Stephanie O'Brien's Blog

Chapter 16 of "Just Cause" is Ready to Read!

25/9/2022

Buckle up, everyone! Alphys is in a moral hole, she's found a new shovel, and she's ready to start digging!

Check out chapter 16 of my Undertale fanfic, Just Cause, to see how Frisk handles their first encounter with the royal scientist and a violent robotic TV host.

Read it on this site

Read it on AO3

The Fae Within is Now Available on Physical Products!

18/9/2022

My new artwork, "The Fae Within," is now available on T-shirts, tapestries, tote bags, and more!

You can see all the cool stuff you can choose from by checking out my Redbubble and Society6 stores.

Chapter 15 of "Just Cause" is Out!

15/9/2022

Today on Kids and Fish Who Are Having a Worse Day Than You, my Undertale fanfic, Just Cause, now has a new chapter!

You can read chapter 15 on my website here.

Or you can read it on on AO3 here.

Here's a quick excerpt:

A few seconds before his boss was supposed to arrive, Sans teleported to his Hotland sentry station.

The moment he materialized, the sound that greeted him made him almost wish he’d stayed away.

“Come on, is that all you’ve got!?”

As Undyne’s strained, struggling voice drifted through the cavern and washed across him, grim resignation pulled Sans’ eyelids closed.

The kid might actually be killing her.

I’d hoped they were past that.

The Fae Within

11/9/2022

A fae casts a glamour to take the form of a normal child... or a child's mind soars into a world where she's a creature of power and magic. Which one is it? I'll leave it to you to decide.

A blonde girl with a sky-blue T-shirt, green shorts, and brown shoes stands on a sunny hill. She’s casting a spell that’s transformed one side of her into an antlered, purple-haired fae, with a blue cape and winter coat, green leggings, and a silver boot with leafy green decorations.

You can see the high-resolution version, as well as the earlier drawing stages, by supporting me on Patreon.

Excerpts from Catgirl Roommate

10/9/2022

You know what I haven't done in a while? Shared excerpts from Catgirl Roommate!

Time to remedy that. =^_^=

“The chances of this NOT being a trap are as good as your chances of making the football team.”

“I’d rather bathe a tiger than join our college’s football team. Not that I see a difference between the two.”

“You WOULD say that, you weenie. But I bet the option you’re taking is just as bad.”

His best frenemy’s words rang dimly in Sam’s mind, bouncing off the new blank spaces in his brain as he stared at the spectacle in the centre of the living room.

At the time, Sam’s insistence that he knew what he was getting into had seemed perfectly sane.

Now, it was just another echo in the cacophony swirling through his head: a chorus of inane questions, obvious statements, and random vowel noises.

In a distant corner of his mind, Sam was aware that the door was sliding closed. It would be easy to escape, but somehow the sound of it clicking shut felt like a signal that he’d just been locked in an asylum and was expected to run the place.

“Hi.”

The word left his mouth before he could quell the social reflex, and panic slugged him in the chest, as if his heart had decided it was tired of living in a body with an idiot and was trying to punch an escape route through his ribs.

The cover art of Catgirl Roommate.

If you enjoyed these mini-excerpts, you can read a longer excerpt and grab your copy of Catgirl Roommate here.

Wakfu Fan Lyrics: Qilby's Turret Opera (SPOILERS!)

9/9/2022

I recently watched the first three seasons of Wakfu, an anime-like French cartoon, and now Qilby is living rent free in my head.

Pretty much anything about him beyond his name is a HUGE spoiler for season 2, so you've been warned...

SPOILERS BEGIN

Like his fellow members of the Eliatrope Council, Qilby reincarnates after death. But while he (as well as, from what I understand, his twin sister, Shinonome) remembers all his past lives, his siblings' memories are almost completely wiped when they die, with only hints of emotional or subconscious memory lingering in their new incarnations.

This means Qilby and Shinonome are effectively the oldest of their siblings... and it also means they're condemned to die repeatedly and remember every gruesome second, and to watch their family die and forget they ever existed, over and over and over, for the foreseeable eternity.

It also means eventually, every part of life that once seemed interesting or exciting has become hopelessly stale and repetitive.

By the time Qilby first appears onscreen, he and his twin have been enduring this for at least several millennia, and it's taken a catastrophic toll on Qilby's mind.

But what was life like before that?

Before his damaged mental state is revealed to the audience, it's shown that Qilby is very good with babies.

This, combined with his "oldest child" status and the absence of their parents, has made me fall in love with the headcanon that in his younger and more mentally stable days, he and Shinonome were the ones who raised their more forgetful siblings whenever they died and were reborn.

I like to think they had a series of actions they repeated whenever their siblings came back to life - songs, childhood stories, favorite games - in an attempt to awaken the embers of emotional memory and reestablish their bonds.

The lyrics in the image are for one of those songs. I kept picturing Qilby and Shino singing the Turret Opera from Portal 2 to their baby siblings, and I decided to adapt the lyrics into something more fitting for the lonely existence of those doomed to be forgotten.

You can listen to the Turret Opera here, if you don't care about end-of-game spoilers for Portal 2.

A screenshot from the show

If you want the lyrics in written form, here they are:

Hello, child, glad to see you again
Though I know you forgot
All our memories
The bond we once had
I will remind you, once again

Love forgotten, but I
Know I can earn it once more, and then
You’ll forget, I’ll earn it again
We’ll make lots of new memories,
Replace the ones you have lost
As it’s always been
It will always be
For eternity…

I can’t do this anymore…

Just Cause, Chapter 14: Spear of Torment

4/9/2022

Chapter 14 of Just Cause is out! You can read it on this website here, or read it on Archive of Our Own here.

Here's a quick peek at the chapter:

“And all the pain you have inflicted on the fallen… Every hope, every dream you have turned to dust… She’s gonna send right back through her spear! NGAHHH! I’ll show you how determined monsters truly are. Come on! Step forward and let’s end this!”

This is it.

Cold, dull resignation fell like a stone into the churning pool of Frisk’s thoughts, sending waves of emotion rippling in all directions and crashing into each other.

She isn’t going to stop this time, is she? She isn’t like those other monsters who attacked me for a stupid, petty reason. She has a really good reason to want to kill me.

And she’ll keep on trying until one of us is dead.

Should I kill her?

More "Just Cause," More Excerpts!

2/9/2022

I’m releasing chapter 14 of my Undertale story, Just Cause, this week, so here are a few excerpts from the upcoming chapter. :)

You can read the first 13 chapters of Just Cause here, or read the webcomic version here.

My supporters on Patreon can read chapter 14 today.

As the smoothness of the carefully-carved path gave way to the harsh edges of a small mountain, and a gust of wind turned the tunnel ahead into a shrieking maw, a surge of adrenaline and dread turned Frisk’s pulse into a pounding tide.

The dull red glare of the firelit ceiling loomed high above, turning the buildings and machines into ominous silhouettes, and closer – far, far too close – a smaller but vastly more perilous figure stood motionless on the mountaintop.

A spark of anger flared through the fog of fear, and this time the curl of their toes whispered of a desire to use the shoes they gripped for a purpose other than running away.

The edge of pain in the monster’s voice cut through the haze of rage like a spear, and the memories that followed it warped what remained of their indignation into gut-twisting guilt.

It was clear that Undyne was going to wait until Frisk made the first move. Still, the human hesitated, caught between a retreat that offered no escape and a battle they didn’t know how to wage.