Well if you need someone to bounce ideas off I am happy to talk about them. I will just stick with what I came up with for Chara for the time being unless I think of something better. Or your idea comes along and makes me go "yeap they both need to do this thing" or something.
[clumsily rolls into thread] hi i love this game! here's some of my disorganized thoughts about it. I'm almost finished doing a pacifist run for my second playthrough. My first was neutral, even though i looked up some spoilers/learned some stuff from watching all the demo's endings back in like 2013. i knew you didn't have to kill anybody but i was like, "eeegh i need... more hp..." but I played it like a pacifist run aside from those 10 or so monsters. It's a little boring doing a pacifist run right afterward, because everything is mostly the same. Spoiler: not sure if this is spoilery Hm, now that I think about it, that's some Flowey-type thinking right there. I was wondering "Well, should I have killed any of the bosses on my first run, just to be different?" But that just seems like it'd have made sans' phone call at the end even more guilt-trippy. "you killed countless citizens AND the queen AND my brother AND undyne AND mettaton. and that spider girl, i guess." and yeah, thinking about sans, I think I won't reset the game after I get the True ending. I know he's just fictional but I couldn't do that to him. I'm cautious about reading fic for the game but I've read some from his POV going through resets, and a couple no mercy AUs where Chara kills sans in Snowdin instead of Papyrus. I think it's neat to think about, as like a role-swap au. like, suddenly the guy who would say he thinks you can be a better person even after you kill him, he has to try to stop you in the last hallway. repeatedly, because you keep reloading. anyway, this is a neat game and i'm glad there's somewhere to talk about it other than the steam community and the undertale subreddit.
I found the pacifist playthrough pretty different from the neutral playthrough, honestly! Like, the basic structure is the same but there's so much additional content that it didn't feel samey. There's also an official undertale forum that toby had set up! https://forum.starmen.net/forum/RadDog/undertale
D: the starmen forums are kind of a rude place, I'm hesitant to go look. edit: not to be a downer, a lot of people there just feel mean-spirited, at least from when I use to visit
Yeah? I've only hung out in the undertale forum, so I'm not really aware of the site as a whole. :( Folks seem pretty friendly in this little pocket of it though!
Haven't looked at much of the thread because I'm still not "done" with Undertale, but I'd like to share my description of it: Ace-Attorney Style Skeleton Dating/Befriending Sim.
So I wrote a poem. I guess. Namely a narrative poem of a moment between the royal family. A not so happy one. It's inspired by things I personally went through as a kid. Which fucking sucked. Sharp shrieks piercing night, terror or pain, a mother’s worst fear. Old husband bumbling, fumbling, but a mother is vigilant. Rush forth, answer quick. There is no time when they cry. What is it, what is it? Monster, human, or worse? Child’s chiding tone calms the heart, but arouses it another way. Why so difficult, so stubborn? Unruly and cruel, but so beloved. Door thrust open, lights flicked on. There it is, sight not believed. Glint of metal, shocked face. A mother’s worst dream not understood. Explanations falling out, knife hidden. Less a plea and more an excuse. “I wasn’t going to, it’s just a joke.” Why such japes all the time? The other cowers, child of womb, cries and crawls back, still so shaken. “It’s fine, Mom. Really,” That’s what he says. Can’t stop, won’t stop. A mother’s fury. Simply unacceptable, so unthinkable. “How could you, why would you?” Scolding stings mothers more. Knife is relinquished, hesitating, unwilling. More excuses, more assurances and from both. A sibling’s honor goes before all, even one’s comfort, even one’s life. Father arrives, so late, still grumbling. Too late for this sort of thing. Oh what is even going on. Shut up by realization. Oh God how? Talk on the knee while father comforts son. Scolding, molding, pleas and questions. But still there’s a hug, and kiss, and tears so many. A mother’s love so resolute. Always. Always.
I bought Undertale this weekend and fell head over heels into love with this game (and. these characters. my god i love all of them.) My first run was Neutral but uh, functionally pacifist because I killed Toriel (plus one or two random monsters) by accident and then decided I didn't want to hurt anyone else. Second run was pacifist, but it was still interesting the second time round! I... don't think I have the heart for a no mercy run though. I've cried enough at this game even when I was doing my damnedest not to kill anyone, I don't think I could commit to actually trying to kill everyone.
Spoiler i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he sort of recreates his soul for the fight. asriel is not the soulless abomination flowey is(i mean just look at flowey's omega form) in doing so, he becomes a true monster, just still evil from his previous existence as flowey.
Spoiler also can we just talk about the implications of sans' hidden knowledge for his boss fight? flowey, having knowledge of determination and SAVE system decided that the key to winning was to overcome frisk's determination, which he tries(and fails) to do by making himself unkillable. similarly, i think sans realized that if he can get frisk to give up, either the universe will be allowed to continue from frisk's death with frisk not loading their save, or frisk will give up and reset the timeline, bringing back papyrus. i think his main reason for confronting frisk might be to achieve this latter scenario
So I said on tumblr that I was going to write about my thoughts on the genocide route and ending. And I think I will do it here first because tumblr lags to hell and back while I am typing which drives me fucking mad. Spoilers will follow. Obviously. Spoiler: TEXT The drive to write this post was really brought up by my coming across particularly judgmental fans of the game. Namely where it concerns the genocide route and any desire to fuck with the consequences of said route. Which pisses me off quite a bit! Throwing everyone into some pile of assholes who don't want to take responsibility for anything is pretty shit. As is judging people for doing it in the first fucking place. So let's talk about the genocide route. I think that people should play through it. Simple as that. It's hard to do. Especially when you come to the end of it. That difficulty is exactly why I think people should play through it. Basically the genocide route makes you do increasingly terrible things even though everyone in the world is begging you to stop. And at the end you are left with a taint on yourself that lasts unless you out meta the meta and delete two folders. What's the point of that though? What is the point of being awful? The point is it's a sort of thinking exercise. It's a way to learn about yourself. Sans asks you to think about what you did in the neutral route. Why not think about what you did in the genocide one? Think about what you really did. How people reacted to it. Why they reacted to it the way they did. Think about why you did what you did. Think about what is going to happen to you. Really sit down and examine what causing others suffering and killing does to you and others emotionally. The genocide route basically lets you be a callous murderer with no real world consequence. You get to examine yourself from an angle you perhaps don't want to normally and you get to do it safely. It's lovely really. This does lead into what part of my problem with the route is though, and that's that the effects of it are permanent unless you fuck with the game's files. Which is easy enough to do and it's all very anticlimactic. Now many argue in favor of this choice, stating that it's teaching you that there are consequences to your actions. That this is why people play Undertale and why they love it. Which is true! That is a big part of why people are so enamored with the game. Where I take issue though is the idea that consequences necessarily need to be permanent and that there is a point of no return. I've mentioned this before here and elsewhere but I really dislike that notion. Heavily. I also don't think it's a very good lesson to be teaching people. People are being told that there is a point at which they cannot possibly make up for what they did. Any attempt to do so just fails and even worse shit happens. So do these people just give up? Is that it? To which some might say "Well why did you do it in the first place?" There are many answers to that question. Perhaps you simply wanted to see how this would affect you emotionally. Perhaps you were just curious and you want to explore all there is in the game. Perhaps you just thought "Well this is just a game. It doesn't really matter". Whatever your reasons I think they are all valid and that some, especially that last one I mentioned, can be very useful to think on. I for example went in out of curiosity. I wanted to see the ending and what it had in store. I went in with an "It's just a game. I like the characters a lot but it's just a game". Going through it I was rather fine with things until I took my first break. After a while I felt absolutely awful because I had hurt people. Easily too and all because I was able to rationalize away what I was doing. "It's just a game" isn't really that different from "Well they're an asshole" or "Well they aren't x" or "It isn't human". At their most basic level they are rationalizations so you can deal with whatever it is your doing. In the case of the genocide route it is killing everyone. In the case of those other things? It can be anything, but the difference is that it's real people. Not fake ones. But the characters of Undertale not being real doesn't mean that what you do doesn't matter. It does if it makes you feel. Think about why you feel bad. Think about why you regret what you did and how you think those characters feel. Now think about what even one hundredth of that cruelty does to real people. It teaches things if you let it. But yeah as is the genocide route is final unless you delete files. Which to me carries of message of "just give up". That is bullshit and defeatist. Yes you fucked up. You fucked up big time and people may never forgive you, but is that really a reason to not try to make up for what you did? No. It's not. If anything that's just a fucking excuse. "Oh well they'll still hate me". Yes they just might and that really fucking sucks but you can't give up. You can't just go "Well I'm tainted forever". Be like Angulimala. Stand up and admit what you did wrong and do everything in your might to fix shit. Or to at least be a better person from thereon out. But in Undertale you don't get the chance to be Angulimala. You don't get the chance to learn just how hard it is to better yourself. You only get the chance for it to really sink in just how badly you fucked up and then the game basically tells you "you can't win". And that is just unacceptable. You've got to be a lion, fearless and noble. Also, don't mistake me. I don't want redemption to be easy. I want this dreamed of fourth route to be hard. Tedious possibly but too tedious that it becomes genuinely unfun. It needs to be the most difficult of the various routes though. By far. Hell the player might even possibly have to play through pacifist after genocide first to even get it going. But let them try. If the fucking flower can get mercy then why can't you?
Just got the game yesterday, and installed it this morning! I fully intended for my first run to be more murderful if not a genocide run, if only because I am normally a total wimp with games that give me the option to please or disappoint characters and I wanted to give that a shot before falling in love with the characters, but. Frogits make a really sad noise when they die. I think it hit me then that this was my choice. That I could make myself and everyone around me miserable, or I could. Just. Not. The weird thing is, I only ever killed one guy and immediately regretted it, and I keep expecting that to matter somehow. Undyne is mad at me, because i am a murderer. And I wanted to tell her, "No, no, I only killed one person. I learned, I got better, I could have been so much worse than I am." But It doesn't matter! I killed a guy! I killed a guy and now I have four extra health and people should fucking hate me. I keep wanting to tell Alphys that it didn't matter that she made a bot that wanted to kill me. It only wants to kill humans. There's only one possible target! "What's one murder, after all." Fuck. I'm honestly kinda messed up over this.
i just beat for the first time on pacifist run, which.. was really hard. some of the battles were really hard and it took a lot of energy not to give up being pacificist... well, ok, it wouldn't a pacific run because - i accidentally killed toriel and restarted, which was a weird thing... i am probably going to do a no mercy run next
Spoiler: Regarding the Effects of the Genocide Ending So, we know that doing the Genocide Run all the way locks you out of the True Pacifist ending. But the thing is, you can still get the Soulless Pacifist ending(s). There are two endings; one where you stay with Toriel, and one where you don't. If you don't stay with Toriel, you see everyone's face except your own crossed out. If you stay with Toriel, all you see is a gleam of red in Frisk's eye, and an ominous laugh, showing that Chara is not entirely gone. Here's a youtube vid with both! I...actually don't mind this too much. Your actions have consequences that stick with you, but you're still able to save everyone. You're still able to free the monsters! You still brought this world back. The endings may be somewhat open to interpretation, but the one thing we do know is that Chara's still with you now, and they're not going anywhere. Because unlike a True Pacifist run, you haven't put them to rest. You GUIDED them down a bloody path, and they're going to be stuck with you for a while now. The photograph can be interpreted two ways; either Chara killed everyone all over again, or it is to signify that you still in a past timeline killed them after all. But the world either way, hasn't been destroyed again like in the genocide run. It continues to live, because you saved it at the cost of your soul. As for the Toriel ending, I really think it is worth noting that the photograph doesn't show up at all. And weirdly enough I think its because being around Toriel possibly helps Chara a little. Sure they're still...creepy, but they haven't KILLED anyone yet. There's hope. Anyway, I like that. In a way you are able to fix things somewhat, even if you did have to sacrifice your soul to do so, and you had to replay the entire game. The Genocide route isn't "final" but while there is a possibility of forgiveness in terms of narrative story, there isn't a possibility that the game will forget what happened either. I guess what I'm trying to say is I want more fic with Soulless Pacifist Frisk living with Toriel now, and dealing with Chara. I want this kid to CONFIDE in somebody, you know? Actually I think there's an ask blog for that. Warning, it's going through a story arc at the time of my posting! Though I guess this is all moot if you wipe the files manually...I wonder how that would fit into the story within its own framework as opposed to outside of it. Wiping the files manually I mean! You know, Watson versus Doyle perspective. Since it is technically the most "True" of resets.
Spoiler: genocide That's not good enough to me because you're still tainted. Being forever tainted goes against everything I believe in and I will not stand for it. Basically I aim for a world where everyone is perfectly pure and blessed. To me having a shot of expressing even a small bit of that in the game would have improved Undertale's thematic weight. Lacking the ability to really work for penance and purification to me is just kind of a huge waste. And what I want isn't necessarily forgiveness from the characters. Really that's just a secondary thing. It would be lovely but that to me isn't what redemption really is. The idea of Toriel helping is good to think on though so thank you for bringing that up. I do like that idea. BUT I WILL CONTINUE TO BE A STUBBORN BITCH. PERFECTLY SELF-SAME ENLIGHTENED OR BUST. Undertale just comes so close to fulfilling what I want to see in media focused around mercy and it just falls short of it. Just a tad. Also this is reminding me that I should reread Shaman King, which was Buddhist as fuck. Though the only actual Buddhists were the lamest villains in the whole thing. Oh. Final note. The resetting all the files thing I think is actually somewhat neat on closer inspection. It has a rather Naraka sort of feel behind it. Basically you are forced through suffering following the genocide route, and then your slate is entirely wiped clean of wrongs. But only after burning. The fires purify you. They don't punish.
Spoiler: Reply to Aondeug Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree; I'm not buddhist, so I just can't share your conviction unfortunately. I don't see either Chara or Frisk as being "tainted" though honestly. Narratively though, these characters WILL have a lot to work on after achieving a Soulless Pacifist Ending. The path your gamefile takes is changed after all, which I think is reasonable enough on its own, given that you did kill off an entire civilization. That's a big thing for any character to do, if we're thinking about the story itself here. And replaying the same game over and over again isn't going to pay that price off entirely; letting the characters MOVE ON OUTSIDE OF THE TIME LOOP will. Because that is one of the biggest problems for the characters in game, ESPECIALLY characters like Sans. They need to be able to break free from this time loop and move forward. Anyway, that's just how I see it story-wise.
Spoiler: AHHHHHH Definitely going to have to agree to disagree yes. I AM JUST SUPER FUCKING HYPE ABOUT MY RELIGIOUS MORALS. THE HYPEST IN FACT. all my writing is secretly religious all of it The way the story goes makes sense though yes. I just dislike it personally because I SEE POTENTIAL TO REACH MY BIZARRE HEIGHTS. And it didn't. So now I am just kind of let down. Still a great game and definitely one of my favorites. But let down.
