As promised, finally got a masterpost going for Paper Trail! Click on any part below to read the comic. There are links to previous and next parts in each one, too!
Alright first full mini comic I’ve posted on tumblr!
If you’re wondering why the art looks a little different between pages 2-4 is because I’ve worked on this about a year ago
This comic is based on an unused idea from an older iteration of a Paper Trail fanfiction (which is still being worked on) by an online friend named DemoPhone.
Oh boy, I made this back in October. It was when I had recently watch ATLA and when I Learned all of Noelle’s move in Paper Trail, (A deltarune fan comic by @lynxgriffin, please give them credit for their AMAZING work) I wanted to make a drawing of Noelle as the Avatar and is in the Avatar State.
Also I feel like I’m gonna post some old art for awhile
Oh boy, I made this back in October. It was when I had recently watch ATLA and when I Learned all of Noelle’s move in Paper Trail, (A deltarune fan comic by @lynxgriffin, please give them credit for their AMAZING work) I wanted to make a drawing of Noelle as the Avatar and is in the Avatar State.
Also I feel like I’m gonna post some old art for awhile
“Omnia Mutantur / Dream” premieres this weekend at ABV GALLERY in Atlanta, appointments only though.
It was a pleasure to be invited to be apart of this and I’m stoked at how this piece came together. Pulling motifs from the Hermit of major arcana and the King of the Dreaming, the piece alludes to an introspection of sorts through the light of consciousness.
Hello there everyone! Pastaguy with an announcement for The Determined Podcast!
The next episode of The Determined Podcast will be airing on May 29th at 5 PM EST on YouTube and Twitch. Our special guest this time is someone that needs no introduction to either the Undertale community or the small group of weirdos that watch us continuously. @lynxgriffin the creator of Dogs of Future Past, Flowey Origins, Amalgamate Origins, and Paper Trail. Along with plenty of her own original works such as The Skybox and Anthrofractal.
We’ve had her on before talking about mainly Dogs of Future Past but since then her Deltarune comic Paper Trail finished and their is plenty to talk about with that. I’m glad to have her on again to discuss such wonderful stories.
Reblogging this here…I am returning to The Determined Podcast to talk about Paper Trail and anything else silly that may come up! I always have a good time talking with these fine folks! Come check it out 2PM PST/5 PM EST tomorrow!
cws: two instances of brief N/S//F/W talk, running away, jealousy, alcohol
- - - - - - - -
“Run away with me,” Janus Hunag says, tossing Roman a motorcycle helmet.
It’s nearly dark, the sky dripping with ruby red and shimmering gold. Janus, with his mismatched eyes and leather jacket and snakebite piercings, is a spot of darkness, framed against the richness of the bejeweled sky. They won’t get anywhere before night creeps in. They’re barely adults, broke and irresponsible and tied down with so many lashes to this place they both grew up in.
“Alright,” Roman says. “Let’s go.”
He clings to the back of Janus’ jacket, leather soft and warm beneath his hands. The air, hot and humid in a way only Florida summers can provide, streams against his skins in rivulets, silken. The motorcycle thrums between his legs, humming as he watches the town that held him for twenty years slowly slip away.
The high school they graduated from, years ago. The college they go to now. The diner the theatre kids raid after every performance, faces sticky and shining with makeup and sweat and adrenaline. The house where Shelby Jackson had tried to stick her tongue down Roman’s throat. Janus’ house, quietly dilapidating on the outskirts of town, trying to hide in a field of overgrown weeds.
He wants to ask Janus what this is, why they’re leaving, why he took Roman, of all people, with him, but the roar of the engine washes away any words before they even reach the other’s ears.
“Why did you want to leave?” He asks Janus that night - well, morning. They’re settling into some crappy motel just off the interstate, nearly out of state lines. “And why’d you take me with you?”
Janus looks up from where he’s rifling through his battered duffel bag. Shrugs.
“Air quality in our area is terrible,” he says. “Any concerned citizen should really make an exit as soon as they can.”
Roman snorts, softly. “Liar.”
Janus shoots a smirk at him. “Flattery gets you nowhere.” He tosses something at Roman, who fumbles but catches it.
The Tempest. His favorite.
“Now can you entertain yourself while the adults work?” Janus drawls, mock-condescending.
Roman huffs a laugh, thumb fanning out the worn page edges. “You certainly came prepared, huh?”
“I can see this will be the first thing we have to establish.” Janus slithers out of his shirt, his binder, and Roman has to look away, feeling almost dizzy. “No questions while I’m trying to sleep.”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Roman says, but his voice is weak.
Janus sprawls out, bare-chested, on the shitty mattress and only sighs in acknowledgment.
He drops off quickly, and Roman is left, a yellowed lamp lighting his way through a tale of storms, of magic, of far-off lands and casting off, so, so far from home.
He wakes up with a crick in his neck and a book across his chest. Janus is already awake and dressed, brushing his teeth in the small, cracking sink.
The eczema clawing at his face is even more prominent in the dull light – red and angry. He makes a face at himself, prodding at his cheek, before he catches Roman’s eye in the mirror.
His face switches into a mask of smugness almost too quickly for Roman to even register.
“Finally,” he purrs, pulling on his black beanie. “I was beginning to think we’d have to risk true love’s kiss.” He flashed a wry grin. “And I wouldn’t trust me to set you up. I’ve been reliably informed I have a terrible taste in men.”
He saunters past Roman, out the door. “I’m off to commit terrible atrocities against god. Be back never.” He passes through the door with a wink, then backtracks. “You might want to check your phone, by the way.”
And he’s gone.
Roman drags himself up, rubbing at his sleep-mussed hair. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, wincing. No one told him biking involved being sore later.
Twenty missed calls. Fifty unread texts.
Roman mutters a curse under his breath, tapping at his screen.
Bro where the fuck are you
The parental units are flipping their shit
Plz tell me I get to snort ur ashes when Mamá kills u
Did u get kidnapped by crazy cultists
Say nothing if ur at a wild orgy
Omg u slut why didn’t u invite me
Oh tea Mr Henderson (the DILF one) said he saw you and jay-anus???
Bitch u2 don’t even know each other why are u banging him
How’s his dick game
Forty one more texts continue in that vein.
Roman stares at them, but he can’t make himself tap out a reply. Slowly, deliberately, he shuts his phone off and slides it into the bottom of his backpack.
“Breakfast and Advil.” Janus sweeps back into the room shortly thereafter with a styrofoam plate and pill bottle. “And I only poisoned one of them! You’re welcome.”
“My hero.” Roman, dressed and lounging with his journal on the bed, shoots a wry grin up at him, taking the plate gladly. “What’s the Advil for?” he asks around a mouthful of waffles – a bit bland, but warm and filling.
“Aesthetics,” Janus deadpans, shaking out two pills and pushing them towards him.
Roman blinks, and Janus shrugs.
“Or feel free to suffer in your soreness, whatever floats your boat, really.” He takes another bite of his pancakes.
“Oh.” Roman takes them, flustered for some reason he can’t name. “How did you…”
“Anyone would be sore after a ride that long.” He lets the words hang in the air long enough to become lecherous, only compounded by the infuriating line of his smirk. “I’d rather not have to listen to you complain all day.”
“Still.” Roman fiddles with the rough cover of his bedspread. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” and it’s a command, not a pleasantry. “Anyway, I found a map on the stand out front.” He shakes it out, lets it settle on the bed beside him. “Figured it might be a good idea to get a route in mind.”
Roman leans forward, fingers tracing over the miles and miles and miles of road, reduced to glossy ink. “Where are we going?”
Janus isn’t looking at the map. He’s looking at Roman’s hands, at the size of them, at how gently, how wondrously they trace over all the places he’s never been.
“Wherever you want.”
It turns out to be Scottsborrow, Alabama, for no reason Janus can name.
But Roman had asked, eyes pleading and address already pulled up, and he hadn’t been able to say no.
“Taa-daa!” Roman pulls off his helmet, grinning, as soon as Janus pulls into the dusty, cracking parking lot. “Welcome to the one and only unclaimed baggage center!”
“Thrilling,” Janus drawls, raising an eyebrow at the unassuming shopping center.
“Come on, Moody Dench, you’ll like it.” Roman smiles at him, and it doesn’t slip into uncertainty until Janus stands, stone-faced, for a moment. “Er, well, if you really don’t think you will we can–”
“Come on,” Janus drawls, pocketing his keys and grabbing Roman by the wrist. “The world’s wackiest assortment of junk won’t steal itself.”
“Oh! Right, I, uh–” Roman blinks, dazed with the feeling of skin against his own. “Wait, steal?”
Janus hides his smile.
“Steal!?”
They spend their day picking through the lost remnants of the lives of others – beat-up suitcases with names scrawled in Sharpee and dusty clothes and bric-a-brac foreign to them both.
“What the hell?” Roman mutters to himself, eyeballing a replica of a troll from some movie he half-remembers.
“You don’t say,” Janus drawls, mentally pricing a small display of skeletons boxing.
“Who even had these things?” He pokes at a tambourine, wincing when it clatters with sound.
“No one who’d miss them.” Janus snorts, running his fingers over a fuzzy handbag.
“No?”
“They’d try to find them otherwise.”
“You don’t think they did?”
Janus fiddles with a snake skin clutch, mouth askance. “Not hard enough.”
The crowded shop is more clothes than anything, but there are enough oddities to keep them entertained – pulling on feather boas and making up stories of who used to own these lost things.
“A time traveler,” Roman declares, pulling a bowler hat over his splay of curls; it slips over his eyes, and he grins at Janus, eyes bright under the shadow of the rim. “Got lost on his way to the eighteenth century and left part of his costume behind.”
The hat’s nice.
When Janus buys it, no one even notices the ruby earrings he pushed up his sleeve – a perfect, shining red against Roman’s dark skin.
Roman likes it, more than he cares to admit.
The way Janus’ leather jacket, so different from the pressed blazers he was used to seeing him in, felt under his hands. The way the motorcycle hums under him. The way Janus, strong and solid, presses against his front.
The road is never-ending, ever-changing.
They stop at beat-down gas stations and greasy spoon diners and cheap motels that have three locks per thin door.
Janus always wakes up before Roman does, and Roman catches him, sometimes, stealing glances when he thinks Roman is still asleep.
Roman hadn’t told anyone he was leaving. No one even knows where he is, besides Janus, this nearly-stranger.
Roman doesn’t turn his phone back on.
“I never mentioned I like the new look, did I?” Roman mentions somewhere in Georgia. It’s the end of harvest season, and the trees around them hang heavy with peaches. Janus reaches up and nabs two, tossing one to Roman.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you to stop lavishing praise on me, actually,” he says, wryly. “I understand I’m irresistible, Roman, but please. Have some decorum.”
“My mistake,” Roman says. “I mean, so many kids go from squeaky-clean student body president to punk motorcyclist, after all.”
“I contain multitudes,” Janus says flippantly, settling down in the lush grass, hands splayed out to press into the warm earth. “Hush up, you’re missing the show.”
“What show?” Roman casts a doubtful gaze around, the edge of his mouth flirting with confusion. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
His mismatched eyes cast across the horizon as the sun dismounts his throne, graciously ceding to the silver queen of a moon.
Janus bites into the peach, wiping away the juices that run down his chin with his sleeve, sucking a drop of pulp off of his thumb. He shimmers in the retreating sun’s glow – gold-cast and brilliant.
“I’ve seen a million sunsets,” Roman says, once he finds his voice.
Janus almost smiles, patting the ground next to him. “You haven’t seen this one.”
The sky flames with red and orange and brilliant, dripping gold, shining against the scraps of cloud, catching color and casting it into a million fractals.
Roman sits.
The peach is perfect, when he bites into it – sweet and plump, the flesh yielding so easily beneath his teeth.
“I still don’t understand why you brought me with you.”
“Drew straws of all our old classmates. I was secretly hoping for Remus, but I’ll take what I can get.”
“Liar.”
“Roman, you flirt.”
Roman sees the ocean for the first time in North Carolina.
Despite living just a few hours from the Florida coast his entire life, he’s never made the trip to the beach. I’ll do it eventually, he’d always reasoned. Maybe next summer, when the weather’s better.
There was always something else to do – play rehearsal or homework or a boy whose name he needed to doodle in the margins of his battered notebook.
He goes stiff against Janus’ back when they crest the bluff and suddenly eternity is before them.
Janus’ head tilts for only a moment before he’s gunning it, faster and faster and faster until all Roman can hear is the roar of the engine, the swelling crash of the waves, the seagulls crying as they cartwheel through a sky so gray he can’t tell where it begins and the water ends.
Roman’s legs are shaking when they dismount, but Janus is cool as ever, pulling off his helmet and resting it on the leather seat.
“Oh,” Roman says, grandiloquence vanished as he fumbles with his helmet, scarcely daring to blink. “I… oh.”
The air is thick with brine; he can feel it pressing against his skin, layering itself on his tongue. The edge of the crumbling parking lot breaks into sand, gently susurrating beneath his shoes as Roman takes one stumbling step forwards, then another.
“Careful, it bites,” Janus drawls, waltzing past him without a care in the world, heavy boots dangling by their laces from his fingers, jeans rolled up his calves.
Roman’s down and yanking his shoes off before he can stop to think about it; puffs of fine sand clouding his every movement. He nearly yelps when his feet hit the sand – somehow coarser and colder than he’d thought it’d be, but when he sees Janus ahead, he starts running.
And he can’t stop.
The sea crashes ahead, furious and joyous all at once, and Roman runs to it, gasping and laughing when the icy water crashes into him like an unfamiliar embrace. He kicks, sending sparking diamonds flying into the air around him. Slimy seaweed tangles itself around his legs, and he plunges his hands into the water, fishing for sea shells and pirate treasure and sand dollars, but all he finds is sand and smooth, perfect rocks.
When he turns, breathless and flushed and laughing like he can’t remember ever laughing before, Janus is watching him, his mismatched eyes so warm that Roman can feel their heat spreading though him like all the sunshine missing from the sky.
“Why’d you bring me with you?”
Janus almost smiles when Roman asks that.
He does that a lot – those nearly-smiles. He’s far from stoic, always smirking and simpering and scowling with his lips twisted into all sorts of interesting shapes. But he hasn’t smiled, not that Roman has seen. There’s something in his eyes, Roman thinks. Something distant and almost lost, like he’s being crushed in a room of strangers. There’s something in his eyes that prevents any tilting of his lips from veering into a smile.
“A man isn’t allowed his fits of whimsy?” Janus asks.
Roman laughs, lowly. “That’s not an answer.”
“Oh, darling,” Janus purrs. “Surely you know me better than to expect that.”
Roman does.
He’s learned about Janus – despite himself, to delight himself.
Janus, who will absent-mindedly pick at his face when lost in thought until Roman swats his hand away.
Janus, who he can’t let into a library, or they’ll lose the entire day. Janus, who when this is pointed out to, will simply protest that they ‘have no itinerary, darling. Let a man read his Kant’.
Janus, who gives pet names that turn Roman’s stomach to butterflies as easily as he breathes, darlinganddearandgorgeous flowing silk-smooth from his silver tongue.
Janus, who doesn’t ever smile, not really.
Janus, who disappeared and brought Roman along, for a reason he still can’t name.
Roman wears the ruby earrings every day now, half for the way they shine, half for the way the tightness in Janus’ eyes will unwind, just a little, whenever he sees the red nestled tucked within Roman’s dark curls.
They’re closer than they should be. Roman’s known Janus for nearly his whole life, albeit only on the periphery. Another name called at elementary school graduation, a face seen a few tables over in the cafeteria, a nearly familiar shape crossing the quad. There are times they can’t afford a room with two beds, and when they curl up on opposite sides of the mattress, Roman can feel the heat of Janus though layers and layers of thin, stiff sheets. He’s so used to the long, strong arch of Janus’ back pressed against him as they roar down another highway, speed into another no-name town where the only people who know them are each other, that more often than not, nowadays, he’s cold without it.
They’re more distant than they should be. Janus won’t tell him why he left. Why he took Roman with him. And Roman doesn’t know how to explain why he still hasn’t called his brother back.
Roman kisses a boy named Patton in a dimly-lit bar in Virginia, and regrets it more than he can say.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out immediately after. “I didn’t… I shouldn’t have…”
Janus is across the room, not even looking their way, lounging across the pool table he’s scamming some hapless fool with. He’s serpentine, mouth coiled up into a smirk and eyes lidded at his opponent. He flicks his tongue out over his snakebites, and his poor adversary misses the cue ball entirely.
“Careful,” he says, eyes dark and smile sharp with promise. “A few more shots like that and you’ll lose our little bet.”
The poor guy is going to lose no matter what. Even if Janus’ eyes weren’t hypnotizing, his negotiations are deadly and his aim is lethal. A few nights in bars like this per week and Janus has more than enough to pay for their food and motels.
“Ah,” Patton says, following his gaze. “Got it.”
“I’m sorry,” Roman says again, feeling generally terrible. “You’re great, you really are, but I…”
“Hey,” Patton says, softly, laying a hand on his arm. “I get it.” His mouth twists into a wry smile. “Can’t say I’m thrilled about it, but kissing a handsome prince is a pretty good crowning achievement for the night.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Thank you, and you’re forgiven.” Patton smiles. “So why haven’t you told him?”
“I think he knows?” Roman runs a hand through his hair. “I just…” He exhales heavily. “We’re kinda on this whole life-changing field trip right now. Not sure when’s a good time to bring it up when so much is new, you know?”
“But you want to tell him?” Patton asks, head tilted.
“So much,” Roman sighs.
“Ah.” Patton catches Janus’ eye from across the room and grins, mischief dancing in his eyes. “Let me help with that, then.”
He climbs into Roman’s lap and kisses him thoroughly.
“Roman, darling?” Janus is suddenly leaning against the table of their booth, eyes dark. Behind him, his abandoned pool rival looks vaguely bewildered. “Do come with me, hm?”
Patton shoots Roman a victorious grin, but he pretends to think it over, drumming his fingers against Patton’s waist.
“I don’t know,” he says, eventually, “why should I?”
“Because,” Janus says, evenly. “I’m in love with you, have a jealous streak a mile wide, and am going to take you home and rail you into the mattress until you can’t walk tomorrow.”
“Ah,” Roman says, standing. “Lead the way.”
“I love you too, you know,” Roman murmurs into Janus’ hair in the darkness of the night.
They’re tangled up, Janus’ head on Roman’s chest and fingers clutched tight together. It’s a warm, sticky night, but neither of them will move for anything.
“You do know, right?” Roman asks.
And Janus looks up at him, chin resting against his sternum, and smiles,soft and gorgeous in the moonlight.
“Yeah,” he says, softly. “I know.”
“Why?” He asks Janus over breakfast, good and greasy and hot like only a true all-American diner can serve up.
“Why what?” Janus asks, and they both know he’s stalling.
“Why’d you leave?” Roman says. “And why’d you take me?”
Janus is quiet for a long moment, pushing his eggs around with his fork. Hash browns sizzle on the long, open girdle. An elderly couple bickers over the crossword puzzle. The waitress with a grease-stained apron swats at the flies buzzing around the open windows. The air hangs heavy with heat and the smell of cooking food.
“I left because I couldn’t stay,” he says. “I was afraid to stay. Still am. I’m afraid that if I stick around, that tiny town is going to swallow me up. Make me complacent. There’s a whole world out there, and so many people don’t even care to see it. I can’t think of anything worse than an average life. Living and working and dying in one place, never even bothering to look beyond the rules society puts before us — I just can’t. I can’t go on without figuring myself out.”
“And you think you’re somewhere out there?” Roman tilts his head towards the dusty road, streaking like a comet through low foothills and fields of grass.
Janus shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. Grimaces at the taste.
“Maybe.” He taps his fingers against the side of his mug. “But that’s enough to go on. It has to be.”
“And me?”
“What about you?”
“Why’d you take me?”
“Roman, darling.” A warm hand covers his own. “I should hope you’d have figured it out by now.”
There’s a fountain in Providence, flowing pure and bright out the side of a hill that Janus’ bike had protested, the whole way up. The stream flows from a wrought-iron face, its trail staining the metal green the whole long way down.
“They say,” Janus reads, studying the worn guidebook. “That whoever drinks from this foundation is forever cursed to return here, no matter where they roam.”
“A place like this doesn’t seem like a curse.”
Janus just snorts, sliding the guidebook back in his leather jacket, so much more worn than when they started out. “A lot of things don’t at first.”
He starts off, waltzing up the hill towards the ancient gates of some Ivy League, but Roman stays, flicking his fingers through the water once, twice, thrice.
“If we both drink it, do you think we’ll always come back here together?”
Janus slows to a stop. “Why, Roman,” he says without turning around. “You almost make it sound like you wouldn’t mind being cursed with me for all eternity.”
“If it was you,” Roman says, and cups a shining handful of water up, “it wouldn’t be a curse at all.”
Janus turns, and Roman offers it, thin rivulets of water trickling out from between his fingers.
“I was thinking we could head out west next. If you liked the Atlantic that much, you’d lose your mind over the Pacific.”
“I’ll go wherever you take me, Janus. But it might be nice to know there’s a place for us, eventually.”
Janu scoops up a handful of water and puts it to Roman’s mouth.
“Promise me when we come back, it’ll be together.”
Roman swallows.
“I promise.”
And Janus puts his lips to Roman’s hand and drinks.
They’re idling atop a mountain, near the top of Maine, when Janus suddenly kills the engine. It’s velvet-dark, the towering trees and rocks around them stained silver with moonlight.
“If we turn around at all now, we’ll be heading home.”
Roman startles, eyes tearing away from the freckles of stars across the night’s face.
“What are you saying?”
“There’s only so far we can go, darling. Unless you feel like forging a few passports.”
“What about California?”
Janus adjusts his driving gloves, not meeting Roman’s gaze. “You were always so loved, Roman. It makes sense you’d want to go home to them eventually.”
The weight of Roman’s backpack, of the phone he hasn’t turned on in months aches on his shoulders. “And what if I did?”
Janus shrugs, fingers tapping against the clutch. “I’ll follow you, Roman. Wherever you go.”
Roman swallows hard and looks down the long, dusty road home – to his family and his classes and his future. Graduating. Working nine to five. Letting a pile of manuscripts build up in a box under his bed because he’s too busy, too scared, too little, to ever let the world see them. The future, perfectly laid before him. No twists, no changes. Just living and breathing and dying in Gainesville, Florida.
He looks ahead – an identical road, long and dusty and worn. He doesn’t know where it goes.
And just that thought makes him feel like he could fly.
“You know, I think I figured it out. Why you took me with you.”
“Is that right?”
“For the same reason I left.”
He rests his head on Janus’ shoulder, his leather jacket soft and warm in Roman’s hands.
