#just finking.... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alyimoss · 2 months

Note

I don’t actually know anything about your underswap I’d love to hear about it!

explodes ok so.

this ended up being the length of the average one-shot so it has to go under the cut

tbf my underverse is not super developed. i mostly just have. sans, papyrus, alphys, and undyne figured out (though not fully) and the rest im still thinking through. but nevertheless i love my swaps and would die for them.

between those four, the swaps are pretty standard (so sans and papyrus swap, and so do alphys and undyne), but they generally have a bit more like?? backstory as to why they are the way that they are?? my underswap is like. base ut but something went sideways and now shit's weird. so these characters, for the most part, started out like their classic counterparts, and this is why my swaps have more of their base ut traits than some other swaps.

like- for example, my swap papyrus started out more or less like classic papyrus. he's energetic and ambitious and he puts his all into the things that he does and he believes in everyone!! but he lets his reality wear him down more than classic: where classic keeps up his "fake it til you make it" kind of attitude towards his own popularity and just keeps trying even if he fails, my swap pap realizes that no matter what he does, he's not the person he wants to be. he wants to be the cool popular guy that everyone wants to be friends with, but… through years of rejection and failure, he eventually resigns himself to just being some fucking guy. not important. forgettable.

so he stops trying. he stops trying to make friends, trying to put himself out there, etc. the thought of joining the royal guard doesnt even cross his mind because he'd preemptively decided that its pointless — he wont get in and hell just make a fool of himself trying. why bother? the funny thing, though, is that, as a papyrus, i guess he can never truly stop trying, because he kind of does a 180 here. instead of being some cool extrovert popular guy, he assumes the persona of just the average guy. he masks his effort levels, trying to make it seem like he's someone who really doesnt try that hard (because he doesnt want to look like a tryhard), so like for example, where classic papyrus speaks in all caps to show his effort (and classic sans, conversely, speaks in all lowercase to show the exact opposite thing), my swap papyrus speaks with proper capitalizations because thats what normal, average people do!! and hes just a perfectly normal, average guy… just your average, completely forgettable rando…

i guess at his core, hes someone influenced wildly by shame and a fear of being his true self, because he doesnt see that self as being worthy enough because it doesnt fit his specific criteria (this is smthn that also applies to classic papyrus, at least to a certain extent, but thats not what im here to yap abt)

and then his spiral into depression is what pushes my swap sans into becoming a proper swap. he, like classic, knows about the timeline and resets and whatnot, and has, too, given up. why bother? nothing matters. except then he looks around and he sees the townspeople notice. his friends at the bar ask if hes okay, and when he blatantly lies to them, he can feel their hopes dwindle. he feels the whole town almost become darker, heavier. he cant fathom himself having this kind of impact on others, but he feels it and even if its not his fault, if its just a byproduct of them all being stuck underground for so damn long, he feels like hes doing something wrong. he feels guilty. and then he sees papyrus. his brother, who had always shined like the brightest star in the sky, giving up and losing hope and hiding away from the world. and sans feels responsible.

so he does the only thing he can think of — he decides to try. of course, that doesnt mean that he actually feels any better. he doesnt think this will do anything in the larger scheme of things. but he cant stand seeing his brother like that. he cant stand the guilt. and so he becomes more like classic papyrus — he enrolls in the guard, he makes rounds around snowdin, he cooks and cleans and drags his brother out of the house with him. and even if he has no energy and he feels like hes drowning but the waves are still crashing on top of him one after the other, he keeps going because anything is better than the feeling of failure.

this is where id go in on his backstory and why he feels this way about failure, but. i kind of. dont have anything. and anyway i keep these two's backstories brief in most aus bc canonically we do not know what the fuck is up w them and i dont know if we ever will. and really im fine with that, the mystery makes them. but yeah anyway, due to circumstances, my swap sans is riddler with guilt and the fear of failure, and he will do anything to prove he is not a failure, that he can at least do something right.

oh and also speaking of guilt, papyrus notices this change in his brother. and he recognizes that he has a part in it. and as grateful as he is for his brother's attempts to cheer him up, he also feels immensely guilty because he can see better than anyone else in the whole underground just how much his brother's self-imposed duty weighs on him. he blames himself for letting himself get so bad that now his brother is suffering from it as well, but he also cant get any better. cue the self-loathing cycle. anyway, as a result, he ends up sharing less with sans. its a means of lessening his burden — if he doesnt know the things going wrong in papyrus's life, he wont have to waste time and energy on him and wont have to have more on his already overloaded plate!! its the perfect plan except they drift apart and now their closeness feels so surface-level and papyrus feels guilty about lying and he knows his brother is still worried, perhaps moreso now that he knows less and he's so scared theyll drift further apart but he's committed fully to this so he just keeps digging the hole and he doesnt know how to stop. (theyre still close, but less so than the classic bros, id say)

ok enough abt those two alphyne time.

these two are actually. less developed. and theres one specific part ill talk abt a bit later that im rlly not sure what to do with. but anyway. they, too, had their original roles at first. undyne, the rambunctious, hotheaded kid who kept getting into fights and couldnt sit still long enough to read one paragraph, and alphys, the nerdy kid who practically lived at the dump, collecting comics and anime… and yeah they somehow ended up the royal scientist and head of the royal guard, respectively.

i havent fully thought through why undyne would end up the scientist, but itd probably have something to do with injury. she keeps her eye injury in my swap. but as evidenced by base ut, a simple missing eye cant stop undyne! so she probably had a more. extensive injury, likely coupled with other factors. im not fully sure what happens, but what i am sure of is i want her to have a similar focus on robotics as alphys. she decides that if she cant fulfill the hopes and dreams of monsterkind on the frontlines, she'll become a different kind of hero. i think she mostly makes prosthetics, likely coupling them with weaponry bc thats just cool. she finds the best ways to combine mobility and magic efficiency and is widely respected by monsters for what she does (also, if youre wondering why monsters would need prosthetics when they have op healing and are made of magic, it comes from my personal theory that the longer a wound is left unhealed, the harder it is to heal it perfectly. so like, for example, it's possible to use magic healing to do things like reattach limbs. it will work as long as the recipient of the healing isnt dead. however, this reattachment needs to happen quick. depending on how long you wait, you could lose significant mobility in the limb, or just not be able to attach it at all. also, theres monsters like monster kid who dont have certain limbs. so i guess where some monsters get prosthetics to replace lost body parts, others get them to have entirely new body parts. anyway.)

meanwhile, alphys becomes a guard through a series of events. i think she signs up to be a sentry in hotland or something at first, because positions were open and they didnt exactly have many requirements, and she needed money. she ended up being like- exceptional. she's detail oriented and driven and is good at problem-solving, and her reviews were always stellar, so at some point i think she was approached about a promotion. which i think she took because, again, money. i think the guard has good benefits and pay.

to explain how she becomes the head of the guard, i want to take a moment to talk abt the guard in my swap. because toriel is the queen and is not thrilled at the prospect of killing humans, i think the guard isnt a thing at all until a couple humans in. i think several were less than friendly, killing several monsters. at first, when people brought this up, i think toriel would defend the humans by saying that they were just scared or acting in self-defense etc. but 1) i doubt monsters particularly liked their ruler defending people who killed their loved ones and 2) the human that got the guard established was. probably pretty bad. dont ask me which soul this was, i wont tell you bc i dont know. but they killed a sizeable number of monsters, to the point where not even toriel could defend them. they were probably the only human she killed (ill get to that later). after their death, the guard was established. still not really to kill humans as much as to ensure they got to the queen quickly and safely, as well as to protect monsters in case a particularly violent human fell down.

anyway yeah with this context, alphys was more fitting to be the head of the royal guard than undyne, id say. she's less violent and more mindful than undyne. i think toriel herself talked to her about becoming head of the guard. she said no at first, i think. she still had her ambitions of being a scientist, she was just doing this whole guard thing for the money. i think what pushed her to accepting was undyne getting the position of royal scientist.

this is another part im. not fully sure of. theres something that gets toriel's attention in regard to undyne, but i really dont know what. maybe just her reputation as someone who's making monster lives better day by day. toriel wants to give someone like that more resources and more voice as hope dwindles in the underground (i think its a bot of a more bleak situation in underswap like theyre just. sad. for reason and not. because where in base ut the underground is full of hope because they only need one human soul before theyre freed, interspersed with quiet dread because they dont know when they'll get that final soul, i think its more of the latter in my swap. theres more reason to this but ill touch on that in a bit).

anyway yeah undyne becomes the royal scientist and alphys is like welp. and accepts the position of head of the royal guard on the condition that she is trained to fight (as a member of the guard already, she had some training, but being the head is like. a whole other ballpark, yknow?) and yeah she as a character is. still pretty unsure of herself. she's a bit more confident than classic alphys because of her position and her training, but she's still got a lotta self-loathing and self-esteem issues. she still has her stutter, but she's managed to work through it enough to give speeches and shit without stuttering. catch her off-guard tho and she'll stutter and generally be kinda awkward (her stutter is like one of my fav things abt her as someone who also has a stutter i will never get rid of it ever).

she's very unsure of herself as a leader and constantly wonders if shes worthy of this position. she thinks she got it by pure luck when someone better suited couldve gotten it instead. i think she felt very resentful at the beginning, too. abt someone else getting the job of royal scientist before her. and its interspersed with the self loathing like "of course someone else got it before you, what did you ever do to work towards it? god, why did you accept this job? you shouldve just done fast food or something. or just stuck to science as best you couldve. god, no wonder someone got it before you. youre not worthy of it." i think she held a sort of resentment toward undyne too at first, but after they met and she realized that undynes. kinda chill, actually, she felt incredibly guilty about it. its not like she did this on purpose, she doesnt deserve this hatred…

anyway yeah shes head of the royal guard and she hires sans and trains him and their training is half actual training and half just fucking around and watching anime/movies and whatever. and her training/fighting i think are more. formulaic than classic undyne's. she's more about plan and strategy than raw power. also her section would still be in hotland. mostly because i didnt want to put undyne in hotland bc she hates it. lmao.

anyway undyne!! i think she has some regrets about not being able to become the hero she'd dreamed of being, but she also has come to accept her new role. she's more or less satisfied being who she is. she's one of the few characters who doesnt really feel that pressure of "was i supposed to be something else?" in this au. because at the end of the day, her goal stays the same: help monsterkind and crush humanity!! and she can do that as a nerd, too. i think toriel isnt too thrilled abt her attitude toward humans, but theres not much she can do abt it. i think the underswap underground is generally like. slightly less hostile to humans than undertale? (because the queen doesnt want humans dead, but monsters remember the hurt theyve suffered at the hands of humans) but undyne grew up on stories of the war from gerson and stuff like that, so she feels pretty strongly abt who's right and who's wrong and what should be done about that. i do also think she knows asgore, but this is a part im not fully sure of because i dont fucking know what to do with asgore.

also alphyne are still canon of course they are. this isnt glitchtale. they probably also meet at the dump, as alphys is contemplating things and undyne is searching around for junk to work on. and they talk and share their theories about where that creepy void leads. and they start hanging out and alphys shows undyne anime (and inspires her to go crazier with her prosthetics and other robotics works) and they work on battle strategies as a way of flirting /hj. and theres one problem that they kinda share bc i dont know what to do with it. that being the amalgamates.

so its unclear if the amalgamates would even exist in this au actually, but if they do i have two routes i can go with them i think: 1) undyne is the one responsible for them, but she doesnt lie and hide about it (not that i think she could do that much bc toriel would be expecting reports and stuff). she tells everyone whats going on, letting them see their families and whatnot, but still working on them and trying to figure out how to. fix them. and as a result theres just. amalgamates shambling around the underground sometimes. and the last human runs into them sometimes and gets freaked out and it serves as this foreshadowing moment to who undyne is as a character and serves to paint her as someone absolutely terrifying (which isnt necessarily true but also not necessarily untrue). or 2) alphys is the one responsible.

deciding to do one final science thing because fuck it, shes got nothing to lose (she has everything to lose), she decides to try to make a monster's soul last after death. how would she do this in a position where she cant easily get access to the things she'd need? god fucking knows. the main thing about this route is that it adds even more guilt to alphys's plate, which is pretty fitting for her as a character. and also guilt hi hello another guilt mention. this seemed more thought out in my head moving on.

some minor details abt this swap also are that mtt and mew mew are swapped, and mew mew is a popular streamer (and livestreams herself kicking your ass); bp and catty and bratty are swapped just bc i think its funny; grillby and muffet are in a weird territory of swap. i think theyre swapped but still in the same places as base game (bc grillby likes the cold and muffet will literally die dont do this to her), and maybe grillby gets the miniboss instead of muffet (she just forces you to give her money lolol).

and now the final thing: the dreemurrs. listen. i do not know what the fuck to do with these guys. they kinda fuck with the whole story if swapped in ways that are. not good at all. im including chara and frisk in "the dreemurrs" btw for reasons.

because like- we know what toriel would do if she was queen. she tells us. she would get one soul, cross the barrier, get six more, and then free the underground. and if she did that, there would be no story to tell. so. and asgore couldnt just lock himself in the ruins or smthn like toriel does in base ut, because toriel would break that fucking door down trying to get to him because she knows the humans come from the ruins, and she does not trust asgore in the slightest. and i dont even want to touch on the implications of asriel being alive in underswap. so i do not know what to do with him period. chara and frisk seem like a simple swap, but. theyre still distinct characters, whose personalities and actions do have an effect on the plot of undertale. and swapping them has repercussions. mostly in shit like philosophy which im notoriously bad at. so for now im just not thinking abt them.

ok back to toriel and asgore. i have like. an inkling of an idea as to what to do with them. that idea being that asgore, angry after the deaths of his children, wants to wage war, but toriel gets wind of the idea before he's able to make an official declaration, and grows absolutely disgusted with him. she banishes him and assumes the position of single ruler of the underground. i honestly dont know what to do with asgore past this point, but i do know that at least in the beginning, he is under strict supervision (likely by gerson bc gerson).

so what does toriel do as queen? she waits for a human to fall. she welcomes them as she did the first one. she does not take their soul. she cares for them and gives them the best life she can. as they grow older, she talks to them about using their soul to cross the barrier after they die. and they agree. the first (second) human dies of old age after a good, peaceful life in the underground. toriel absorbs their soul, crosses the barrier… and is nearly killed by the humans, still fearful and angry because it hasn't been that long since the last time they saw a monster. she goes back, deciding to instead wait a little longer. in that time, another human falls, then another… but after the first soul, i think most dont die of old age. several die by accident, several are killed in self defense. as mentioned above, at some point the guard is established due to the violence of one of the humans. toriel doesnt absorb these souls, instead keeping them safe in containment.

we know that when a human's soul is absorbed, they still persist (as evidenced by 1) asriel telling us that chara told him to do things and had control over their body when he absorbed their soul and 2) the photoshop flowey fight), i think toriel kind of feared losing herself and/or hurting the humans somehow by absorbing their souls. and with some of the more violent humans, i think the fears of losing herself grew stronger. so yeah she chooses to wait until the humans no longer fear/want to kill monsters or whatever.

and this has influence on the underground of course because imagine your ruler acquires the necessary means to cross the seal trapping you underground and you think that finally, finally youre free!! and then she comes right back like "yeah uh actually they still want us dead so lets wait a bit longer…"

how crushing is that? knowing that not only was your freedom a lie, you now know for sure that the humans outside want you dead? that chances are that even if you do manage to leave the underground, youll either be killed or forced right back under? this i think is a major reason the underswap underground is lacking in hope compared to the undertale underground. but yeah i. dont know if ill end up going with this, actually. because, again, i do not know what the fuck to do with the dreemurrs and i hate it.

another thing im not sure of is the whole "sans's promise to toriel" thing?? bc i kinda still wanna have that in some form, yknow? and i think it works if he's a guard and shes the queen. he visits her at some point to do a report or smthn (maybe bc alphys is busy who knows) and he notices shes looking kinda gloomy. so he gives her his best knock knock joke and she absolutely loves it. so he keeps going and then she gives him a couple of her own and yeah you get it. i just like sans and toriel they are the besties ever.

anyway yeah i think?? thats it?? for now, anyway. i probably forgot to mention smthn but who cares this is like. wayyyy too fucking long already anyways. thank you for letting me yap, i will continue to do so… forever.

#underswap #idk what to call my underswap so its just underswap #finking #RAMBLING #thank you for the ask!!

22 notes · View notes