[BTS] Writing Overgrowth

Once upon a time, there was a magician who created a series of beautiful images of a red-clad skeleton and a flower-infested human. At that time, these artworks had no name, but that’s okay, because it wasn’t time for them to be named yet. There is a time for everything, and when the name of these artworks is finally given, that is when the power of these artworks is also birthed into the world.  

Now, this magician had a bit of a friendship of a tiny little tumblr hobo who was quite tag-happy, because the hobo always thought that writing comments on posts was a bit too much for them, and so just went nuts in the tags. This is because the hobo has the self-confidence of an apple and an anxiety problem thrice their size

The magician-artist, or artist-magician, whichever, because everyone knows art is witchcraft, liked the tags, and made another piece that they more of less tagged ‘how do you like this one Leviticus hmmm’.  

And the hobo of course, loved it and vibrated and spontaneously combusted. And then reassembled and breathed in life again because the universe wasn’t done with them yet.  

The hobo responded, still via tags, ‘JUST YOU WAIT I’M GONNA WRITE FIC OF THIS’.  

And thus was born Baby’s Breath, or as everyone knows it, Overgrowth. 

Now notice that this segment didn’t start with ‘in the beginning’, but ‘once upon a time’, and that’s because that wasn’t the beginning of the beginning, but the beginning of something that’s already in the middle of the story. Here is how it really begins.

In the beginning, Neskybo, darling talented artist, started drawing Undertale characters with flowers. Then they plagued Sanei with these images, and they both had a good time swapping ideas and planting flowers on places where flowers should not be planted, which in this case is poor characters who did nothing wrong.

Sanei was inspired and decided to use this idea on the Underfell iterations instead of the Undertale versions. They made a lot of drawings and posted them on the-humerus-skeleton, which I was following. And I loved these images. I loved the idea of flowers infesting bodies to represent something (I saw it first on Dark Woods Circus, it was symbolic of wounds and I’ve fallen in love since), and in one artwork, Sanei said that a flower would appear every time Frisk reset, and it would get to a point where their body could no longer take it and they’d become a patch of flowers.

And I loved that. It was feelsy, it was unique, it was great. The Undertale fandom was still fairly small at this point, ( and so there wasn’t a lot of noise coming in on my end, which I may have been happy about, because when a fandom gets too big, oftentimes, it becomes cancerous. I didn’t want this thing to be ruined for me, because I thought it was just so unique.) and this idea, this au didn’t have a name yet. 

I got tag-happy with a lot of Sanei’s posts, and that sort of led to our friendship. A while later, they announced it would be named ‘Flowerfell’, because it’s flower infestations in Underfell. In one artwork, which I think was of Sans and Frisk at the waterfall, Sanei tagged and teased me if I loved this one, because we both knew we were filthy sansfrisk shippers (and again, the fandom was still growing, and the only shippers around were either the booming papyton or the still-emerging soriel shippers) and we were just happy to stew in our own hell. 

I threatened back that I was going to write a fic for them and they didn’t think I was serious. I was.

I started writing at around late December and then I got sick for a little while and had to stop, and then resumed. I spent majority of New Year’s Eve finishing up, and I was planning on staying up until midnight anyway so it was a good way of burning time. I wrote until eleven and then went out and chilled with my dogs. 

And let me tell you, I hated what I wrote.

 Mostly because I knew what I wanted, but it was such a journey to get there (to be fair, that’s what I feel about most things I write, but I hated Baby’s Breath so much). I wanted to write about Frisk slowly getting infected with flowers but still staying determined to get up. At that time, I didn’t have a beginning or an end planned, but I had a concept.

Majority of Overgrowth was influenced by Sanei’s art because I wanted to stick to the source material as much as possible. A while before I wrote it, Sanei posted a piece of Toriel and Frisk saying goodbye to each other by the ruins, and so that became my beginning. Before that piece was posted, Overgrowth was supposed to start directly with Sans and Frisk. Every part of the fic was influenced by what photo was out at the time of writing.

What was out (that I remember, I might have forgotten a few) was Frisk and Toriel, Frisk and Sans by waterfall, the Frisk and Sans comic with the Novo Amor lyrics and Frisk wearing Sans’ jacket.

That constructed the initial phase of Overgrowth. Frisk and Toriel and Flowey in the Ruins, the saying goodbye, Frisk and Flowey and Sans meeting, eventually becoming friends, and the waterfall scenes. And then I realized, wait, this is an AU. 

I sort of have a personal rule for AUs. 

It’s an alternate universe. And if it’s drastically changed, like Flowerfell is, then there are a few things that the audience isn’t going to get, so you have to set a bit of a ground for them. Not make it a wholly new thing, but let them have one foot on the original and one foot on the AU. You have to reintroduce them to these iterations, and part of introducing a character is giving them something to latch onto. Giving them a reason to get attached and care about that character.  

The easy part about writing fanfiction, see, is that you don’t have to build a relationship between your readers and the characters, because most of the time, it’s already there. In writing an AU, you have to partially do that, because while the readers already have sympathy for this character, there’s a bit of a change. Moreso if it’s a personality change. You have to give them a reason why they should like this AU; why they should like this iteration. 

Examples I can give you are, within the Undertale fandom, Underfell. A bunch of people don’t like Underfell because it defeats the purpose of the game. It twists exactly what makes the game unique, which is making the characters actually nice and unwilling to hurt the player, and it just turns them into a whole lot of edge and blood, which can…eh, rub people the wrong way. Underfell was also largely images (at the time I joined fandom anyway, and I joined early) and didn’t have that much of a story, so maybe that added to it. 

Underfell is a personality change, and you have to give the readers a reason why they should like it. (I don’t really count FF as a part of the Underfell’verse, because I don’t understand the Underfell’verse. I have a reason for why Flowerfell is the way it is – the whole of which will be explored in Last Reset and is not for me to say, but Overgrowth has its own way of standing on its feet in regards to causation.)

 Another example is, if you’re the Gravity Falls fandom, the Reverse Falls’verse. This is another personality change. Why do people like it so much? The fanart? Damn straight – maybe, really, I don’t know, there’s not a lot of good Reverse Falls fanfics out there, okay? But it’s a bit cool to see these two nerdy twins become ruthless badass, and it’s hilarious to see a psychopathic demon practically become a weepier and triangler version of Good Omen’s Aziraphale. Also, you know what, you should have made Will Cipher an angel. That would have been cool too. 

But Reverse Falls easily could have become GF’s Underfell, and people could have hated it, but they didn’t, because there are writers out there who can actually give us a reason to like this AU. There are fanfics that aren’t just edge and edge and oooohhh I’m so evil for no damn reason other than I’m evil, but actually give us substance. And I’m not saying feelsy substance, okay, I’m talking the perfect balance between smart and snark and calm and cool. There are fics that make these characters interesting, and sometimes that’s enough to give people a reason to invest themselves in characters.  

And now, another example, because I absolutely LOVE this AU, but if you have not read a lick of Good Omens, then I suggest you close this window, go find a copy of Good Omens and read that book, and do not come back to this after you have read it, okay? Because damn, you are missing out, and you will not be able to feel the magic of this AU if you read this without being in the fandom. 

Or just. Skip this section, okay. 

I’ll tell you where to read when I’m over. 

SKIP IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE GOOD OMENS FANDOM.

Are we ready? Drumrolls please, since this AU deserves it, because oh my god. The one and the only, The Sacred and The Profane, which I am very sure is inspired by that one painting. Now, Sacred and Profane holds a very dear place in my heart, and I have passed plates in school based on this and I have teared up at the explanations (especially for the abstract ones) and my god, people do not know what this piece has put me through. But basically, Sacred and Profane is a roleswap. And in the Good Omens universe, roles are very, very vital to one’s personality, so swapping them is very – it tips a lot of scales, and it’s dangerous for everyone’s health.

So here we have Aziraphale, who is the epitome of good, but is just enough of a bastard to be worth liking, and Crowley, who is – well, he’s not bad. He’s hella good at his job and is hella smart. And then, the roles are swapped. Crowley who is hella good at his job and is hella smart is an angel, who should be the epitome of good. And Aziraphale, who is the epitome of good is a demon, who should be, well, bad.  

And it’s batshit. 

It’s so bad it’s good, like oh wow. 

Here we have this twisted, bastardized version of Aziraphale who was at the right place, at the right time, but thought the wrong thought. And here we have this ‘could have been’ version of Crowley who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, but thought the right thought. They are very different from the characters we knew but they still retain characteristics of them so that we can recognize them for who they are, but my point here is, personality change.  

But despite that personality change, the author still gives us a reason to care for them, and oh wow are they good at it. Here we have Zirah, who thought one thought that wasn’t even really that bad? Like holy shit? And they got kicked out of heaven, and that sort of drove them off the edge, and so they became super good at their job (with a dash of insanity) because what if, if they do their job this time, what if they can be forgiven? 

And here’s Caphriel, who was too good at following orders and staying in the right lanes that they didn’t hang with the wrong crowd and thus got to keep angelic status and was miserable for it. 

And you know what? It works. Because number one, here are characters we care about, put in situations where they are absolutely suffering. Number two, they are suffering things people can relate to. I mean, have you ever thought a wrong thing at a moment, and it’s not even really big, but you get rejected or judged or get put in horrible situations for it? Have you ever been too good at doing what you’re supposed to do that you are left wondering what’s out there, if you just stepped out of the line and actually did what was of interest to you?    

Listen, if they just swapped the characters’ roles but still made them the same, it’d be fun, but I wouldn’t be attached to it, because it’s just like reading another GO fanfic. And if they swapped and changed it but didn’t make it interesting enough and didn’t give me a reason to like the characters, I wouldn’t like it. But they did, and wow.

I just love this AU so much, okay. Even though I am absolutely destroyed. It has been such a long time, but wow. 

ANYWAY, END. NON-GOOD-OMENS FANS CAN READ NOW.     

Basically, if it’s an AU, you gotta give people a reason to care about your characters. You gotta give people a reason to keep reading your story. You have to give them a reason to care when something bad happens. And how do you do that?

Build-up.  

 Well, solely not build-up, there’s a lot of other factors involved, but in Overgrowth’s case, it was build-up. 

See, if I let you read the original of Baby’s Breath, where it’s just Sans befriending Frisk on a whim that didn’t make sense and then they went to Asgore and things happened, you would not give a shit. Why? Because who cares happens to these two, there was nothing between them other than an unexplained compulsion on Sans’ part to befriend a human he should be killing. 

I put a lot of stock on causation, and so I had to make build-up. Remember that I hint on Overgrowth that the monsters were not always dark and bloodthirsty. Once upon a time, they were just like their counterparts in Undertale, but then Chara and Asriel died, and you know what happens when people get desperate enough. Hell, in Undertale, they already killed six children. They were just lucky that the citizens weren’t batshit enough, but in real life, in most cases, the public panics faster than the government does, and that’s what happened in Flowerfell’verse.

 Everyone knew what to do to get out of there. They just had to do it.  

And it was a painful transition, because monsters are made of mercy and compassion, so they had to be strict about it. They could not afford to sacrifice the lives of many for the sympathy of one. 

I had to give Sans – someone whose brother has a position in the Royal Guard, someone who has once killed humans himself (I hinted on that, in case you missed it), someone who is depressed and uncaring – a reason to help this human. Six humans have fallen into the Underground before. What made Frisk different, and what made it worth it for him to drop everything and fight for this child? 

Frisk is the living personification of Kindness, possibly more than the soul of kindness themselves. And maybe you can get attached to someone who is kind to you one time, but Sans has been hardened by years of apathy, abuse and grief, so I had to repeat and repeat and repeat their meetings until they both got attached to each other, social-aggregate-like. You tend to form bonds with someone you spend a lot of time with, even if you don’t really talk all that much. Your mind just sort of latches on to them – I don’t know what that’s called in psychology or anything, I just write what I experience in real life. One of my closest friends today is someone I have next to nothing in common with, but we got close because we spent an entire semester in each other’s company. 

I had to make Frisk be kind to Sans (which wasn’t hard), and Sans, who has not recently experienced kindness is taken aback by this, and this is what makes Frisk special from the rest of the humans. So there’s his reason, there’s the nail. I have to drive it in. What’s the easiest way to drive things in? Guilt, and the feeling that you owe someone something. Like seriously, do you know how many people you can manipulate with that?

At first, of course, as Sans is a paranoid little munchkin, he does not trust Frisk and even kills them. Several times, he leads them to their death, because that’s what a good monster is supposed to do. But Frisk perseveres in befriending him, and so it gnaws at him, it makes him guilty, and Frisk keeps on going at it, until Sans finally breaks.

The entire Snowdin part was just exhausting to write, because it’s stuck in one area and the story also isn’t progressing since Frisk isn’t progressing and it got taxing to write. I celebrated when I finally got to Waterfall.

Sanei had a lot of Waterfall artwork, so I was able to write for Waterfall fairly easy. I also had to remember that being in the snow and then suddenly being in dry area and then dipped in cold water could make you sick, and there’s no medicine that Frisk could access in the Underground and the flowers were already sapping their body, so I got Frisk killed there because I was being too logical. And then, since I had to turn Frisk into a patch of flowers, as I had seen in Sanei’s artwork, I had to make them die again and again and again so they would get covered.  

I was a bit confused as to how to deal with Muffet and Mettaton, because Sanei didn’t have anything on it, so I tried to look up as much as I could on their Underfell versions. The same thing happened with Alphys, and I figured that since she made Flowey, they could have a bit of a moment.

When I got to Asgore, I was originally going to have Sans kill the king, but then I remembered that Frisk would be crying so much their poor heart would give out, so I had Sans spare him. And then, I think I got too sleepy at that point and I stopped writing, but what my sleep-deprived brain thought was this: we are done with the Asgore fight, we just have get everybody on the Surface. 

Note that I said ‘everybody’. As in everybody. As in Frisk was supposed to live and get to the Surface. 

But this is what happened. The next day, Sanei has a new piece of art on my dashboard, and it’s Sans surrounded by the six souls, carrying Frisk, and it looked like Frisk was either dying or dead, but Sans was still promising them that no matter what it took, he was going to get them to the Surface. 

The red soul was right in front of him. And I wanted to stick to the pictures as much as possible.

So I guess you know what happened. 

I made Frisk’s body frailer – like, I had to scroll up and up and add more flowers and made Frisk have difficulty breathing and standing and feeling and just turn them into a walking vegetable at that point – so that they would die easier, and then at the end, I had Sans carry them, just like in the picture, and I had the red soul rise up to his face, Frisk offering it freely. 

And then of course, they got to the Surface, and I finally connected the last bit of the story, where Frisk becomes a patch of flowers and I got to put in the knock-knock joke. I was writing at midnight, and at midnight my brain just says whatever it wants – actually, it does that all the time, but it was unforgiving that night, because the last line was supposed to be ‘“…Sweetheart?” Soon”, and just as I was going to save the stupid thing, I thought ‘But nobody came’, and I just sat there…thinking, ‘……that’s just savage. Let’s put it in.’ 

And then I closed it. Let it sit for a week, because if I edited it right away, I was going to miss a lot of errors. And then I posted it around the middle of January, slid it over to Sanei FBI-like. 

 And then it exploded in popularity, but I’m not going to talk about that yet.

Since Flowerfell was largely taken from Underfell, I had to do a bit of looking up, and what I got was that everybody in the story was basically bad and edgier than a teenager going through The Phase. I thought it was interesting, but I needed to justify it, since people don’t just turn out the way they are for no reason. I managed to make one up, thankfully. 

The line “Always be kind, sometimes kindness is all we can give, sometimes kindness is enough” was thought up about a few days after I finished playing Undertale. I was on the bus (I have to ride two hours to get to school, and as you can imagine, it gets boring, especially when you have my attention span), and I was thinking about how unique and amazing this game was, and how much it put emphasis on kindness and how you don’t really have to hurt anybody to get through anything (I hadn’t played genocide yet).

And that sentence was a part of my thought process and I thought that it sounded like something people would quote. I just laughed to myself and kept it in mind. And then when I was writing Overgrowth, it seemed like it was a good fit, so I put it in.

Frisk was not originally supposed to go blind, because I thought they would have difficulty navigating, but they were supposed to turn into a patch of flowers, so I had to make Sans and Flowey navigate for them. This was a bit hard on me, because while writing this I had to keep in mind what it had to be like to be blind when you were used to seeing, and how it felt like to have someone you care about slowly go blind. Also, I had to know how it felt like to have someone you care about slowly degenerate. 

It wasn’t hard because I didn’t know how it felt. It was hard because I knew exactly how it felt.  

Now, for people who don’t deal with like, feelings jam sessions well, you might want to skip this. But, you know, you wanted behind-the-scenes things. And you should know that writers are fond of putting pieces of their souls into their writings. Don’t worry about it. Sanei knows about this too.     

For the past two years or so, my father has been slowly going blind from cataracts, but we can’t afford an operation because that would mean my sister and I have to stop our education. And I am willing to stop college, believe me, if it wasn’t for the current implementation of K to 12 system in our country and the fact that I’m part of the last batch that isn’t affected by it. Basically, if I stop now, that means I won’t be able to go to college for two years, and I won’t even be able to get a job because there are certain requirements in our country for job employment. 

I have been watching someone I love slowly go blind, and with that, I have been watching him struggle to walk, struggle to read, struggle to do anything. And with his other body problems, it’s like watching slow death. And it’s fucking agonizing because I know that the reason why he’s not getting any better is because he would rather have me finishing up my school even if it means he has to suffer, instead of him getting better while I worry over my future. 

I have observed the way he has moved for the past two years or so, with that slow degradation, and because I am a depressed and problematic mess, I had to find a way to be cathartic, and guess what? I poured all of that out on Frisk. From the way their body slowly goes numb, to the shaking, the labored breathing, everything. And Sans, watching from the outside, unable to do anything – all of that is just me translating what I have felt onto this character. 

You see, when I write, I write. I don’t slap words onto a screen or a piece of paper for the hell of it. I write for myself, and even though sometimes my words will not make sense to anyone else, or will sometimes come off as weird and half-assed, it will always mean something to me. Because even if my writing will go to someone else, first and foremost, I am my own audience. You are goddamn special if I write for you. 

I have had friends whom I have loved with all of my heart, friends whom I have done things for, but eventually we all grew up and they thought I was odd and weird, and I didn’t fit in what they classified as normal. I was a square peg for a circular hole. And I know, I know – edgy teenager syndrome, blah blah, but you know, it actually hurts like a bitch. Because I knew these guys from childhood, and I have been losing people since I was young and we actually made it to teenhood and I thought, hey, maybe these guys will stay, and suddenly they start coming up to my face and saying I’m too odd for them. And they start excluding you, and the exclusion hurts more than the bullying, you know that. And when they do suddenly include you, it’s because they want something, and as soon as it’s done, you’re odd, you’re out, and you did nothing to contribute, what are you talking about?  

 And hey, I know what you’re thinking – what does this have to do with anything? What does this have to do with Overgrowth? 

Once upon a time, when I was not disenchanted, I thought that if I was kind and good enough, my friends would look past my oddities and my anxieties and defects and would still be my friends. I fucking stood by them as their parents made them feel like shit, as their significant others cheated on them, as they got lost in the middle of the fucking rain. I helped them. I tried to be there for them. I didn’t even fight them whenever they tried to pick a fight with me. 

But sometimes. Sometimes, a few things are not enough.  

But for some reason, that was what Undertale pressed, and I tried to believe, I really did, and so I tried to press it on Overgrowth too. If I believed it enough, maybe it’d be real enough. If I told you this enough, maybe you’d have a better chance than I did. Maybe if I lied enough, because at our cores, this is what writers are. We are professional liars, and we make you believe and love things that don’t exist. 

And I put that there, in the way Frisk persevered even though Sans betrayed them again and again and again.     

(Also, I don't blame those friends. I was always a little shit anyway.)

This is why Overgrowth means more to me than it ever will to any reader. Because I’m too small to hold all of my hurt in that it stains the pages of what I write. This is why I am angry, and this is why I did not handle the situation well when people started insulting my wishes and kept on doing things that I explicitly told them not to do. Because I loved Undertale, and I loved Overgrowth, and all of that wasn’t just a story about magic and kindness, it was mostly about what I could translate from my life onto a universe that I loved. It was about what I understood about a universe that I loved. It was personal.

I’m young, I’m dramatic and I’m fucking stupid, but this is the way I hold on, and I am sorry if it’s too much for some of you. As I’ve said before, I might sound like a whiny, dramatic bitch, but I know I’m a whiny, dramatic bitch. 

Also, out of the Sans-holding-Frisk-with-the-six-human-souls-surrounding-them photo, I had originally thought of including the other souls and making them join Chara in urging Frisk on, and I had actually written that, but I thought it was too much and just deleted it. There’s no copy of it anywhere, I won’t be able to post it even if I wanted to. 

Overgrowth was originally named ‘Baby’s Breath’ from one of Nesky’s art, where they drew Chara and Frisk, and Frisk was infested with blue flowers called baby’s breath. Eventually, on the date of posting, I was scrolling through my dashboard and a friend of mine posted this photo of Tony the Talking Clock being infested with plants from the inside, and the prompt of the piece was ‘overgrowth’ and I thought it was similar to the story, so why not? And thus, Baby’s Breath was renamed Overgrowth.

The story itself’s pretty much got a basic structure: set-up at the beginning, explaining what’s going on by sample scenes with Toriel; what I actually wanted to happen or the actual ‘beginning’, which is Sans and Frisk meeting; the build-up and the internal journey; the external journey; climax and the hard decision; and then end and consequence. 

I was mostly binging on butter cookies, ice cream, oreos and coke that Christmas. 

I never even thought about the story gaining popularity though, if we’re being honest. I just wanted to write a story that meant something and give it to a friend. The goal was just to get them to see that 14k thing. And then it spread and it got out of hand, and at first I was overwhelmed, but then I saw that everyone was enjoying it and making fanart and offshoot fanfictions and I thought that it was a good thing, but then it…well, got out of hand again. And my mental faculties are a mess and I didn’t need all of that stress, because daily life’s hectic as it is, so I had to take it down publicly. 

I might resent it a bit, slightly, but that doesn’t mean it stopped being a catharsis for me. Hopefully it meant something for you too.