve mentioned that Undertale’s two soul rule feels somewhat like a contrivance. One could argue that the Barrier requiring seven human souls to shatter is also a contrivance, but I think what makes that easier to swallow is that it’s a rule that’s established fairly early in the game. The reveals of the Barrier’s two “rules” are spaced apart from one another and each are given dramatic weight and time for the player to dwell on their implications.

The mechanics of Chujin’s serum, on the other hand, rely on multiple contrivances that are all spilled out onto the floor at once in the final stretch of the game right before they become necessary to explain Ceroba’s motivations, which only makes their narrative purpose feel all the more transparent.

Getting back to Ceroba, we’re left with her plan and what she did to Kanako. Now, I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt here and say that I don’t mind the particulars of whether Ceroba’s plan involving Clover would have worked or not—as far as I’m concerned, Chujin’s plans could have been doomed from the start even with a “pure” soul. The point wasn’t whether Chujin’s plan would’ve worked but rather how Ceroba’s grief has turned her own life (and by extension the lives of her family) into a sunk cost—she feels that she has to go through with her plan or else all her family’s suffering was for nothing.

In many ways this makes the contrived requirements for Chujin’s serum feel less necessary, since the serum’s mechanics could’ve been kept vague or it could’ve even been implied that Ceroba was simply repeating the same experiments as before hoping for different results.

I’ve put it off long enough, but it’s time to talk about that scene. You know the one: the big reveal flashback at the climax of Ceroba’s pacifist fight. Again, I’ll try to be charitable and say that I don’t absolutely hate the idea of Ceroba testing Chujin’s serum on Kanako. I mean, I would hate the act on a moral level if she were a real person, but I don’t hate the idea as a story concept. Still, my charity has its limits.

I’ll just come right out and say it: the scene where Ceroba injects Kanako is hard to watch—not because it’s tragic, but because it’s just not a good scene. My original write-up for this part was far harsher, but I’ll spare the vitriol. This scene has been memed to hell and back by people more critical of the game and… I can’t disagree with them—this is my least-favorite scene in the game.

(Image from ScottFalco's "Undertale Yellow with a side of salt" video)

The most obvious criticism I’ve seen is the fact that Chujin specifically told Ceroba not to do the exact thing that she does. That’s a fair point and honestly, yeah, I think the simplest writing fix would’ve been for that line not to have been in Chujin’s tape to begin with so that Ceroba doesn’t look willfully ignorant on top of being recklessly negligent.

Tbh, it feels a little out of character for Chujin to say something like that because I got the impression that Chujin wasn’t always the most thoughtful or attentive dad. His own tapes mention that he didn’t keep an eye on Kanako when a monster was attacked in Snowdin, and even then Chujin was more preoccupied with tracking down the human than with comforting his own daughter. He made nice things for Kanako, sure, but even that could be explained as him being more wrapped up in the work than her. It’d be wrong to say that he didn’t care about Kanako at all, but I got the impression that he had the wrong priorities and it’d be fitting if Ceroba’s own actions followed that pattern.

That being said, I can’t solely blame Chujin’s warning for why Ceroba’s flashback doesn’t work. The scene as a whole is just dreadful, even when viewed in isolation from the rest of the narrative. There’s so many issues big and small with this scene, like Kanako being able to read the word “corruption” but not “extract,” Ceroba’s immediate turnaround after the slightest prodding, or the predictable outcome of the whole thing that’s dragged out for what feels like an eternity.

You know, I’ve heard some people critical of Undertale say that the true pacifist ending to that game felt maudlin—I disagree, but in some places I could see where they were coming from. Calling the Kanako flashback maudlin would honestly feel like letting it off easy. If I wanted to be mean I’d call it manipulative, but honestly I think a more fitting term would be a comedy of errors. It feels less like tragedy and more like dark humor bordering on self-parody of what an Undertale character’s sad backstory would be.

So what should’ve been done differently? The easy and safer option I’ve seen suggested would be for Kanako to stumble across Chujin’s research and inject herself, with Ceroba feeling guilt for allowing it to happen. I would prefer this over what we got, but I said earlier that I don’t completely hate the concept of Ceroba experimenting on Kanako, so how can that idea possibly work? Besides getting rid of Chujin’s overly-specific warning, I honestly think the best fix for this scene would simply be to not show it. Don’t remove the events from the backstory, but just don’t reenact them onscreen. Normally it’s better to show than tell, but there have always been exceptions to that rule.

I’m reminded of how Undertale didn’t show us Asriel’s death or the Dreemurrs’ divorce, and only offered a glimpse of Chara’s buttercup plan. These were cases where less was more—letting the players imagine these events in their heads sidestepped any potential tastelessness and seeing the aftermath of these events and how they affected the characters involved painted a vivid enough picture. I think Ceroba would be a perfect fit for a similar approach.

If we need to see something, then either portray it via montage like Asriel’s memories or only portray Kanako finding Chujin’s basement and Ceroba stumbling upon her after she’s viewed the tapes. Ceroba could then explain to Clover that Kanako pleaded with her for months or even years to let her help with Chujin’s experiments. With time Kanako only become more stubborn and their relationship more strained. The whole time Ceroba knew that only Kanako’s soul would work for the experiment but she tried to remain in denial and hope an alternative would present itself. After countless research dead-ends used up all but one vial of the leftover human soul extract, Ceroba gave in to Kanako’s demands in a moment of weakness. And that’s all it took—one moment she was there and the next she was gone.

Not to toot my own horn, but I feel this kind of summary would’ve worked better because it leaves things up to interpretation. Was Kanako still a child when this happened or was it many years later? Did Kanako understand what she was signing up for? Is Ceroba’s recounting of the events reliable or is she merely rationalizing her actions after the fact? It’s not perfect and it’s still somewhat “safe” compared to the game’s swing for the fences. Unfortunately, a big swing means nothing if it misses, and even less if the bat goes flying and hits someone.

Despite what I just said, the Kanako scene doesn’t ruin Ceroba for me as a character. It blemishes her boss fight for me, though I have other issues with that fight besides the flashback (as I’ve mentioned). When thinking back on this game’s characters and story, I mostly just ignore the particulars of the Kanako scene unless if I need to sit through it again. I view it as the equivalent of a flubbed line read or a boom mic visible in a shot--I can see the pieces that were meant to be there underneath the lackluster execution.

Surprisingly, Ceroba’s still my 2nd favorite original character in Yellow, though a lot of this is owed to her dynamic with Star, and part of me wonders if I like her more for the character she could’ve been rather than the character we got. Still, I’ll always remember the buildup to the mystery of Ceroba’s backstory, even if the reveal failed to deliver.

Flowey

Flowey is one of my favorite Undertale characters as well as the only character from Undertale featured in a recurring lead role in Yellow, so I was curious to see how this game would handle him.

When this game was first announced, many fans debated the “canonicity” of whether Flowey would have encountered the human who fell prior to Frisk and whether Flowey would retain his save abilities in such a scenario. Often this debate overshadowed the other aspects of Flowey’s portrayal, so to avoid doing the same, I’ll just say that I don’t believe Toby ever intended for Flowey’s save abilities to function in relation to a human like how they’re portrayed in Undertale Yellow. However, I don’t take issue with this “lore contradiction” because I feel that the way Flowey is utilized in this aspect works for the story that Yellow is trying to tell. Flowey’s role is to limit Clover’s own powers and to keep their story on-track.

It’s easier to tell a prequel story where the main character is destined to die if that character doesn’t also have the ability to return from the dead at will or turn back time, so having Flowey fill that power vacuum makes sense. Despite this, Clover is still given plenty of agency. Flowey only railroads their story in two notable instances: whenever Clover is going to live with Toriel or when Martlet offers to have Clover come live with her in a neutral run. Both outcomes would be a bit of a cop-out for the game’s main conflict and would be the boring option as well (sorry fanfic authors)—Flowey agrees with this sentiment, making it feel justified that he’d intervene.

Having gotten that out of the way, what do I think of Flowey’s portrayal? Compared to Undertale, it’s interesting to think how much more screentime Flowey receives in Undertale Yellow, despite Flowey being the main antagonist and ostensible central character of Undertale. Since Flowey’s story can’t be allowed to conclude in Yellow, his character is kept in some degree of stasis—in many ways, Yellow’s portrayal can be seen as “Flowey, but more.” That might sound like a pejorative, but for the most part I think it works here. Flowey’s interactions with Clover honestly make him feel a little underutilized in Undertale by comparison.

That said, Undertale was a game intended to have moments of isolation, so having Flowey chime in at every save point likely would have diminished that effect and also made Flowey less threatening due to overexposure. I think Yellow can get away with giving more screentime to Flowey because for most of the game his mask hasn’t dropped—he has every bit of ill intent that he did in Undertale, but for the sake of his plans he has to play along at being your friend for far longer than he did in Undertale.

The result is that very little of what Flowey says in Yellow can be taken at face value once you know his aims. Until that point, however, I think the game does a good enough job at keeping you guessing as to how far gone Flowey is and at what point in his moral decline this story is meant to take place. If someone played this game without playing Undertale first, they’d probably chalk up Flowey’s mannerisms to him just having an odd and occasionally morbid sense of humor, which isn’t far from the truth.

One thing that I appreciate about Yellow’s portrayal of Flowey is his dynamic with Clover—the game manages to thread the needle of not making their relationship an also-ran of Flowey and Frisk or Flowey and “Chara” from Undertale’s No Mercy run. For most of the game you get the sense that Flowey views Clover as a means to an end that he’s forced to humor and put up with, but that deep down he likely has some small sentimentality towards them (mainly shown in the pacifist ending).

I think Flowey’s relationship with Clover in neutral and pacifist gives us a look into how he likely acted around the other monsters of the underground back when he tried to solve their problems or form bonds with them—he can’t fully relate to them but is willing to fake it ‘til he makes it, or rather until they make it to the outcome that he wants. If I were to draw a more direct comparison, I think Flowey’s bond with Clover might be the most similar to his bond with Papyrus—he’s implied to have spent a lot of time with each of them and found them each amusing in their own regard, but ultimately Flowey isn’t above using them or casting them aside.

What I find especially compelling about Flowey and Clover is the turn that their partnership takes in Yellow’s No Mercy route. Here Flowey initially seems to be cautiously optimistic about Clover’s rampage, but as his advice is ignored he grows increasingly exasperated with their actions. It’s strange to say, but it’s a refreshing dynamic to see Flowey outright grow to hate his human companion—while he voiced plenty of insults and disdain towards Frisk, it came off more as condescension or an attempt at intimidation.

In Yellow, however, you can really feel Flowey becomng absolutely fed up with Clover, not just for their pushiness and disobedience in the no mercy route but also for the hundreds of runs where Flowey has had to string them along and, in the process, be strung along himself. This development is much better-paced in Yellow than Flowey’s turn toward fearing Chara in Undertale—it’s amazing what can be done when you’re allowed to have more than four conversations with a character.

That said, I don’t think there’s any one Flowey moment in Yellow that quite lives up to Flowey’s speech in New Home or the conclusion to his story in the form of Asriel—those two moments will forever be peak Flowey to me. When comparing Undertale Flowey to Yellow Flowey, it’s a case of quantity vs quality, but in this case the “quantity” is still pretty good.

If I had to voice any complaints for Yellow Flowey beyond a broad “it’s not as good as something near-perfect”, I will say that when Flowey’s mask does drop in Yellow, he doesn’t sound quite as crass or childish as he does in Undertale—something I feel is important to him as a villain, but this is a very minor nitpick since he has plenty of lines in this game that go hard. I didn’t even notice the difference in speech styles until I went back and watched footage of Undertale and realized “oh yeah, I guess he sounds a bit more childish here.”

I suppose there’s one other thing I should discuss regarding Flowey. This is a topic that I intentionally saved for last since I find it’s a perfect capstone for Undertale Yellow and my opinions on it: Flowey’s boss fight. If ever there was a case of “Flowey, but more,” it would be this fight. For years Undertale fans have speculated and wished and wondered what a fight against plain old vanilla Flowey would be like. Countless fangames and fan battles have tried.

Yellow opts for an unorthodox approach by centering the entire fight within Flowey’s mind—this framing is used to its fullest and then some, allowing for interface-screws and psychedelic attack patterns showcasing Flowey’s twistedness, his self-loathing, and his various forms of retraumatization.

Players are attacked by phantoms of any bosses that they killed, complete with Floweytale-esque corrupted designs. This aspect of the fight dovetails perfectly with Flowey’s comment about only enjoying the moments of Clover’s run where they “gave in” to their violent urges, and clearly these moments are etched in Flowey’s memories for Clover to relive.

Afterwards we’re treated to a peek behind the curtain at Flowey’s subconscious, featuring a collage of his first runs as a flower—this whole sequence adapts my favorite Flowey moment from Undertale while not tipping its hand too much by revealing Flowey’s true identity, as it easily could have in less-skilled hands. We’re given just enough to ponder without spoiling things for the mythical gamer who tries playing Yellow before Undertale.

Next up is a brief horror fakeout where Clover “reunites” with Martlet. I don’t have much to add other than the telegraphing being a bit obvious but not in a way that majorly detracts from the moment. Overall it just makes me consider that this fight as a whole might be scarier than anything in Undertale

Finally we have the climax of the fight. I’m not quite sure what to call it. Photoshop Flowey 2.0? To be brief, the visual spectacle shown in this phase surpasses not only the visuals of any sequence (so far) in Undertale or Deltarune, but I think it’s unlikely that future chapters of Deltarune will feature anything with visual flare on the level of this finale.

That’s probably the highest praise I’ve given to Undertale Yellow so far, which is what makes this next part so difficult. I’m sure this will go down as my hottest take in this entire review, and it breaks my heart to say it given the clear effort on display from the developers, but…

I did not care for the Flowey fight.

How can I even say that? Was all of my prior praise just a lie? Not at all—I meant every word of it and then some. So how is it possible that I didn’t like this fight? You’ll notice that I broke down the Flowey fight into its individual phases and aspects, praising each in isolation. You might also notice that my praise was aimed at the spectacle and underlying concepts of the fight, which are fantastic, but I had very little to say about the actual experience of playing the fight—and that’s because I found the fight to be an utter slog to get through. In hindsight, it might actually be my least-favorite fight in the entire Undertale franchise if we’re solely talking about the gameplay. I’d rather fight a Jerry than have to fight this thing again.

I’ll admit up front that I sucked at this fight when I played it. I sucked at all of Yellow’s final bosses and initially didn’t care for their gameplay. I eventually warmed up to Ceroba and Martlet’s fights as I got better and learned to beat them without needing easy mode, but the Flowey fight never clicked for me in the same way despite arguably being the easiest of the three.

So what’s the problem? There are little things here and there—I found some of the phase 1 attacks a bit obnoxious to dodge, though nothing major. I found the collision detection in the vine chase sequences to be a bit clunky, resulting in one or two deaths that felt unearned, but none of these issues are enough to sink the fight.

No, two major missteps that come to my mind are length and repetition.

Out of curiosity, after my neutral run I looked up gameplay videos of the Yellow Flowey fight and the Omega Flowey fight from Undertale: on average, Yellow’s fight took players twice as long to complete as the Omega Flowey fight. The difference is so stark that a “no hit” speedrun of Yellow’s fight with dialogue skipped, the intro cutscene edited out, and no attacks from killed bosses is still longer than an Omega fight played normally.

I want to be clear that my criticism here is not “it’s different from the Omega fight, therefore it’s bad.” The Omega Flowey fight, in my opinion, already drags at times, and it’s probably my least-favorite final boss in Undertale despite having the most effort put into it. I already take (minor) issue with the Omega Flowey fight for overstaying its welcome, but Yellow’s fight is beyond the pale. One nice thing I can say is that Yellow’s fight at least tries to break itself up with an intermission of sorts in the middle, but the whole experience is still technically one fight, so in some ways this just feels like padding, particularly the Martlet scene.

To give a non-Undertale point of comparison, the Flowey fight reminded me (oddly enough) of Darth Vader’s hallway fight scene in the film Rogue One. For many fans this scene was considered the highlight of the entire film, but a vocal minority at the time criticized this scene for being irrelevant to the film’s central characters and unnecessary to the overall plot—it was just something thrown in for fan service that could have been cut at no detriment to the overall narrative. While I can understand the latter perspective, I have no issues with the Vader scene at all—if anything I think it enhances the third act’s feeling of desperation. but overall it’s just a cool scene and that alone makes its inclusion feel warranted.

So why do I feel different about Vader’s scene compared to Flowey’s fight? After all, both are action-heavy “scenes” featuring the main villain of the original installment doing what they do best at the end of a prequel that wasn’t centered on them. The difference is that Vader’s scene is less than 2 minutes long. It’s closer to 60-90 seconds if we only count the portion where he’s onscreen and it’s less than 1% of the film’s runtime. Conversely, there’s a no commentary neutral run of Undertale Yellow on Youtube where the Flowey fight takes up about 15% of the overall run. Had Vader’s scene been that long, even if it were expertly shot and choreographed while being broken up with bits of pathos, I would’ve been checking my watch and waiting for it to be over.

Still, I could forgive the Flowey fight’s length if it had variety and was building toward something. Surely this is true of the Yellow fight, right? Well, I would say that the Yellow Flowey fight probably has the widest variety of total attacks in the game—it has six unique photoshop phases as well as copied attacks from previous bosses in the first phase. The problem is that these are part of his total attacks but not necessarily his most common attacks—half of the ones I just listed are optional depending on who you killed and the other half are for brief one-off phases.

For the majority of the fight you’ll be dealing with Flowey’s other attacks: his standard attacks, which are recycled ad nauseam with little variation and no iteration. In phase 1 this isn’t too noticeable if you only killed one or two bosses, but if you killed most (like I did) then every unique boss attack is sandwiched between a standard Flowey attack and a vine chase sequence, which really bloats the runtime of the fight. Still, I’d argue that phase 2 is the worse culprit in this regard.

For those who’ve played, let me know if this sounds familiar to you: four vines shoot up out of the floor, four piranha plants emerge twice spitting up bullets, two hands scroll across the screen lazily scattering pellets, three guns materialize and fire at your location, a bomb with an “X” or “+” shape detonates, a small circle with spikes orbiting it homes in on your position, and two cowboys riding horses gallop by until one explodes, all while the song “Afterlife” plays from the beginning. Now tell me: which part of the fight am I referring to? If you guessed “more than half of all attacks in the 2nd phase,” then you’d be right!

Now, some of you might be questioning why I’m complaining about lack of “variety” when I just listed off seven individual attacks and earlier I complained about Yellow bosses using too many types of attacks. Well, the problem is that these same seven attacks are all used in sequence with each other over and over and over with no progression—each phase of this lasts 25-30 seconds and it’s repeated at least 7 times in the fight (more if you die).

Combined, no joke, this one sequence of attacks lasts 3 minutes, longer than an entire pacifist Toriel fight (dialogue included). Don’t believe me? Look it up on Youtube. You spend at least 10% of the Flowey fight dodging this one attack pattern. You literally spend an entire Toriel fight dodging just one prolonged attack pattern. And as the cherry on top, “Afterlife” always starts over from the beginning each time this sequence plays—just to drill into your head how repetitive this all is.

To be fair, Omega Flowey has a similar problem of repeating a ~25 second attack phase multiple times, but I find it more bearable there because:

Omega Flowey randomly uses 3-4 types of attacks from his larger arsenal per phase instead of trying to cram nearly every single one in every time like in Yellow, which (ironically) makes the Omega sequences feel less samey

Omega Flowey makes use of loading, which spices up the encounters by feeling unfair initially until you notice the save messages in the corner that telegraph them

Each of Omega’s sequences has a Fight button that, though optional, acts as a goal and motivator, as opposed to the player just impotently killing time until the phase ends, and

Omega Flowey’s music doesn’t start over from the beginning each time he attacks.

Those last two might seem minor since they don’t directly affect the overall gameplay, but I honestly think they’re the most crucial because they give the player a goal and a feeling of progression, even if it’s illusory.

Probably my biggest issue with Yellow’s Flowey fight, even more so than the length and the repetition, is that it ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. It pretty much can’t be allowed to go anywhere due to the aforementioned “stasis” of Flowey’s character arc. Flowey can’t suffer a grand defeat or learn a lesson that impacts his character in any major way, which only makes me question why this fight is here at all.

Omega Flowey, while feeling hopeless and repetitive in some places, has a clear progression, goal, and conclusion that leads to Frisk either reinforcing Flowey’s beliefs or causing Flowey to seemingly question them and offer a path to the true pacifist ending. There’s a reason why the song “Finale” is considered an underrated gem—because it shows a clear turning point and building momentum in that fight. I’m not saying Yellow’s fight needed to copy this same moment, but instead it just peters out with nothing to show for itself. I mean, do I even need to say anything when the game itself basically makes my case for me?

So what would have been better? Personally, I think the first phase of the fight is largely fine as-is. Phase 1 is by no means without its flaws, but it’s the phase that’s most relevant to Clover and the overall story on a thematic level—the boss attacks are a consequence of Clover’s actions and the vine chases (though repetitive) are meant to symbolize Clover’s endlessly repeated runs. And the thing is? The pieces are already there for the fight to end in a more natural way that respects the player’s time.

If the fight were to be given a page 1 rewrite, then I would end it at the section with Flowey’s subconscious that shows his past. Why?

It’s a great scene on its own that should be kept,

The scene would actually be relevant to the fight instead of it going unremarked on like it currently is (seriously, Flowey has nothing to say about it?),

It would fit the central conceit of the fight—Flowey is able to peer into Clover’s memories but Clover can do the same to Flowey and that scares him, and as a result...

It would be a more believable and character-driven “off ramp” for Flowey to back out of the fight.

This last point is especially important because we see throughout Undertale Yellow that Flowey is constantly hiding from other monsters—he clearly doesn’t want to entangle himself with them or have them interfere in his affairs. We can also pick up from his dialogue in Undertale and, to a lesser degree, Yellow that Flowey doesn’t want to talk about his past life as Asriel.

Having Clover intrude upon that territory would likely spur a strong reaction from Flowey, to the point where he’d rather abandon his plans, albeit temporarily, than open up that side of himself to a stranger. This would not only make the fight shorter and end it on a more emotionally resonant note, but I feel it also makes more sense for the narrative and themes of Yellow.

Flowey’s rationalization for letting Clover go could be something to the effect of needing to “tidy up” his head space before he’s ready to share it with someone else. Perhaps in the process he could drop a hint that he’s only opened himself up like this once before (with Chara) or that he had thought he had buried those old memories for good.

I also feel like this explanation would work better in the greater context of Flowey’s actions—Flowey quitting the fight out of boredom raises the question of why he’d repeat the fight on future neutral runs or why he’d be so confident that he could absorb the six souls in Undertale if one was too stubborn for him. Instead, having Flowey be emotionally unprepared for his plan but trying to find a workaround would lend itself better to him trying again in the future—to him it was just a little slip-up that he can overcome with enough attempts.

I don’t want to give the impression that my critique here is “the Flowey fight wasn’t done the way I’d have done it, therefore it’s bad.” My suggested “rewrite” to the fight is merely piggybacking off of what was already there, which are great concepts that I could never have dreamed up myself. The problem is that there’s just too much. Way too much. It feels like not enough was cut during the planning stage and what we’re left with is the epitome of “less than the sum of its parts.”

Of course, my rewrite omits the 2nd phase entirely—something that couldn’t be done with the current fight since it’s the most visually stunning segment of the entire game—like it or not, that genie is out of the bottle.

If I had to give any suggestions to improve the fight that we currently have? I’d say that I don’t think the “afterlife” portions of the 2nd phase need to be repeated so often. I think the phase would be better paced if afterlife only occurred at the very beginning and very end, and instead each mini-phase just brought you right back to Flowey’s petal roulette wheel to take you into the next mini-phase.

None of this is to say that I hated the Flowey fight overall. I still love many of the concepts that the fight brings to the table and I’ll watch moments of it on Youtube from time to time, but I just don’t care to experience it again firsthand any time soon, which is pretty much the opposite of how I felt with the Omega Flowey fight.

Looking at Yellow’s final bosses now that I’ve completed them all, I think my favorite might actually be Zenith Martlet? Which is insane to me because I hated that fight the first time I tried it—anyone who shared a Discord with me can attest that I was complaining nonstop when I attempted that fight.

Even now I’d say the Zenith fight is sloppy and the bandaid solutions for it in the 1.1 patch only illustrate how unbalanced this fight originally was. I’ve never beaten it on 1.0, nor do I intend to, yet in 1.1 I’d say I probably enjoyed myself the most with this fight. It doesn’t overstay its welcome like Flowey, nor does it have anything as egregious as the Kanako cutscene in the Ceroba fight. It respects my time, it has great music (though that’s par for all the bosses), the attacks (while chaotic) mostly stick to a consistent handful of themes, and the narrative context of the fight works (minus the bit with Alphys’ lab).

At first I found the Zenith fight unfitting for Martlet as a character. I thought “what? Martlet isn’t some hidden badass,” but that was exactly the point—this isn’t who Martlet is, and reality catches up with her. The 2nd phase is my favorite part of the fight as we see, in typical Martlet fashion, she didn’t plan ahead and can only hopelessly flail about as the “enemy retreating” motif overtakes her theme. It’s a somewhat understated and undignified ending to the character and that’s exactly what makes it work—it’s another example of the game showing restraint and being all the better for it, as opposed to overreaching.

That said, if I wanted to cheat, I’d say my real favorite final boss is the Asgore “fight” from the false pacifist ending. It’s focused on the characters and their goals and it doesn’t try to be anything too flashy. It’s an even more understated yet fitting final boss than Martlet, though the rest of the “false” ending outside of Asgore is a bit lackluster since it’s just a glorified neutral ending.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, I’m sure you’ve all noticed the throughline here: Undertale Yellow is at its best when it’s tasteful and restrained, and at its worst when its ambitions run wild. Of course, that’s easy for me to say from the outside looking in. It’s likely that many of the things I enjoyed about Yellow were ambitious in their conception but were handled carefully enough to appear restrained and effortless. I have no intention of downplaying that—the project as a whole was ambitious, given the time and effort lovingly poured into it.

As I mentioned in the beginning, my criticisms are not intended to dissuade anyone from trying this game. I would not want this game to be forgotten, but I also would not want it to be uncritically praised as some flawless masterpiece that eclipses the original game—that not only does a disservice to the people who worked on Undertale but also to the people who worked on Undertale Yellow. Both games were carefully crafted and both games have their triumphs as well as their flaws.

The last thing that I would want any fan creator to take way from Undertale Yellow OR the original game would be “this was perfect, just copy what they did.” What’s important is understanding why things worked and where they could be improved. Despite Undertale Yellow’s reverence for Undertale, it takes risks and finds places to innovate over the original game. Not all of it works, but I can respect the effort.

And that sums up my overall opinion of the game—it’s a game that I like but a game that I respect even more. The best complement that I can give is that even the parts of the game I didn’t like still had good ideas evident within them. The pieces were there.

With some tweaks, fine-tuning, and the courage to reign in a couple aspects, I honestly think this game could be made to rival the original one day. But even if that day never comes, Undertale Yellow is still a fine game as-is. It’s not a game I consider “canon” like some fans have argued, but I still plan to replay it alongside the original in the future, and I can’t think of higher praise to give than that.

#undertale yellow #undertale #starlo #ceroba #martlet

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autistic-sidestep · 6 months

Text

sidestep scar map

here's all the physical scar mentions of step's ive discovered so far that aren't choice dependent! (choice dep scars will be in another post). lemme know if i missed any!

edit: hi people from r/hostedgames o/

edit 2 (nov 8th): added some more i missed!

(cw for sh/sui mentions and graphic injury description)

general

"Have you seen me?" You don't bother to hide your sneer. Even with your clothes on, there are enough scars and marks that many people would pay dearly to remove them. (ch 22, argent meetup) Regenerate…the notion is a tempting one; could it work on your tattoos? You've tried cutting and burning, but there's just too much, you'd be scarred and mutilated before you were done, but this…this prototype, could it help you too? (ch 19, etc, regenerator discovery) "What?" A moment's confusion and then—finally—he adds up the dots. His frown deepens, and he looks between your face and your chest, marred by scars and brightly orange tattoos, marking you as other. As not human. "Are you saying that—" (ch 22, flystep apartment scene) "Do you like scars?" you tease, taking one of [Daniel']s hands, tracing it across one on your chest. An ugly one, a remnant from an angry attempt to carve away your tattoos until the drugs couldn't keep the pain at bay any longer. (ch 22, flystep apartment date) It's a slow, circling motion over the small of your back, palm against skin, warm fingers tracing the deep scars you both know are there. And a few that ${he} doesn't. (ch 17, hoots makeout) ${his} hands are running over your skin, over your back. You know ${he}'s tracing scars, the same as you, and having an easier time of it. No fancy hospitals for your body, just your own skills, and no need to make it look pretty. (ch 21, chargestep apartment nsfw)

autopsy (incision) scar(s?)

"I obtained…pictures." He lets out a sigh, rubbing his face. "Classified. Highly classified. I assumed they were from the autopsy." He focuses on you. "Your autopsy." […] "The damage from the fall was horrific…you looked dead. Opened up." (ch 22, steel bar meetup)

legs

You remember that [Psychopathor] fell against the wreckage, and it moved and caused you to scream out loud as it dug into your leg. There's still a scar there somewhere. (ch 2, warehouse fight)

face

"Yeah, things changed. For me." You touch your face without intending to. The thin scars there are the most obvious legacy of your fall, of the window tearing into you like memories. (ch 21, hoots) "I'm not the only one with scars." He rubs the side of his face as he looks at you, and you have to fight not to do the same. You can feel your own face itch with the need to pick at your scars. "Yeah," you admit with a tired sigh. "Looking into the mirror is not fun." For more reasons than one, but you'd be lying if the scars weren't one of them. Bad memories imprinted on your flesh, a reminder of nightmares you can't ever forget. It's interesting, really, the way they see you as another vet. Are you looking out of place enough for that? A helping of scars. The nervous awareness. (ch 22, steel bar meetup)

hands/wrists

"Does it say that the scar on your hand always itches when you're stressed?" (ch 22, flystep apartment date)

"I'm not sure about this," he says, looking down at your scarred hands as if he could read your mind. Soft. Human. He doesn't want to hurt them. (ch 25, post puppet crash step leg rights, chen apartment minddive)

You let Ortega take your hands in [theirs]. Warm. Calloused. Scarred. Just like yours. You can't help but trace the edge of ${his} mods where they break the skin, strangely cool to the touch. (ch 21, trans mc ortega apartment reveal)

You look down at hands so much cleaner than your own. $!{puppet_name} hides all scars. (ch 18, puportega stakeout)

"It feels like they do," you say, scratching one of the scars on your hand a little nervously. "I wish I could tell you, but I can't." […] Your hands are clenched. Hard enough that your knuckles are white. There are a few scars across them, memories of punching things you shouldn't punch. People. Armor. Walls. […] You press two fingers against your wrist, feeling your pulse, feeling the scars. It's a familiar sensation, but instead of the weight pressing against your shields, you feel like a balloon, ready to burst. (ch 17 - finch therapy scene)

arms

tattoo removal attempts

You tried to get rid of them after your first escape. A specialist, suitably coerced. You still have the scar on the inside of your arm where the lasers didn't quite take. Too deep. Something she had never seen before, and she wasn't lying. Almost as if they were regenerating. (ch 15/ch 17, reader regenereveal tag )

You've tried lasers to remove them. You've tried dermabrasion. You even flayed off a piece of your own skin, and while that worked, it left another scar, a deep one. You know it's not possible to do that for your entire body. It's too much surface area; the process would kill you or leave you maimed. Not exactly the life you want. _(ch 15/ch 17, reader regenereveal tag / ch 19, puppet auction)

You tug at your sleeve; it keeps clinging to your sweaty skin. The small hairs on the back of your arm stand on end. The scars are visible now, the ones you made yourself. The ones where you tried to remove them. (chapter 19, argent regene reveal)

"I'm not lying anymore." You very slowly tug your sleeve up, rolling it past the scars, past the places where you tried to obliterate the tattoos, up to where they peek out beneath the fabric. Sharp. Orange. Inhuman. Like you. You look away, regulating your breathing, keeping a straight face as ${mhis} fingertips trace the edges of the design. There's a slight "tsk" at the burn scars that cut them off, no doubt ${mhe} is adding the clues together. […] "I tried to burn parts of them off," you say, […] so ${mhe} doesn't need to ask. "Didn't work too well. Needs third-degree burns, or they'll grow back." "Really?" $!{mhe} bends your arm, and you shift to allow it. "Fascinating." "Flaying works if you cut down to the flesh." Your voice sounds dispassionate even to your own ears, and Dr. Mortum takes a step back with a shocked look on ${mhis} face. "I'd hate to know how you found that out." "Other arm." You tug your sleeve down now that ${mhe}'s stopped touching you. (ch 20, "good" mortum mc reveal at the lab)

Holding your breath, you raise your arm in front of you, watching the pale green hospital robe slip back, revealing the intricate tattoos etched into your skin, broken only by scars. Neon orange. (ch 24, mccrash, revoked legrights)

dog bite

Some [dogs] were kept to guard the perimeter; you got bit once for straying outside. You still have the scar on your arm, a reminder that things that are hurt inevitably turn on each other. (ch 15, 1st boneyard scene)

general arm scars

It's so easy to feel human around ${him}. So easy to ignore the fear. Your sleeves are rolled up to your elbows. Anything more would risk revelations you aren't ready for, but even like this, the scars are enough for conversation. […] *if suitag: The bubbles hide most; you keep them buried deep in the soapy water to make sure ${he} doesn't look. (ch 21, ortega apartment dishes)

sh scars (suitag dep)

The scars on your arms are hidden under your sleeves, and maybe they would be something you could talk about. Something she would expect. A safe revelation of self-harm. *if suitag: Across. Not lengthwise. Your one deal with yourself. Not yet. You have things to finish first." (ch 17, finch therapy scene)

#fh codediving #hopefully this format is useful!#ramblings #fallen hero #sidestep #archival adventures

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class1akids · 10 months

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I wish people would stop short-selling Shouto and instead actually read what Shouto says in Ch 390 and not make up stuff that's not there.

The intervention of the family slowed down the rise of Touya's temperature, but didn't reverse the process in the slightest. The most important thing Rei, Fuyumi and Natsuo achieved was to prevent Endeavor to go through with the murder-suicide. But they couldn't do anything against the explosion.

2. Shouto's Great Glacial Aegir is what neutralizes Touya's impending explosion for all intents and purposes

3. "Might not have been" =/= "wouldn't have"

Shouto credits his family, saying that their intervention mattered in stopping Touya - their ice, them showing up, being there, stopping Endeavor from murder-suicide - in whatever way, without them being there, Great Glacial Aegir might not have been enough, not necessarily regarding this explosion, but also because Touya kept getting up, kept surpassing his limits to get the closure he wanted.

4. "He reached an uncharted territory I can't tread" - this doesn't mean Shouto can't beat Touya. It means that he can't / won't raise his fire to this suicidal level. He's noping out of the toxic mindset Endeavor created for them which is centered on getting fire hotter and hotter and using ice to stifle the inner heat.

Shouto already said that he was not going down the path that Endeavor wanted. He chose another way, his own way - nurturing his ice and using fire as support to his ice.

That doesn't mean that Shouto is weaker or less powerful than Touya. It just means he's working on flashfire in a different way than what Endeavor wanted for them. After all, he countered Touya twice now successfully, and what's more, he's doing it without hurting himself or anyone else around him.

So what he is talking about is Endeavor's ideal:

The path Endeavor designed for his coveted masterpiece, that he created his entire family around. But in the end, it was Touya, not Shouto who followed that path to it's tragic endpoint - where even with his inner ice, his body is falling apart trying to raise the heat to higher and higher levels.

So Touya is Endeavor's real masterpiece. He is the endgame to his little genetic experiment. That's one meaning of the masterpiece sentence.

The other is that Touya is also a masterpiece or Shouto isn't one either. All siblings have their unique personalities, talents, strengths, and Shouto wants to destroy this artificial division Endeavor created between them. He will not play this game where Touya feels like he has to torch himself even more. He will not have the family destroyed in a competition he never wanted in the first place.

That's what Shouto: Rising is about and anyone who is reading this chapter with some powerscaling glasses on to try to decide who is "strongest" - Shouto, Touya or Endeavor - woefully misses the entire point of the chapter.

This isn't about win or lose, or even ultimate feats of power - it's about putting an end to a competition that never should have happened in the first place.

It's Shouto sidestepping competition in favour of connection, it's about him deciding what his strength serves. It's about him affirming his own reason to exist - and not the one he was created for.

#bnha meta #todoroki shouto #todoroki touya #bnha 390 #bnha manga spoilers #the way people shortsell shouto after this chapter is baffling to me

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roosterr · 1 year

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guardian angel ✹ ch 1

note: as promised, here it is!! inspired of course by the wonderful @sofasoap and their lastochka series, which is the entire reason i'm kinda obsessed with nik now tbh. this fic came to me in a vision from god, this might be the fastest i've ever written anything. anyways enjoy and i hope i can indoctrinate a few more people into the loving nik cult

pairing: nikolai x gn!reader

word count: 3.6k

no use of y/n, no description of reader

readers callsign in kilo '0-9'

summary: after a headache of a mission, being shot at by your ride isn't quite the picture perfect ending you had in mind; but hiding out in the desert with him, now that's something you can get behind

warnings: descriptions of injuries, canon-typical violence, fluff, soft nik, minor character death, my poor duolingo knowledge of russian, nik relentlessly flirting with you, reader being a little bit of a mess

ao3

[two]

your breathing was ragged, blood rushing hot in your ears and every sense on high alert. the ground felt like it might slide from under you, built up exhaustion of the last few days weighing heavily on your overworked mind. being stranded in less than friendly territory with no solid idea of when help was coming – if at all – had done a serious number on your composure; but it was so close to being over, the exfil site was up ahead, the tall office-looking building was within your sights now. all you had to do was make it to the roof and you'd be home free.

you weren't even sure if you were still being tailed, the frantic beating of your heart drowning out any noise from around you. though considering you hadn't been shot at in quite some time, you had to assume you'd lost your assailants at some point during your escape. your hand was beginning to ache from the iron grip you have on your gun, but you don't dare holster it – your guard wouldn't be down until you were safely within the walls of your own base, whenever that may be.

you skid to a stop just before the glass doors of the building, pressing yourself to the wall and slowly peeking around the corner. you don't see anyone inside, so you carefully push through the door and step inside, letting it click shut behind you.

you're just about to head for the entrance to the stairway along the back wall, when from the corner of your eye something grabs your attention; the short, almost undetectable glint of sunlight reflecting off metal, just slightly poking out from around the corner.

your heart misses a beat, eyes widening in the fraction of a second it takes you to throw yourself to the floor, narrowly missing the bullet that whizzes past and shatters the glass behind you. the shards rain down on your back and the ground, digging into your palms as you push yourself to crouch and point your gun in the direction the shot came from. whoever was there had disappeared around the corner again, bringing a frown to your face.

"you gonna fight me like a man, or stay hiding over there all day?" you taunt, masking the tiredness in your voice with aggression. or at least that's what you try to do; you're not sure how believable it is paired with the undeniable shake in your hands. you see a few drops of blood fall from them, silently cursing yourself for acting so carelessly. you could feel the tiny shards under your skin as you tighten your grip around your weapon, never once taking your eyes off where you'd seen the gun.

"those are fighting words, 0-9," a voice breaks the silence, deep and heavily accented. you narrowed your eyes – he sounded very russian, exactly like the people you'd been running from for the last three days.

"how do you know me?" you demand, your overworked muscles aching from where you were crouching. you hear footsteps, tensing your arms again, and the mystery shooter sidesteps into your view, his arms raised next to his head and gun firmly in its holster at his hip.

"i am nikolai, a friend of the commander." he offers, giving you a small, lopsided smile. your glare doesn't waver as you examine his appearance; the aviators hanging from his collar and the clunky headset around his neck suggested that he was a pilot, and farah had told you it was too dangerous to send more than one person to rescue you – and to top it all off, you can't deny that he's attractive.

uh oh. that's not a great thought to have about a stranger you just met, and in enemy territory no less.

"you expect me to believe that?" your voice is lower, testing. his smile grows, and he nods in an exaggerated, almost amused, manner.

"if i wasn't, would we still be talking?" he asks, beginning to lower his hands, but when you move your gun up to point between his eyes, he continues, "i will get you home in one piece, farah karim's orders."

you say nothing for a moment, considering your options. he hadn't given you any concrete evidence that he really was friendly, and not just tricking you – aside from knowing farah's name – but then again, your enemies so far had been much more keen on killing you than transporting you to a secondary location. that, and he was currently your only way out of here which meant you were summarily out of options. you'd have to have a talk with farah about codewords once you get back.

you sigh, lowering your gun, "i guess i just have to trust you then, huh?" he walks over to where you're still on the floor, and you hold your suspicious glare on him as he approaches.

"i guess you do." he's still smiling – though it's smaller now, more natural – even as he grabs your free hand and hauls you to your feet. you wince at the sharp sting of his hand digging into the countless slices in your palm, holstering your gun and meeting his eyes again. "even if i wasn't your ally, it would be a crime to ruin such a pretty face." he adds, and you realise in that moment how close he was standing to you – his chest almost touching yours, near enough that you could see the reflection of yourself in his deep brown eyes.

"i– you, uh–" for a moment all you can do is sputter, feeling the heat rising in your cheeks. you snap yourself out of it with an exasperated shake of your head, you turn and march towards the stairwell, hoping he couldn't tell how thrown off you were. "let– let's go already, we don't have time for this…" you call over your shoulder, focusing your mind back on the situation at hand, and not on the way his smile makes your heart feel light.

he chuckles at your reaction, low and rumbling in his chest, before following after you. "of course, милая." he says, and you don't have to turn around to know he has that zealous grin on his face.

you'd barely slept for the last three days, only being able to get in two or three hour power naps every now and then, and as a result your body and mind were both well and truly at their limits. if you thought your legs were tired while you were running, they were positively agonising going up the seven flights of stairs to where nikolai's helicopter was waiting. the man in question didn't say anything more as you ascended the stairs, perhaps because he could sense your fatigue, which you appreciated. when the two of you finally got to the roof, it took all of your self control not to collapse onto the flat ground, but you manage to hold yourself together just a little bit longer as you approach the helicopter.

"the flight will be a few hours, you should use the time to rest, милая." nik says, sliding open the door and stepping up onto the chopper. he offers you a hand, which you gladly accept, letting him pull you up alongside him. you're again reminded of the cuts in your hands, but elect to ignore it until you're not about to pass out.

"way ahead of you, i'm gonna sleep like a corpse after this." you reply, groaning as you flop down into one of the seats. the noise of the engines wouldn't be able to keep you awake, not what you'd been through on this mission.

he laughs again as he slides the door shut, sending your heart fluttering, but thankfully he's already sitting in the pilot's seat, so he can't see the way you fluster at the sound. you busy yourself with putting on a headset and strapping yourself in while he starts the engines.

you're up in the air in no time, and true to your word, you're out like a light almost immediately and stay that way for the duration of the flight. your dreams – fortunately or unfortunately – are completely occupied by a certain black–haired russian, whose first impression seems to have had a very strong effect on you. it's almost strange, how much you liked nikolai right out the gate, the two of you had just met and you could already feel yourself getting attached.

✹✹✹

your much needed slumber is interrupted by the man himself, his hand on your shoulder gently shaking you back to consciousness. you open your eyes, blinking away the residual sleep and your eyes water a little with the sting of how tired you still are.

“we’re here, sergeant, time to get up.” nik is quiet, crouched in front of you with his sunglasses perched on his nose. you groan, your sleep addled brain not quite back up and running yet, but you push yourself up from your slouched position

“five more minutes…” you mutter, freeing yourself from your seat and earning a low chuckle from nikolai. your stomach flips at the sound. you stretch as you stand, feeling the substantial ache in every limb, your eyes following nik as he places both headsets back on their hooks. he must’ve taken yours off while he was trying to wake you up, you note.

“you weren’t lying,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice even before he turns to look at you, “you really did sleep like a log, i'm a little impressed.” you return his grin as he slides the door open and gestures for you to jump down first.

“what can i say? your driving was just that smooth.” you comment, revelling in the feeling of the urzikstanian sun on your face.

he hops down after you and opens his mouth to respond, but before he can get any words out another voice cuts him off by calling out your name. the two of you turn in the direction of the voice, and you smile at the sight of farah walking towards you with alex in tow.

“glad to see you made it back in one piece,” she places a reassuring hand on your bicep, before bringing you into a brief hug.

“glad to be in one piece,” you reply, pulling back from farah and giving alex a quick hug too, “though i'd be lying if i said it wasn't painless.” you look back at nikolai with a pointed stare. farah lets out a small laugh at his bashful, if slightly guilty, grin and guides you with a hand on your shoulder to walk alongside her.

"we should get moving, we're still not safe here. you can fill me in on the details when we get back to base." she leads you to the truck you assume she and alex arrived in, moving around to lower the tailgate and unload the two motorcycles secured on the back.

"it's too dangerous to continue by air," alex explains, helping the commander move the bikes and closing the tailgate, "you two can take the truck, farah and i will scout ahead on the bikes."

you glance back at nik before giving alex an affirming nod, walking around to the passenger side and opening the door.

"you're driving, unless you want me to pass out behind the wheel." you call out to him, a playful smirk gracing your lips. he returns the look, raising his hands in mock surrender and making his way to the other door.

"your wish is my command," he teases, settling into the drivers seat and as you click your seatbelt, you see him give you a wink over his sunglasses, once again sending your head floating. you quickly face forward again as you set off, watching the others disappear ahead of you and pretending your heart isn't beating wildly out of control.

✹✹✹

the drive is peaceful, a very welcome change to the pure chaos you'd been dealing with lately. you gaze out the windows, watching as the sun slowly lowers in the sky, casting the scenery in a golden glow. occasionally, you spare a glance at nikolai's profile, and with the way a tiny smile tugs at his lips whenever you look over, you can tell he notices your eyes on him. you both choose not to acknowledge it, much to your relief; you might just go into cardiac arrest if he flirts with you any more.

almost an hour of blissful peace and quiet goes by before you hear any news.

"there's a convoy headed your direction," you and nik share a look as farah's voice sounds through the radio, "find some cover and wait for them to pass, we can't afford a confrontation with them."

"copy that, commander." nik replies. the quiet between you was slightly more tense now, as you both scan the environment for somewhere you can take cover. the sun hadn't dipped below the horizon yet, but it would soon and the last thing you wanted was to be caught off guard in the dark.

"over there," you call out, pointing a ways ahead at a place where the ground dips behind a large rock outcropping, "we can park behind those rocks."

nik pulls off the road, coming to a bumpy stop next to the twiggy foliage as close to the rocks as he could get, and cuts the engine. you unbuckle and hop out, jogging around the back of the truck and kicking dirt over the tyre tracks you'd left behind, breaking off a stick from a nearby bush to scratch away your boot-prints. chances are the convoy wouldn't be paying that much attention, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

after sufficiently covering the evidence of the truck, you make your way back to stand with nik as he updates farah on your location. he dropped the radio into the back of the truck and turned to you, opening his mouth to say something, but pausing once his eyes land on you.

“your hands, милая,” nikolai's gravelly yet soft voice brings you back to reality, as he takes your bloody fingers into his own. “you are still hurt.” he looks up to meet your eyes, and even through his sunglasses, you can see the worried look in his eyes.

“yeah, never got around to patching them up.” you mutter, your gaze falling to your wounds as the pain starts to set in. you'd been so tired, paired with the adrenaline from earlier, that you completely forgot about the cuts and glass still littering your hands. nik gently squeezes your wrists, bringing your attention back to him.

“please, allow me.” he's lost the usually teasing tone, and the intensity in his gaze has you fidgeting in his hold.

“oh– uh, sure…” you stutter, burning heat rising up your neck to the tips of your ears at the tiny smile your words evoke. he lets go of your hands, opening the door of the truck and rummaging through the compartments for a minute. shutting the door again, he returns to your side with a small med kit in his hand.

he gestures for you to sit, and you get as comfortable as the hard desert ground will allow as he crouches next to you. your non-dominant hand is significantly more cut up, so he starts with that one; gently pulling it closer to him and wiping away all the blood and dirt that had built up.

"извините," he looks up and meets your eye with the same bashful look from earlier as he picks the glass out of your hand, "for almost shooting you."

"is that an apology?" you wince slightly as he starts to wrap a bandage around your palm, and he nods. "well, you missed, so I'll let it slide." you smile, watching him patch you up in the orange light.

he laughs, grinning at you as he moves on to your other hand. "so gracious, милая."

"what is that?" you ask, and he looks up to you with a questioning expression. "mee-la-ya? you keep calling me that." you continue, wincing again at the feeling of the antiseptic in your cuts.

"милая. it means 'darling'." he smiles, and carries on patching up your had like he hadn't just caused your stomach to erupt into butterflies. for a moment, all you can do is stare at him, mouth agape and any words you could come up with dying on your tongue.

"you, uh– you call all of your almost-homicides that? or do i get special treatment?" you try to ignore the stutter in your voice that betrays your nerves, and you can only hope that nik can't feel how your hands are shaking.

"нет. just you, моя дорогая." he's still smiling as he meets your eye again, soft and kind, and you get the feeling he's not teasing you this time. he's finished cleaning up your cuts, but he still holds your hand in his, a gentle touch you can't say you're used to experiencing. you choose not to question him on the new phrase, you're not sure your poor heart could take the answer.

"i'm, uh– flattered…" the words come out as a whisper, and you're suddenly very aware of how close the two of you are to each other; you can feel the heat radiating from him, see the way his eyes watch you from behind his sunglasses, and if you leaned forward ever so slightly…

the moment is interrupted by the low rumbling of cars in the distance, steadily growing louder and louder as they approach your position. although it's unlikely they'll spot you in the dim light of the setting sun, you still hold your breath as you listen to them drive past your cover. the groaning of the engines rolls past without faltering, and you release a breath you didn't realise you were holding.

neither of you dare to move until they're safely past where you're hiding. nik is first to break the silence, as you pull yourself up to mirror how he's crouching.

"looks like…" his words fade into white noise as you spot a shadowed figure over his shoulder, standing unmoving next to a motorcycle at the side of the road.

a moment passes, and at first you thought it might be alex, or farah, but you realise that they're both a couple miles up the road from where you are. but then your eye catches the orange glint of the sun reflecting off something in the figures raised arm, pointing directly at nikolai's back–

"nik!" you react on impulse, shouting his name as you shove him to land on his back with you over him, pulling your gun from its holster with one hand and holding yourself up with the other. your finger squeezes the trigger without hesitation, a bullet landing firmly in your target's chest.

their body makes a dull thud when it hits the ground. you look down, finding nik already looking up at you with a sufficiently shocked expression.

"бляаты…" he mutters, twisting his neck to look at the body a few metres away, before looking back up at you. "you saved my life,"

"let's call it even, then." you smile, shifting to get off of him, but he stops you with a hand on your waist before you can get too far. you freeze, his touch igniting sparks under your skin despite the layers separating you.

"how about i call you my guardian angel instead?" he utters, returning your smile with a suave one of his own. he lifts his sunglasses with his other hand, hooking them into the collar of your shirt and using them to gently tug you down closer to him.

"wha… y-you– i don't– uh–" you sputter, jumping away from him and falling backwards onto the dusty ground in your haste to get away. your brain feels like it's short circuiting as you cover your burning face with your hands, an embarrassed whine leaving your throat.

"why are you covering your face?" nik chuckles and you hear him shuffle slightly closer. you're glad you can't see the smug face you're sure he's making at you.

"...you fluster me." you mumble through your fingers. part of you hopes he didn't hear you, but the way he pulls your hands away from your face makes it clear that he did. his grip is featherlight, as if he were afraid you'd shatter if he was too rough. you will yourself to meet his eyes again, seeing him looking at you with such an intensity it has you wanting to cover your face again.

"you fluster me more, милая," he utters, his face so close to yours you can feel his breath on your face. you're almost worried you might burst into flames with how hot your face is.

"i think you're just saying that to make me feel better…" you mumble, your eyes involuntarily darting to his lips, inches from your own, and back up to his dark eyes.

"maybe," one of his hands comes up to your face, his thumb gently your cheek as you stare him down. "come, люблю, we should let the commander know we're okay." he stands, tugging your wrist to bring you up with him and retrieving the radio from the back of the truck.

he talks to farah while you stay by the truck, your eyes following his form as he inspects the man you shot; and you can't help the way your pulse skyrockets as you wonder, what have you gotten yourself into?

#nikolai x reader #nikolai cod x reader #nikolai call of duty #nikolai cod #call of duty #cod mw19 #mw2 x reader #cod x reader #141 x reader #cod nikolai #nikolai mw19 #nikolai my beloved #roosterr writes

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thecosmicsleep · 1 year

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happy retribution

#fallen hero: rebirth #fallen hero: retribution #sidestep #ch: auburn miranda mora #mine art #i was gonna put more effort into this but nah #also i was messing with colors in shading to get more interesting art #i think it worked? i dunno

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enm-enthusiast · 7 months

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The Exhibitionists Club Ch. 4 - Jack Part 2

Last chapter we saw Jack witness the preliminary wrestling match between his colleagues Daniel and Roderick, in which Daniel surprisingly came out the victor, but now before both of their cocks were put on display in front of the entire crowd. Now, Jack has to face his own boss, Henry in a strip wrestling match, can he emerge victorious and get through his initiation unscathed? Or will he end up a naked loser?...

Jack

I swallowed the growing pit in my throat as I followed Henry up on the stage, and as I did I took the chance to size my boss up. He wasn’t as tall as me, standing at 5’10 compared to my 6’2 but he was bulkier, his thighs and arm muscles far exceeded my own and from the stories I had heard around the office he knew how to use them. His casual clothes couldn’t hide his rather impressive glutes, either, and I couldn’t help but admire his toned and meaty globes attached to his backside. His graying dirty blonde hair was cut short, and had recently shaved his neat, handsome face, his piercing hazel eyes turned to look at me and flash a dazzling, knowing wink and a smile before taking the final steps up on stage.

I followed him up, the bright lights flooding my vision and making me temporarily squint as my eyes adjusted from the darkness of the crowd. Ian greeted us as he did Daniel and Rod, we introduced ourselves to him, afterwards he turned back to the crowd and said “There you have it gents, our next two volunteers! And may I say what hunks, am I right?” He said.

Many from the crowd voiced their agreement and I thought I heard one even say: “Tear his clothes off, blondie!” and I felt my face flush from heat as I knew who they were referring to.

“Let’s wait and see who rips off whose clothes first, shall we? Now, to repeat, there is no biting, kicking, or low blows to sensitive areas, either of you get caught doing this by me or security and we will remove you from the premises, right?” He said, matter of fact. Both me and Henry nodded our heads and Ian waved us down to the ring and we separated to take opposing spots with me on the left and Henry on the right.

“And remember! First one to lose all his clothes will lose the match, and you can either keep or return the loser's underwear, and with that, let’s get this show on the road!” Ian finished and me and Henry both took our socks and shoes off, taking our first careful steps inside the oil-slicked ring.

I was wearing casual navy blue shorts, a red shirt, and a red and black jockstrap underneath it all…I told myself that my opponent would be someone I could handle enough that I wouldn’t lose more than my shirt. True enough, if anyone else BUT Henry had been chosen to wrestle me my victory was guaranteed, no doubt it's why he's my opponent.

Henry himself was wearing black cargo shorts and a black tank top, showing off his muscled arms which threatened to put me in a hold I’d never escape from if he managed it. We began sizing each other up in the precious few seconds we had before Ian started his countdown to begin. My best chance was to evade being grappled by his arms and focus on his legs which would slow him down. I’d go for his tank top first, the straps were an easy target that wouldn’t be an issue for me to simply rip off of him.

“1!” Ian shouted, his countdown had begun.

I spread my legs open and crouched, storing energy in my legs in case I got the opportunity to pounce and wrap my legs around him.

“2!”

Henry moved his arms up in a defensive position, which made me think he was either preparing for a straight up attack or was feinting and trying to catch me off-guard.

“3!”

The match had begun, and true enough he was feinting, because I didn’t move first, instead he lunged at me like lightning after the first few seconds had passed. My eyes widened and I moved to sidestep him but he reached his arm out which managed to grab right onto my left hand and he pulled me along with him.

I pried my hand from his grasp and moved before he could, he was against the edge of the ring and so I wrapped my legs around his waist and hooked my arms underneath his and pulled upwards. Within the first minute I managed to get him firmly pinned.

“Fuck…your quicker than I thought” Henry said, his voice hoarse from the breath being knocked out of him.

“Maybe you're just getting slow, old man,” I said, my smile widening. I noticed my crotch was pressed into his lower back, right against his firm ass. As soon as I realized, I could feel my cock start to respond and I cursed myself silently as the more I restrained Henry the more his ass pressed upwards onto my crotch.

My bulge was growing as I could feel his glutes rubbing up against me, despite the layers of fabric in between. Henry tried to free an arm and I responded by lifting Henry up further which as soon as I did it, I knew it was a mistake.

I landed his backside right in the middle of my crotch, my shaft was even rising in a way that nestled itself between his cheeks and at the contact I couldn’t help but bite my lip and said “Fucckkkk” under my breath.

Henry, damn him, heard me and even from this angle I saw a smile split his face. “What’s the matter, tough guy? Is all this muscle too much for you? Or are you just happy to see me” He said and I could tell he had noticed something poking at his ass and my expression of arousal had only confirmed his suspicions.

I didn’t answer, but even while restrained he could still slightly move and so he took it upon himself to sway his ass from side to side, effectively grinding his ass against my quickly growing cock.

I sucked in a breath as the contact only made my cock grow to full mast inside my shorts and jockstrap. I felt my head swirl with lust as I wanted to completely tear off Henry’s clothes and bend him over and fuck him senseless but I had to focus, I had to keep him pinned so I could rip off his tank top. I managed to clear my head at least for a moment so I had to act fast because as soon as one of his arms was free it would only be a few seconds before he broke away completely.

As Henry continued grinding against me, I counted down internally and as soon as I hit 5 I once again lifted Henry up, bending his back and while he was distracted I let go of his left arm and immediately grabbed ahold of the left strap of his tank top and Henry was beginning to realize what I was doing.

I tightened my grip, released my legs around his waist, and whilst pushing my legs away while still holding onto his left strap…

RIIIIIIPPPPPP

I lunged away but half his tank top came with me, the rest was in shreds around him and was now stripped to his waist, and the crowd cheered as I lifted up the garment in a momentary victory and threw it into the crowd. Henry turned to face me, now bare-chested and as I always suspected was quite hairy but still very well built and stocky. His torso was already beginning to glisten from the oil, because as soon as I had jumped away he had landed on the ground, and it only accentuated his large male pecs which rippled with muscle as he instinctively flexed them as he ripped away the remaining shreds of his shirt.

The movement stirred something in me, his large dominating figure awakened something primal, and I felt an equal urge to both break and bend his ass over for me…and for him to utterly pound me into submission. My cock twitched in response as it continued to throb, still imprisoned within my jockstrap.

“I see you haven’t lost your edge, it’s too bad though…playtime’s over” Henry said, his eyes locked onto mine and the look in them sent a tingle down my spine, and a chilling dread in the pit of my stomach. His expression wasn’t one of rage or amusement like it was before, no, his face was stone-cold and determined, and it both frightened and turned me on at the same time.

He readied himself, arms up in defense and I matched his movements in quick succession. We then circled one another as we slowly traversed the floor of the ring on our knees, each waiting for a sign of weakness, and it wasn’t until someone in the crowd nearby coughed that Henry made his move.

He lunged forward and so did I, and our palms slammed into each other, the force of which had me slide backwards a few feet. This didn’t deter me as I knew my next target was his shorts, and I briefly glanced down at them until my eyes locked right onto his crotch…

He had a full on bulge going on, and judging from the size of the tent he was pitching down there, the old man had nothing to be ashamed of unlike poor Rod.

I had to force myself to look away and locked eyes on Henry’s again, who noticed where my eyes had gone but his expression hadn’t changed, he still looked like he was equally ready to end me as much as strip me naked.

Our arms were locked in a struggle, and I was holding my own for the moment but I could already feel the strain on my arms weakening my resistance against the slow push of his arms against mine. I tried to push back in a vain attempt to knock him off his balance and I did succeed in sliding him back a bit, however Henry just smiled, a cold, wicked smile and said “it’s cute how you think this is my full strength, time to show you how it’s done”.

He breathed in deeply and his arm muscles rippled and he pushed with much more force this time, and my arms, already strained, couldn't keep up and I lost my grip. Henry seized the advantage and lunged forward and I was too slow to react to try and evade him. With one arm he bound mine behind my back and slammed me down on the ground with my arms pinned underneath me. He used his right arm to hold my torso in place while his legs held down my own.

He didn’t waste any time gloating or taunting, no he went straight for my throat with his free left hand and gripped the collar of my shirt tightly in his fist. He leaned down towards my ear and without warning he softly licked my earlobe which, despite myself I whimpered and felt my body tingle as he did so. My face flooded with heat as he said “you have no idea how bad you're gonna get it, this is just the start” and with a growl in his throat he tightened his grip on my shirt…and pulled.

RIPPPPP

He completely tore off my shirt, leaving my furry but stocky and well-built chest exposed. The crowd was loving it, they watched Henry completely turn the tables on me and had me firmly pinned, there wasn’t anything I could do to escape unless he wanted me to. Suddenly, he gave both my nipples a twist which made me suddenly gasp and say “Ahhh…fuckkk” I said.

My cock throbbed inside my shorts and Henry noticed the tent in my pants suddenly lurch upward. His grin grew even wider now, and he twisted my nipples again, and again. I had to bite my lip to keep myself from moaning, instead I put every ounce of energy into looking for an opportunity to escape. However, my hopes were in vain as he twisted my nipples one last time, and harder too, I couldn’t help but let out a soft “Mmmmm”

While I was distracted, Henry suddenly stepped off me and before I could react he flipped me over onto my stomach and quickly put down my flailing legs and held my arms down with his right. Henry didn’t waste any time in giving my ass a quick slip before saying “time to lose the shorts” he said out loud.

Some in the crowd had heard him and they began to chant the words “lose the shorts!” “lose the shorts!” “lose the shorts!” they said, each time more voices joined in. I couldn’t tell if our colleagues had joined in or not but soon enough their voices chanted in near unison for Henry to divest me of another piece of clothing.

After a few moments, Henry bowed to their wishes, because he kept my legs pinned down but used both of his arms and reached for the sides of my shorts. The soft contact of his hands against my bare skin at first made me gasp and my cock twitch slightly as it was pressed against the floor. He slowly started to lower my shorts, and I could feel the cold air against my lower half as he did so and my cheeks flooded with shame as I felt the top of my ass being exposed.

“Wow! We got another jockstrap here!”

“What a pale butt, he needs to tan more”

“Smack his bare ass!”

As he exposed the top half of my bare butt, Henry did just that and I felt his hand smack against me, the sting made my eyes water a bit and strangely my cock throbbed even harder inside the pouch of my jockstrap. After that, however, Henry lifted himself off me and quickly slid my shorts down and off of my legs, throwing them into the crowd which left me in nothing but my jock, and people quickly noticed my bulge as I flipped upwards to face him.

Before Henry could prepare another attack, I recklessly tackled him to the ground, and the crowd lost it as we each rolled over, our bodies becoming ever more slick with sweat and oil as they collided with both the floor and each other. Henry was caught off guard and I used it to my advantage as we wrestled across the ring, and despite my frantic, energetic attempts to reach them his powerful arms constantly blocked any attempt at grabbing for his shorts.

At one point he wrapped his arms around my stomach and lifted me upwards, holding my body against him, and this time, as I did at the start of our match, this time I could feel his bulge’s warmth against my ass and Henry growled in his throat as he thrust his hips upward, sliding his crotch against my exposed ass cheeks.

The red in my face returned as it felt so good to feel the warmth of his bulge thrusting against me and that strange desire to submit to him returned. I briefly imagined myself in his office, this time both of us naked and me bent over his desk, with him pounding away at me like the alpha male he was that was claiming what was his. My desire to strip away his shorts now intermingled with my lust for my own boss, which only made me want to slap myself for acting like an animal when I had a match to win.

I had to break away, but suddenly Henry’s hand reached underneath me, grazing my bare ass cheeks but reaching past to grab my aching cock through the jockstrap’s pouch and I audibly whimpered this time. Henry’s voice whispered in my ear “who knew that the big, tough, new guy Jack was secretly a slut that’s practically begging to take my cock” he said, chuckling softly and I felt my face flood with shame. He knew this was turning me on like hell, and had intuitively guessed at my lust for him. Even before today I caught a few glimpses now and then of his features, checking him out every time he flexed his muscles or bent over it would always catch my eye. But today was the first time I had ever felt anything so intense, especially with my growing desire to let him fuck my brains out, and the fact that he knew was just so embarrassing as I had always cultivated the ideal image of professionalism for myself, and with each time he massaged my bulge it made both my remaining dignity and self-control slip away ever further.

He continued to massage my boner through my jockstrap, and I knew that if I didn’t escape soon I might lose my only remaining piece of clothing or worse…shoot my load in front of everybody here. I couldn’t let that happen so with all my strength I pulled his left arm muscle which made Henry cry out in pain and I seized my chance to break free from his grip.

I turned around and lunged straight for his shorts, and I managed to grab a hold of his sides but the oil made my grip loose, which made it easy for him to quickly side step me. I wasn’t letting him off easy, so I followed and tumbled with him, his arms again kept trying to hold mine down and overpower me, but I adopted a strategy of swatting his hands away whenever he tried, and my legs were just as powerful as his, indeed mine had the edge in terms of energy and training as his leg strength gave out way faster than mine did.

His deeply-tanned torso was shining thanks to the oil, which some people continue to pour more into the ring to keep things from drying out. My own torso, much paler than Henry's, was glistening with sweat and oil, which made our grips and grabs flimsier and our bodies easily slid along anothers.

The crowd was enraptured not only by our determination but also the sexually charged tension between us. Henry had sensed my lust but I was beginning to sense something else from him too, it was one thing to tease and taunt your opponent, however it was another to grab his hard-on and thrust your bulge in between his bare ass cheeks.

My suspicions were confirmed when I made the mistake of trying to use the floor to slide away from his lunge and latched himself onto my shoulders, he quickly climbed over my body and used his own full body weight to hold me down on the ground, pinned beneath him. I felt it again as he did so, however, the same euphoric warmth of his bulge had nestled itself right along my ass crack. Because of this, I had a rough idea of how big he was and if I was right…he had at least 7 inches on him which I knew could utterly destroy me if he ever did pound me into submission like my cock was begging me to do.

Just then, however, I felt him thrust once, twice, three times, until he was outright humping me. I bit my lip once again and felt my face turn a crimson red as Henry utterly humiliated me by asserting his dominance and manhandling me as if I were nothing. That strange, suppressed desire was starting to take hold of me again, and it took all of my self-control to keep myself from begging him to fuck me right there and then.

I knew I was defeated, however, there was no escape this time and all he needed to do was snap the waistband of my jockstrap and it would be over. It made my desire to submit all the stronger but I held onto my defiance even as my cock was leaking precum inside the pouch of my jockstrap.

Henry showed no signs of stopping, in fact his slow thrusts turned deeper, faster, more full of energy as he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and his voice in my ear said “Saturday, 9:00 o’clock at night, my office, don’t be late” he said before kissing the side of my face and licking my earlobe once again which sent shivers down my spine, before retreating.

In my confusion I almost didn’t register him suddenly wrapping his hands around the sides of my jock, and I sank my head in defeat as I felt the fabric give way with a simple snap and I laid there as Henry stood up and raised his arms in victory. The crowd cheered, but some expressed their desire to see me stand up with him, including, I noticed, our colleagues who were standing right beside the edge of the ring now. I realized there was no point in trying to hide, but thankfully Henry extended a hand to me and helped lift me up onto my feet.

“Jesus! That thing is thick!”

“Wow, Can you believe he’s already leaking?”

“Fuck, I’d ride him till he shot!”

Were all shouts from guys in the crowd I could make out coherently, but most of them drooled at the sight of my fully hard, 5-inch long and thick cock. My pale face was beet red, and I sheepishly smiled and chuckled at the guys from the office who all sported wide, shit-eating grins and suffered from bouts of laughter.

Suddenly, Ian tapped on his mic and said “Well well, looks like our winner is Henry Knight, and sorry Jack Whittle, guess you can’t keep your underwear, however, before you leave we keep spare clothes for those who lose them, but feel free to stay as bare as you want,” he said and gave me a wink that only made me turn my head away in embarrassment.

“Alright folks, let’s get at least two more rounds here, come on, volunteers” Ian said as me and Henry stepped out of the ring, and the guys greeted us with, as I expected, laughter and teasing. I used my hands to cover myself until my boner went down though none of the guys let me off the hook for it.

“Alright fellas, a bet’s a bet, time to pay up” Henry said, and held out his hand, waiting.

The guys all lost their grins immediately and started pulling out their wallets. “Um, what’s going on?” I asked, and Henry looked at me, still bare-chested, and smiled and said “Oh right, well the guys here bet me you wouldn’t even be able to get a single piece of clothing off, but I had faith you’d put up a fight, and trust me…you did” he said as he gladly accepted cash from each of our colleagues, all except for Daniel who stood off to the side, seems he hadn't taken the bet.

I almost couldn’t believe my ears, my mouth hung open, and I was about to lose my shit but suddenly I remembered the second part of my initiation bet…

“So….I lost, and I said I’d do one favor for you guys if I did, so…what is it?” I said.

Henry glanced at the guys, whose knowing smiles returned but they said nothing. Henry spoke up and said “come into work tomorrow and find out” he said, winking and that’s all he would say about it for the rest of the night. We decided to stay and watch the other two matches, one was a Latino man that looked like he was a professional marathon runner, the other was a young blonde that didn’t stand a chance and got stripped fully naked within 5 minutes. The second match was a lot closer, it was between that one hottie I saw before, Sebastian, and some other student I had seen on campus, some red-haired jock that talked a lot of shit. Sebastian managed to put him in his place, stripping his arrogant opponent naked but not before he lost his own shirt and pants. Ian called it a night after that, I made sure to grab a change of clothes from security, which were unfortunately too small but…it was better than walking out naked.

"See you at work tomorrow, sexy" Henry whispered in my ear as he walked by and towards the main doors. I couldn't help but shiver in pleasure as he did so, and despite myself...I couldn't wait for Saturday night, and judging by the growing bulge in my new pants...my cock agreed.

Next day at work

I arrived at my usual time, and everything seemed normal at first until I had put my change of clothes inside my locker and walked out into the main office to see all the guys standing there, including Henry, waiting for me.

“Uh…what’s up guys?” I asked, nervously.

Henry stepped up and said “Well, you wanted to know what your forfeit was for losing the match, and we decided that if you lost…you have to stay naked at the office for a whole week” he said, and some of the guys snickered.

My eyes widened and I could feel my cheeks blooming with heat as I panicked and said “What?! I’d never have agreed to-t-to this if I’d known this was my forfeit!” I said, my face now crimson red.

“That’s the point, you wouldn’t have, so we had to keep it vague, but you knew that we could have demanded anything when you agreed to the terms, it’s not our fault you failed to consider this possibility, so step up and take your punishment. Strip,” Henry said, that cold and serious look on his face again.

I hesitated, I began to think of what Henry had said last night right before he stripped my jockstrap away, and despite how mad and humiliated I felt…I already knew I was going to do exactly what he told me, and my cock began to rise at the thought of what he planned for me. I knew that there was no point in arguing, if I didn’t, they would strip me themselves, so…I began to remove my clothes.

The guys watched me like vultures as I stripped, first came my socks and shoes, which I left in front of me, then came my shirt which I slowly unbuttoned and I let fall onto the floor, next came my pants which quickly joined my shirt. That left me in nothing but my boxer briefs, and the guys all nodded their approval, including Henry, who watched me ravenously as I slowly pulled off my last piece of clothing and left them in a pile with my other clothes, leaving me totally naked.

Daniel, with a nod from Henry came over and quickly gathered up my clothes and walked off, which left me no choice but to stay naked. I used my hands to cover up and I hung my head in shame as I asked “Do I have to leave the office naked every night for the rest of the week?”

“No, you can get dressed in your change of clothes once you leave work every night, but not before then, oh and don’t worry I’ve changed the schedule, you're on office duty for the next week, so you better get busy naked boy” Henry said, winking at me before walking off.

The guys then walked over and started chatting with me, a bunch of them said they thought I had balls of steel to go up against the boss like that, while others asked if they could have another “look” but I told them to fuck off which thankfully they did. Through all of it, my hands covered what was left of my modesty and dignity. I thought I had found a way to make my initiation as least humiliating as possible…instead I managed to make it possibly the most any guy has ever had to endure.

As I walked past the guys who began to resume their work duties, I felt a stray hand slap my bare ass cheek as I walked by. I glared at them but they only grinned at me in return. They all talked among themselves and as I made my way to the reception desk, where the main desk worker was posted during the day, I thought again of what Henry said but also of how I had to stay naked for the entire week.

If they caught me trying to wear clothes at all they’d just strip me naked again, or worse punish me for disobeying…no, they were right, it was my idea and I agreed to their terms, better I just suck it up and deal with it…

What the guys didn’t know, or see, except maybe Henry, was that as I stripped away my underwear and stood naked in front of them, my cock rose to full mast and still hadn’t gone down. Thankfully I was able to tuck it between my legs and used my hands to cover it, though it made walking awkward. Still, the combination of confusion, embarrassment, and arousal only made things so unclear. One thing remained constant, however, and that was that no matter what, I was going to be in Henry’s office, at 9 o'clock ...on the dot.

End of Chapter.

Author’s Note:

Thank you guys for reading another chapter of this series! I know it’s been a while since my last post but don’t worry I haven’t forgotten you, I’m unsure which character to focus on next, please feel free to suggest any of the ones I’ve introduced so far or someone you’ve been wanting to see from the main cast list! Until next time, I’m always here and I hope you enjoyed ;)

These are my two main choices for the next character chapter, but again feel free to suggest otherwise!

Time for a blast from the past, either:

1.) Professor Ethan from The Professor's Anatomy.

2.) Thomas from Thomas' Misadventures

#enm #enm stripped humiliation #cmnm #gay #stripped #embarassing #enm story

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