#for REF .... in the game he wants to like absorb her powers?? for some reason idk what her powers DO tbh its all kinda gumbled

[kanamae]

❝ i see there is some shadow of fear upon you. ❞   :3c

𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚜 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚕 . the power of the shikigami . . . he wants to eat it and make it a part of him; he's decaying . . . she can smell the death all over him. he was right ⸻ fear was all over her. ❝ s-stay away from me . . . ❞ but the words came out in a choked whisper; she could see the bugs crawling against his failing skin, he was not of any world that she knew.

❝ s-stay away from me! ❞ would if she could call upon her powers, but her arms are too weak, her knees too wobbly. she's stifled by her own cries, kaname could feel death creeping up upon her, inch by inch; second by second. ( she was a rat in a snake's cage ).

❝ if i could give this power to you . . . i would! but i can't, so just leave me alone! ❞ she can't die yet! not when her brother was still out there! not when their parents were looking for them in their world. kanme couldn't die now, not yet; not like this.

❝ please . . . i'll do anything! ❞ / @niraiku

[argentdandelion]

Undyne’s Prejudice (Part 3)

Undyne’s Prejudice (Part 3): Undyne's Improvement

Author Patreon - Author Ko-Fi

"So," the reader may be wondering, "Undyne is prejudiced. But surely she's less prejudiced by the end of the game?" While just the hangout seems to lower her anti-human prejudice, it surely doesn’t remove it completely.

At the beginning, she has a few "cracks" in her persistent, severe prejudice. She has a crush on the human-loving Alphys, and enjoys human "history" (manga and anime). Believing anime is real, she thinks humans are “cool” with their “giant robots and flowery swordswomen”. Yet, evidently this is a theoretical admiration; seeing Frisk, she compares them unfavorably to the humans in Alphys’ media, justifying her hatred. Without the hangout, she fares poorly from the loss of her Royal Guard job and wants revenge on even a pacifist Frisk.

While Frisk’s kindness in reviving her doesn’t make her change her mind, Frisk hanging out with her does. She’s initially hostile, no matter the options chosen. However, Papyrus uses a clever bit of psychology. By framing befriending Frisk as a challenge, he sets Undyne's honor and inability to resist a challenge against her prejudice, tricking her into befriending someone she repeatedly tried to kill.

Bizarrely, if Frisk chooses the "incorrect" options, her desire for (retributive) justice manifests as a desire for revenge. For "the perfect revenge", she considers making Frisk enamored with her in the process of becoming "besties". (Despite the fact she didn't befriend Papyrus out of revenge...)

Yet, whether Undyne's improvement sticks or whether she improves more depends on the ending. In the best Neutral ending, in which Undyne was befriended, the Royal Guard is disbanded. Undyne is no longer captain; in fact, she says she "quit her job" (as compared to the less voluntary-sounding "I have a new job now" or "I lost my job”). She doesn't seem unhappy about this. She talks happily about her new job assisting Alphys and being a gym teacher for Toriel's school, and she’s more sympathetic to Frisk about Asgore's death.1

In a variation of that ending where Frisk killed fewer than ten monsters (with or without befriending Undyne), Undyne fares worse. The royal guard is disbanded, and while Papyrus says he has "no idea what to do with [his] life", he says Undyne's "the one that's got it bad". She lost her job and her house, and he and Sans take care of her in a "sleepover there's no escape from". She works at Sans' illegal hot dog stand, and hates her job. Undyne blames Frisk for Asgore's death, and often talks to Papyrus about an unlikely plan to cross the barrier and get revenge on Frisk by beating them up.

If the protagonist killed at least ten monsters after Undyne (Undyne cannot be befriended if monsters are killed first), Undyne hates Frisk even more. She feels hurt, betrayed, and angry at herself for befriending Frisk, when Frisk killed monsters later. Papyrus cannot understate how much Undyne hates Frisk, to the point of warning Frisk never to come back.

Other endings are, of course, even worse for her. In one ending she becomes empress of the Underground, creating a military dictatorship and being determined to kill off humanity.

It's obvious only a situation where Frisk doesn't kill anyone and befriends Undyne lowers her anti-human prejudice, though it's unclear by just how much.

That Improvement is Relative

While Undyne’s prejudice does lessen over a Family Ending (best Neutral ending) or a Post-Pacifist ending, it’s likely she still has some prejudice.

One should compare her to Toriel, Asgore, and Papyrus. Given Asgore lived and likely ruled through a war that killed off most monsters and sealed the rest underground, one might expect him to be prejudiced against humans. Yet, he raised Chara as he would his own child, as did Toriel. While Undyne is angry at humanity for their crimes, Toriel suffered the same fate, and yet took care of several humans over many years.

Papyrus changes his mind about humans rather quickly compared to Undyne. His plan to gain prestige, power, and popularity by joining the Royal Guard depends on capturing a human. Upon seeing Frisk likes puzzles and pasta, he quickly wants to be their friend. When he notices Frisk's interest in puzzles and pasta, he wants to be their friend. Though he dismisses the idea to fight, during the fight he changes his mind: he apparently figured out his plan depended on killing Frisk, or only then did his plan stop being an abstraction. Though he knows the benefits of killing humans, he wants Frisk to stay alive so they can be friends.

It’s possible he changed his mind so fast because his self-concept is malleable (that is, fragile: he lies to Undyne about loving grease), or his goals are so broad they can be achieved in different ways. He doesn’t have as much of a stake in the belief “humans are evil and should die”. In fact, he does what he can to prevent Undyne from killing Frisk without outright lying to her.

Undyne’s beliefs don’t change just by seeing Frisk is nice and pacifistic. Even later, her beliefs don’t change as much.

At first, she doesn’t predict Asgore will try to kill Frisk, despite being such a “fluffy pushover”, because of the war’s popularity. She doesn’t question the morality of the war with humanity. In fact, she’s willing to wait until a “mean human” falls down, and kill them instead. Even by the end of the hangout, she threatens Frisk: not only can she not figure out that Frisk and Asgore may have good reason to fight, but she also says that if Frisk fights Asgore, she’ll absorb some souls, cross the barrier, and kill Frisk herself.

Part 1 → Part 2 → Part 3 (here)

If the Neutral Run is started a second time, Flowey won't kill Asgore after he's defeated. Instead, he will sacrifice himself in his despair so Frisk can pass through the barrier. Undyne excuses Frisk with "you were just doing what you had to" and "it's not your fault he [died]", but it's unclear whether she meant "go past Asgore to the barrier" or "kill Asgore". Undyne would surely cut Frisk some moral slack if she learned (through Flowey) that Asgore killed himself so Frisk could go home, rather than Frisk murdering him. ↩︎

[argentdandelion]

Undyne’s Prejudice (Part 1)

1. Undyne's Prejudice: Part 1 Patreon - Author Ko-Fi

In the Lost SOULs battle, the Lost SOULs allude to their worries, unhappiness and insecurities. For example, Sans says the ominous “you’ll never see ‘em again”, while Asgore says “Forgive me for this” and “this is my duty”, referencing his crushing duties as king.

But Undyne’s words are different: “All humans will die!”, “You're our real enemy.”, and “Mercy is for the weak”. When saved, she says: “Some humans are okay, I guess!”

This is puzzling. Why doesn’t she talk about her insecurities or unhappiness or worries? Why does someone normally so confident make a hedging statement?

2. Societal factors

First, one should know why Undyne distrusted humans, and the reasons lie in monsters’ history and society.

Long ago, humans and monsters lived in peace. Yet, according to monsters, when humans learned a monster could hypothetically absorb seven human SOULs and gain the power of a god, they attacked monsters out of paranoia. The war survivor Gerson claims the war was more of a massacre; the few monsters that survived were sealed Underground for hundreds (if not thousands) of years.

Furthermore, the prince of monsters was later killed by humans while fulfilling a dying human’s wish, and he didn’t even fight back. The king’s grief turned to rage, and he declared war on humanity.

While devastated by the deaths of Asgore’s children, the war raised the kingdom’s morale. It became very popular: many monsters view the six SOULs Asgore collected so far and barrier’s imminent destruction as a symbol of hope, something to “grit their teeth” and keep living for. It took a long time for seven humans to fall in; it’s possible many monsters lived and died before ever being free.

The war surely created new societal norms and incentives. A book in the Snowdin library even contrasts humans with monsters by claiming monster souls are said to be made of hope, love, and compassion, while humans’ souls “don’t need [love, hope, and compassion] to exist”. This might be old hearsay or propaganda given new appeal by the war, though it could also have been made for the second war itself.

Complicating the matter, monsters aren’t very familiar with real humans: many can’t even recognize Frisk as human. It’s likely most monsters think of humans as just nigh-legendary “bad guys”, given the war, the sealing underground, and Asriel’s death1.

If Frisk doesn’t kill anyone in the Neutral Route, Toriel takes the throne and makes a new policy: any humans that fall down will be treated as friends. However, if Undyne or Papyrus (who both recognized as Frisk as human and wanted to kill/capture them) are killed, Toriel will be deposed or resign peacefully. It’s likely monsters hold humans to unfairly high standards out of prejudice, to the point monsters consider humans a threat even if an otherwise nice human kills just once in self-defense. It’s likely this obstacle exists because cutting off empathy for humans makes it easier for monsters to get the freedom they want. Yet, it’s illogical to hate all humans, not just humans responsible for awful things.

Part 1 → Part 2 → Part 3

“Monsters and Humans”, a game two slime kids in Snowdin play, might support this perception, assuming it parallels the outdated Cops and Robbers-esque game “Cowboys and Indians”, where one also plays as historical enemies. To be fair, one of the slime kids is eager to play the game with real humans; depending on how the slime intends to play it, this might actually be a sign of low prejudice ↩︎

[argentdandelion]

Reasons Papyrus Would Kill a Human

HorrorTale Papyrus picture. From Sour-Apple-Studios.(The following post is a response to this reblog chain. It was impossible to reblog directly without making the post far too long.)

HorrorTale is a work that takes place after the Empress Undyne ending. The CORE, which produces all the Underground’s magic and also all/most of its food supply, has unexpectedly shut down. No one is able to fix it. A long time passes; food supplies diminish. The Underground is starving. After an argument with Undyne, Sans announces a new “policy”: any humans that fall down will be harvested for food, rather than SOULs.1

In this response chain, the posters characterize HorrorTale Papyrus as a ruthless, sadistic madman, and claim he has to be like this because he is starving.

Personality

Consider Papyrus’s personality traits. He is a “skeleton with high standards”, whose puzzles are very fair. He wants to be “prestigious, powerful, and popular”. He wants to be “popular”, in the sense of having lots of friends, most of all, to the point he befriends Frisk for sharing his love of puzzles.

He’s compassionate to the point of offering mercy to a human he knows has murdered a whole lot of people, possibly even people he knew. Related to this (and possibly high self-control) is how he is the only monster in the game who cannot ever kill Frisk; even Toriel can kill Frisk by accident. Rather than killing Frisk, Papyrus will capture Frisk when Frisk is at 1 HP and then put them in a shed. When Frisk (who Papyrus is trying to capture to achieve his goals) escapes, Papyrus even gets worried about Frisk.

However, in the words of Insanelyadd, “this man [HorrorTale Papyrus] would trick you into jumping into a bear trap and laugh and then eat you”.

This sadistic nature is the opposite of how Papyrus acts. Those before me have made the argument he has to have this sort of personality to do what must be done, but, beyond warping the integrity of his characterization, I find this implausible.

Reasons

Saving Monsters

Papyrus does not have to be sadistic and insane to be dangerous to humans. Though he might let himself starve to death rather than abandon his principles and kill humans, what about others? Would he let others die when he could have saved them? This has, in fact, happened before in HorrorTale, even to children and people Papyrus would know (i.e., Dogamy). If killing one human would save multiple people from starvation, would Papyrus act upon his compassion?

Furthermore, if he knew people would love and admire him for providing food, it could be even more of an incentive. He gives up on capturing Frisk because he learns he can get what he wants (friendship) by befriending Frisk instead. In contrast, in HorrorTale he could obviously get what he wants by killing a human and giving away the meat.

Saving Humanity

Still, perhaps Papyrus thinks killing a human isn't worth saving monsters (for a while) or becoming popular. But...what if he thinks him killing humans is the best option for humans, too?

Papyrus has very good control over his magic. Even when distracted talking about Sans and eventually being in the Royal Guard, he produces fast, complicated bullet patterns, bullet constructions, and great numbers of bullets. (In fact, he can make his bullets move as fast as Sans'.) He can even inflict zero damage: no one else, not even Toriel, can do this.

Some monsters' patterns, compared to Papyrus's, are crude, slow, or weak. If Papyrus kills the human, he can ensure her death will be quick and painless. Indeed, he could probably kill a human so quickly the human wouldn't even know what was happening, sparing them the stress of the situation.

The biggest reason he'd kill a human, though, is his niceness. Undyne is much more committed to war with humanity than Asgore. Undyne surely won't wait to collect seven SOULs: she'll absorb just one, pass through the Barrier, and probably get the rest by killing humans. After that, she'll have the power of a god, and monsters will be at war with humanity.

But if Papyrus kills a human, he can absorb the human's SOUL. With the human's SOUL, he can leave for the Surface, bring back food, and politely ask (or barter with) humans for some SOULs of recently-dead humans. He knows Undyne won't be so merciful.

Ergo, if Papyrus kills one human, he can prevent any more monsters and humans from dying with a minimum of suffering, and improve all their lives. (though mostly monsters' lives)

One wonders why they don’t do both. Do some vigilantes absorb human SOULs, try to cross the Barrier, and get killed on the way or on the Surface?On a related note, a theoretical Papyrus in a HorrorTale-like situation might feel happier about his decision to kill a human when he discovers the human is still conscious as an absorbed SOUL. (There's no way he'd know this from the start, though.) Perhaps he’d explain his reasoning, be forgiven, and perform the preferred burial rites with whatever is left of the human’s body after monsters have picked it clean. ↩︎