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beethovenus · 1 month ago

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the case for alphys in deltarune

Alphys is so important and unique in undertale. she’s the royal scientist, a (initially self-serving) ally to frisk, and the focal point of the True Lab; her experiments on determination led to Flowey’s very existence, among their other impacts in the Underground. her arc is such a gratifying part of undertale and yet she's been so relegated to the periphery in deltarune. she's just a... regular, run of the mill teacher? which is fine? but? huh?

she’s exceptionally irrelevant to the dark worlds compared to everyone else. other characters have been the source of great speculation for good reason, or at least, we’ve seen hints of their relevance. both Asgore and Toriel are tied to the Dess conspiracy, Undyne is missing in the bunker, sans is… sans, Papyrus is suspiciously and increasingly absent, and Mettaton is the subject of a number of references in the Dark World, the least of which being the spamton NEO body that he drew on the Library computer. Alphys’ greatest relevance at first glance, meanwhile, is probably having been the one to tell Kris & Susie to go get the chalk.

that's not enough for me, so i want to make the argument here that Alphys’ peripherality to the narrative is suspicious and intentionally overlooked, and that there’s going to be more than meets the eye happening as the story unfolds. this is a long one sorry ^-^

let's go over what we know about Alphys in Deltarune. We know she’s the teacher for the high school class in Hometown. and we’ve seen that she’s not especially good at it. firstly, Alphys isn’t very mature and can't seem to separate her hobbies, interests, and obsessions from the obligations of her job as a high school teacher.

she really wants to come across as the cool teacher and is terrified of doing or saying anything that would make her students dislike her (which obviously isn't working). she does try to look out for kris, but ultimately, she's terrified of taking risks. despite her concern for kris, she keeps trying to act like more of a “teen on their level” than an authority figure who’s supposed to be preparing them for their future.

This makes sense with who Alphys has always been. she’s always been shy, insecure, and nerdy. being a scientist in Undertale made sense for her, even if she lied, because she could keep to herself and hole up in her lab. teaching, meanwhile, is a job that requires you to be able to tolerate dissent and contempt, to lead, and to act with confidence... and Alphys hid from grieving families because she was overwhelmed when the determination experiments went wrong and couldn’t bear the idea of telling them what happened to their loved ones. of course, that reaction makes sense. that's a manifestation of guilt and anxiety. but it’s indicative of Alphys’ inherently avoidant nature that she has to overcome in Undertale.

even if Alphys’ anxiety in Deltarune hasn’t been exacerbated by trauma to the degree that it was in Undertale, it’s still clear that her baseline mode is socially anxious, conflict-avoidant, and insecure. to that end, none of Alphys’ strengths, other than the fact that she’s smart, are on display in a classroom setting … but ALL of her weaknesses are.

so why is she a teacher?? scientists exist in the real world!! one might argue that this is a limitation of the small town setting in Deltarune. Alphys lives in Hometown, therefore she is limited to the jobs that you would work in a small town. which could be an explanation, but in chapter 4, Alphys says she moved to Hometown. so she came to town from somewhere else for... some reason...

and whatever her plan for work was coming in, we also know Toriel actually got Alphys the job, according to the mayor's secretary in chapter 1 (who apparently expects a student to come in complaining about her...?). Toriel's constant checking-in on Alphys and asking Alphys if Kris has been acting strange is contextualized by this. Alphys probably feels that

The narrative is setting up Alphys as a questionable teacher, and this is especially noticeable in chapter 4.

chapter 4 thematic relevance

the mentor-student dynamic between susie and gerson in the dark world is, despite its brevity, one of the most significant and transformational relationships of Susie’s entire life. Gerson breaks through Susie’s walls and teaches Susie to cultivate her skills and take risks. He wants her to work on her healing rather than accept her limits being “hurting people magic”, in her words, and he incentivizes her growth in the secret boss fight. Gerson brings out the best in Susie.

this same chapter, Susie tells a story of being told by adults around her not to play a public piano, because she “just looked like [she] shouldn't be playing” it. By profiling her, they taught her to believe, as she tells kris in chapter 1, that “no one can choose who they are in this world.” Nobody would believe she could be anything other than what they assumed she already was, so she would accept that she wouldn’t be. she learned to put up a facade and play the role of a troublemaker. even in a town of other monsters, she's maligned; others take Susie’s facade at face value. unfortunately, Alphys is one of these people.

in the chapter 4 juice combo interaction, which is mandatory to progress through the game, Alphys’ assumption is immediately undermined for a reason. she’s not just wrong about Susie, but she’s participated in the same line of thinking and judgement as the piano incident. Toby Fox wants us, the players, to know that Susie’s teacher was assuming the worst of her in the same chapter where Susie will soon gain a really productive teacher figure in her life and where Susie will confront, again, the lines of thinking that made her feel like she was less-than. this sticks out and stings when susie tells gerson:

it’s quite bittersweet. because Alphys is her teacher, but Gerson is the first person to make her feel like she’s not stupid.

(and it could be said that Susie doesn’t necessarily help her case: in both chapter 2 and 4, she refuses to even interact with Alphys. Alphys is the only character Susie actively avoids talking to and that likely stems from Susie’s own negative experiences with teachers and her own assumptions about Alphys. this is a challenge for Alphys… but she is Susie’s teacher. Gerson found a way to get through to Susie even when she wanted nothing to do with him initially. that is the expectation on Alphys as Susie’s teacher. So where does she go from here?)

there is space for Undertale OGs to experience development, growth, and change in this story. for Kris’ sake, we have to hope both Toriel and Asgore will grow as people, of course. and we’ve seen that Tenna is acting as a catalyst for Mettaton’s gender expression (which is interesting, because that was originally really tied to his friendship with Alphys). and Undyne had previously complained about how boring her job as a police officer was, and now she certainly will not be saying that….........

and ultimately, if Deltarune is thematically a story in part about escapism, fantasy, and fiction - no other character in Undertale relied so heavily on the comforts of fiction as Alphys: her fixation on Mew Mew Kissy Cutie comes up in both games. the wholesomeness of the first Mew Mew brings Alphys so much comfort in Undertale because she feels so much guilt and dread about the experiments... when it comes to escapism, she might be the reigning champion of Undertale and it would be wild if Deltarune didn’t do anything with that.

alphys the successor

moreover, Alphys being Gerson’s successor in Deltarune directly parallels her being Gaster's successor in Undertale (Gerson mirrors Gaster in a couple ways...) And just as Father Alvin says that it’s difficult for Alphys as Gerson’s replacement, the goners compare Alphys to Gaster

now, to Alphys’ credit, I think that she is a really genuinely talented scientist, and we simply don’t have enough evidence to compare her to Gaster because of course Gaster’s followers are going to hype him up in comparison to her. the only reason we know to take Alvin seriously is because we’ve seen he was right, otherwise it’d just come across like him having a bias towards his own father.

the point being, Alphys is also connected to Gaster. this connection should be taken as significant, especially if we’re to assume she knew him (which for a long time was what people assumed based on entry 17... which could be an entire other can of worms)

and how she knew sans, too. the fact that sans keeps Alphys' secret about the true lab and the amalgamates indicates the strength of their friendship. if the "sans in undertale = sans in deltarune" theory is correct, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to conclude that if anyone else KNOWS about that, it'd be UT!Alphys. especially when she's studied alternate universes and it seems she's even aware of the player...

by the way, Alphys is way more observant than she gets credit for

the last major point i want to return to here is back in Deltarune, actually.

For example, she’s INCREDIBLY observant to the happenings of Hometown surrounding Undyne. in chapter 2, she identifies the uselessness of the police force and then immediately speculates on the mayor’s intentions. she does a similar thing in chapter 4 where she talks about the shelter with suspicion and fear. she immediately manages to pick up on something incredibly abnormal going on in regards to the shelter, and that undyne and the mayor have gone over to the bunker...

both times, Alphys has gone “makes me wonder…” and then speculated about something of incredible significance to the conspiracy in this town. We know now the police force was mostly for show, with the exception of whatever Undyne’s responsibilities were regarding the bunker, and that perhaps that’s all tied to the “police sacrifice” that’s supposed to happen next week. we know there IS something in the bunker - the knight, eram, friend - SOME matter of threat.

but as far as she knows, there’s no such thing as dark worlds. she lives in a reality similar to our own in her day-to-day life and yet she feels that there is a something in the bunker that is dangerous. she's that locked in.

(perhaps there's something to be said about FRIEND looking suspiciously like Endogeny in early chapter 3...)

all in all that's all i have to say about alphys thus far. personally i'm sad that she doesn't know mettaton yet... i guess she knows asgore though? And he likes mew mew kissy cutie 2? Put a pin in that?

but really, while i don't have any clear sense of the direction deltarune is going to take with Alphys, i feel that she's been such an important character to undertale and even to the staging of deltarune itself. i think there's so many clues that she's going to be relevant to the upcoming happenings, they've just all been so easy to miss with everything else going on. there's so much talk about how sans connects the two games, for example, and i think Alphys essentially will complete that picture for me somehow. we'll see what happens from here on out but at least i've staked my claim in the #ALWAYSBETONALPHYS movement this early in....

and by the way i was kind of mean to her in this post so i just want to say I LOVE ALPHYS!!! I <3 COMPLEX FEMALE CHARACTERS!!!!

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