Undertale - Pet dogs and date a skeleton!

I share that one.

 

Spoiler: endgame spoilers

I have couple ideas I go back and forth on, for this. One of them is that he was, as you said, drinking ketchup before the fight. It's in-character for him to set up one last parting shot like that. The other is for when I'm in a more dramatic mood: Undyne the Undying proves that monsters can generate Determination under the right circumstances, and it is linked with the color red...

Well, someone working himself so hard he passes out from exhaustion probably counts as determined to stop you. Maybe his manifestation of it was just a little bit less obvious than melting.

 

I've seen a hypothesis that Sans

Spoiler: Pacifist route spoilers

was one of the monsters that fell down and was sent to Alphys-the only one who she didn't give too high a dose of DT to.

in that theory some of why he drinks so much ketchup is so he can hide his meds in the ketchup

 

....Ooooh.

Spoiler

That is a neat take on the "maybe Sans has DT injected in him" theory. It ties in an idea how Sans and Alphys know each other, and why they're not keen on admitting how.

 

also consider: that's why he was sweating in his fight, and also why he apparently emits slime

EDIT: and possibly why the 1hp

 

I've heard those ideas before, but they didn't sell me on it. Two of them, I can pretty easily contradict.

Spoiler: These details

Bleeding red because determination, I'm not convinced.
Undyne is the only character who we know is a monster with determination who's capable of dying, and she doesn't bleed red. Not with the presumably lesser amount in her neutral melting death, nor as the Undying. Maybe because she's got more body than a skeleton, maybe because she's generating it herself instead of it being injected, that might make a difference. But we don't see red.
Flowey's got injected DT, but he's explicitly not a monster. He's a physical flower that's been so infused with magic that his body has lived since Asriel died, which was definitely at least a few years ago, and maybe more like a century+. He's a weird case.
The other amalgamates don't die and don't bleed. They have so much DT and so little physicality, that they fully melted but stayed alive.
So whatever's going on with the red... out of all the monsters, it seems unique to Sans.

Sweating as a prelude to melting doesn't work either. Papyrus, Alphys, and Flowey all sweat when they're nervous about various things. Undyne sweats when she's doing active things like running from Waterfall to Papyrus' house. Monsters, even skeleton monsters (and flowers who aren't technically monsters) can generate sweat. It makes sense for Sans to sweat when he's tired from fighting and scared for his timeline's potential eradication.

But the slime idea, that's plausible. It suggests Sans occasionally drips in a way that isn't sweat, a way that Papyrus doesn't. Slime monsters emitting slime makes sense, skeleton monsters no. Assuming that Papyrus wasn't just making it up, he's noticed it and doesn't have a real expansion for it... So he makes fun of it, as though it's just related to Sans not exercising enough for the JOGBOY's standards.

Spoiler: Admitting I dislike the overall theory

Lemme say upfront, "Sans has DT" theories almost never do anything for me, because most of the ones I've seen aren't thought through in ways that work. I've had time to notice and be bothered by those dissonances. These are theories trying to explain canon, rather than neat AUs that take parts of the story and make up new things connecting them. So between not liking them, and seeing them contradict stuff I do like, I'm critical of the overall idea.

Characterization-wise, I prefer takes on Sans' fight where he's desperate and scared, knowing a single blow is all it would take, using every bit of metaphysical knowledge he can muster to stop us from eradicating his timeline and maybe the world itself, and joking to keep himself from being too afraid. If that characterization is contradicted, then it's gotta be convincing. He's still gotta be the guy who carries woopie cushions, and has post-it note jokey arguments with his brother, and lives in a bedroom that's a posterchild for Depression R Us.... Or it doesn't actually increase the amount of the game that's explained, and fails at its purpose as a theory.

Game mechanic-wise, things where he's gotten DT artificially added to him as a way to make him more powerful and badass and hopefully resistant to death, those don't fit with my understanding of what DT is. Alphys describes it like, "this is what gives their SOULs the strength to persist after death. The will to keep living... The resolve to change fate. Let's call this power... "Determination."
Nothing about combat prowess.
Going from the strength of the amalgamates' attacks, injected DT might make magic somewhat more powerful... Or they might be strong because each amalgamate is multiple monsters in one body. Sans' power isn't in doing massive damage, anyway. It's in the lingering damage effect, and the various GUI infractions and time/space jolting effects.
Undyne is badass, but her DT is naturally generated from her will to strike us down, her soul is working with the stuff to try to keep going. Adding DT isn't what made her badass, but maybe being badass is what made her make DT. And she only manages to delay her death, not prevent it.
Flowey... Well, he's scared of dying without a SOUL, but he still briefly killed himself in his first timeline. It's only because he discovered the power to "change fate," and rewind back to his early determination as he first came to in the garden, that his DT let him not die.
The human we control around the underground feels determined when they see things that inspire them in some way, restoring their health (will to live) and updating their save file (to change fate).
But I'm noticing that the only people we know to revive from outright death are Flowey and Frisk, and they're both physical in a way monsters aren't. (And they've both spent time around Chara's remains)



Some takes on the DT theory involve Sans, for some reason, stealing the DT from Alphys so he can inject himself with it. Requiring him to know of the stuff, of her experiments, but either not know or disregard the effects it had on the others. And for him to go around her on the matter because... Sans is secretive? Or something? I haven't yet seen a convincing characterization of him doing that, and I'm sure not motivated to think of one.

There's others where he doesn't steal it, but Alphys gives it to him shortly before the fight. Those require her to think that adding DT to somebody would be helpful, and for her to think of it when they're hiding in the bunker of the true lab with the doors locked and the other evacuees hiding with them, surrounded by the cranky amalgamates who are neat but not exactly badass. That one's almost plausible, desperate times and desperate measures and all, especially since she'd probably take that step sometime during the steps that can also lead to Queen Alphys... But if all that's the case, then I'm more interested in her grieving Undyne, and how she didn't offer the same gamble to her, than I am in Sans' condition. It bugs me because dang it, I like this comic's idea better than giving the basic idea to Sans. Bluh.

Spoiler: The specific version you mentioned

This idea, though, that you mentioned? That Sans was like... the last person brought to Alphys, receiving the least dosage? That almost works in a way I like! It gives them a non-Gaster explanation for secretly knowing each other, and being awkward when asked how. Even a possibility for him having the same dog food she gives the amalgamates.
The main point against it is that he and Papyrus have an everyday regular schedule that the Snowdin monsters can almost set clocks to, so... how would he explain his absence to everybody back there and to his brother?
...unless...
Okay, maybe the way Papyrus checks on him multiple times a day (why aren't you at your station, get out of Grillby's, go do your job) came about after Sans' little disappearing act. Another reason for Papyrus to be all cranky that Sans never tells him anything, another guilty reason for Sans to shrug and let his bro yell and chase him around. And any effects during his geno fight are accidental.

It can make a neat AU, with some exploration of the differences. And it might make a good explanation for canon stuff, if it's well supported and ties into characterization stuff past the fight.

Eta fixed a couple typos, added two clarifying clauses, and further separated the spoiler tags

 

or: Papyrus having done check-ups on his brother before the Spoiler Thing, but not as often, and then one day he found Sans

Spoiler: spoiler

comatose at his station, and brought him to Alphys...he probably explained it to everyone else as "Sans slipped on ice and landed so badly he nearly died" or something

ETA:

Spoiler: kill-all route spoilers

also Sans doesn't count as a death. after killing him the kill counter doesn't increase...just like how the kill counter only increases once for killing Undyne, and not again for killing Undyne the Undying.

 

[STRIKE]WELP, that just made me go from "okay I guess it's possible" to "OMG IT'S TOTALLY CANON" in 0.5 seconds flat.[/STRIKE]

Hang on, wouldn't that be explained with the Gaster theory as well?
...hmmmm
...ghhhh this is frustrating, that's a very interesting piece of evidence that we need!

 

interesting thing about Gaster: there's three instances of Wingdings text.
One translates to [REDACTED], but the other two have one normal case and one capslock.
W.D. Gaster may actually be a composite of two or more characters-Wing Dings and Aster, maybe, although there's also three Wingdings fonts so there might have been three royal scientists and then whatever happened to them caused the Underground to faintly remember one of them as a genius who was a "tough act to follow"-resulting in Asgore spending a very long time appointing the next Royal Scientist...because he was waiting for someone who could match three geniuses.

 

Spoiler

Huh. Now I want to go see if the kill counter increases after beating Flowey.

ETA WAIT first I'm testing if killing Asgore in a neutral run adds to the kill count. Then neutral Flowey. Then I'll try to check their geno deaths.

eta2 Okay, just killed Asgore.
From the undertale.ini file and File0, it looks like kills do not go up after killing Asgore. So the kill counter doesn't go up for everyone that you kill.

 

I read a fic where the reason Grillby mostly serves fried food is that the preparation of fried food doesn't have to involve large amount of water and Grillby is a fire.
He also cleaned dishes etc (but not tables) by incinerating the food residue.

In that fic, Papyrus got employed by Grillby and did things like salads and pastas and soups-Grillby knew the recipes but didn't want to work with large amounts of water that needed to stay liquid often.

 

Spoiler: genocide route spoilers

Yeah, my assumption re: the kill count not going up for Sans is that it's because he's the end boss for the route. The game (to some extent the anomaly) doesn't need to keep track of the count after him because you just put the world's last nail in its coffin.

Unrelated, but is there a canon reason to think that the characters (aside from Frisk) would be able to check other people's HP / ATK / DF stats? I see it coming up a lot in fics that Papyrus knows Sans has that 1 HP.

 

Spoiler: kill count

Oh, I think I figured it out! The kill count only measures the deaths in the Ruins, Snowdin, Waterfall, and Hotland.
No matter the route, Mettaton is the last possible monster it'll measure.
After that, ending path available is locked in.
If the kill count is greater than 0, we can't get one of the happier family endings; Undyne finds out about what we did and hates us.

Killing or sparing Asgore in a neutral/pacifist makes no difference to the ending, since the only way we can "leave" through the barrier is by killing him. That, and Flowey kills him even if we don't. Killing or sparing Flowey makes no difference to the ending, Papyrus is the only one he's chatted to in the timeline we take over.

HP... That little kid in the Snowdin Inn knows of HP, recounting a lesson from their mom. I can't think of a specific example of characters themselves checking HP or indicating that they know how to. It might be one of those sciencey things for most folks, like I can't CHECK my breakfast and see how many calories it has, but I know generally that it's possible to measure.

 

i reckon that papyrus knowing sans has 1 hp comes up in fics a lot 'cause if he didn't, he might've accidentally killed sans already during a practice fight or something, assuming that he had more than he did, and since he hasn't accidentally killed sans, he probably knows that sans has 1 hp. that, and papyrus is able to reduce frisk to one hp and capture them, instead of outright killing them, which suggests that he has learned fine control over the amount of damage he causes and is aware of how much hp people have.

 

Spoiler: spoilery for at least the pacifist route

i've been thinking about perseverance and determination in undertale and why, despite their similarities, they are not the same thing.

determination is described as

and perseverance as

and they clearly do different things in undertale. determination is resets and save points and loading and "but it refused" and according to the red determination theory, normal soul mode. perseverance, on the other hand, is the mode muffet puts the player in, in which they can only travel along certain lines. it's associated with stuff like note-taking, problem solving and traps.

and those feel very different to me. like, determination is, "fuck you, world, you're playing by my rules now," and perseverance is spending a fuckton of time selling cloudy glasses to the temmies to get money for their colleg and then temmie armor. determination is having a desire strong enough to warp reality itself and to question the very fabric of it, and perseverance is the willingness to wade through a slog when you think it's the only way to get what you want. breaking the rules vs. working very hard within the rules to get what you want.

and i think quite a bit of how the human solves things without killing people is essentially them breaking the assumed rules of things. like, constantly pressing spare on toriel instead of doing the fighting or acting that turns most monster's names yellow, running away from undyne, getting out of fighting muffet by buying her products beforehand... stuff like that.

and yeah, i've just been thinking about what makes them distinct things in undertale. i may be wrong but this feels intiutively right to me right now.

(determination is in yellow here 'cause i like the theory about determination being save point-yellow (not justice yellow) and not a Soul Virtue, and frisk/chara's Soul Virtue being something else. i'm not completely convinced but yeah...)

 

Yeah, Determination as "my rules now" is good-that's actually a little tiny bit of what I headcanon it does it magic, forcing a spell to stay stable and existent after power is no longer flowing through it.
As most magic spells-as-such are slight local alterations to how reality works, determination-in-magic will also inevitably boost it. Drastically.
Result: things like the Barrier, that were boosted enough to become basically invincible unless you had the magic mastery of a monster and the sheer raw power of seven human souls...multiplied together. Absorbing souls isn't additive but exponential, albeit unstable: a being with seven human souls and one monster soul would only be stable for a few days at most, and then just sort of...explode back into the component people, resurrecting them if they'd died.

 

thinking of where the heck the Underground is: the beginning cutscene makes it seem like it takes place somewhere in Europe, because Poncho Human has a European-style sword, but then some things Chara says, and the Americanized spelling, makes it seem like it takes place in the USA. also, the wording of the intro implied that at the time of the human/monster war, there were few enough humans for all of them to be in one country, which, given that it's medieval times in the intro, would probably be more like Scotland or England or France in size than the USA.

conclusion: the world of Undertale doesn't look like Earth. also it's post-apocalyptic. possibly more than once depending on the effects of the Barrier.

 

201X... but not 201X AD/CE

 

201X BA/AA?
(Before Apocalypse, After Apocalypse?)

 

Videogame inspired by Earthbound, I default to them being under Japan (with helpful localization translation).

Though for one rp thing we went with Canada.... I forget why. :|a