"Love your ego, you won't feel a thing."

sans is now the main character. he is the only character that matters and all the other characters and events revolve around him. he is the most powerful, best scientist, biggest hero and no one is better than him but he’s also tortured and angsty

papyrus has no character other than being a helpless baby that sans has to valiantly protect at all times and he dies a lot and sans gets angsty.

toriel also has no character outside of being sans’s love interest, and also dying a lot and making sans angsty. also she makes no mistakes has no character flaws and you can’t possibly hate her.

frisk becomes a side character and is essentially the same as papyrus except with determination.

asgore is a creepy sad stalker ex-husband to toriel and did everything wrong and is meant to be laughed at and/or hated.

alphys is just a walking anime joke and also she did everything wrong and should be hated, and also all her scientific accomplishments are now sans or gaster’s work instead

gaster is a spooky ghost and another reason for sans to angst but that’s it.

undyne is loud. thats it.

mettaton no longer has his calculator form, he is always in ex form, and every line of his dialogue is about legs

flowey has no personality other than evil.

asriel has no personality other than sad goat child.

                           “ ooh, so you’re a punny guy, eh ? a girl after my own fart. ”

                           Sans chuckled at his own joke before looking around at the restaurant’s patrons.

                           “ alright, i’ve got a job to do, so we’re gonna have to actually go through with this whole ‘showing you around’ thing. so, you’re gonna be a waitress…right ? ”

“I got the jist for it, at the least.”

He... how is he employed here? Is he a friend of someone important? Is he owed something in the form of secure employment? Is this place just that laid back? Sans not only came off as weird to her but he didn’t seem like someone who cared or paid attention to details by his questions. How is he supposed to train her? Is it possible to make a side comment to the manager about it later? ...Probably not.

She was lost in her overflowing thoughts, it took her awhile to reply to him, perhaps a bit too (and awkwardly) long.

“Uh. A little bit of everything...”

* alright, alright, i’m coming.

As they left the tunnel, Sans realized what he’d been too caught up to notice before — the stars above them were real. Not glowing hunks of rock a few feet above their heads, but actual stars far out in space. He stopped for a moment to stare at the open sky he hadn’t seen for years before stumbling forward again.

* we–we’re on the surface?

* We got up here a few years ago, yeah. You said you had a travel machine or whatever, right?

* Time machine--I vaguely recall. I remember the scientists talking about it briefly before it was abandoned....

Not that either one wanted to get into detail about it, it sounded like one big headache. The female of the pair remembered that ‘paradoxes’ alone sounded like a pain but... it was gonna be a bit of a walk anyway, so.

* This uh--if I’m thinking correctly, counts as some sorta paradox where the plan wasn’t abandoned or something else?

flavor text Chara is excellent

      “ My child, what is bothering you? You can            tell me. ”

For the first time in awhile Chara felt doubt and uncertainty. She averted her eyes and hesitated, but in a moment she locked her red eyes with Toriel’s and felt compelled to tell her the truth.

“Well, um. Santa isn’t real... I was told this when I was eight and... I’ve gone years without Santa, presents, or a ‘Merry Christmas’. --I won’t ruin it for Asriel or the others, though.”

“Unless... it’s just that human Santa isn’t real and the monsters do have one.”

Number 1: Flowey can uproot himself if he wants to. Pulling him out of the ground is painful, and he’s still a scaredy-cat crybaby to an extent– If you’re insistent on putting him in a pot, and he can’t fight you, he’ll uproot himself and go into the pot on his own.

(and somehow dragging himself away??? i have never understood that line.)

it is interesting to think about how much of asriel is left in flowey. not much, but there are some shreds of who he used to be. i wonder how many “pacifist” routes he must have gone through before becoming so sick and tired of it?

flowey really does show some traits of the player. what i mean by that is - a player might go through every possible pacifist run. like, challenging themself by never saving, never getting hit, only using the bandage and stick, etc etc for all those challenges sans will comment on. and then, people get bored - they’ve done everything…maybe they could try getting all the variations on the neutral routes?

so they do that. and then, they do all possible neutral routes with all of those challenges just to see how sans reacts.

and they do it again and again. but, they’re so bored of this game…but they really do want to see what would happen, if they did a genocide route…they don’t really want to do it, they just want to see what happens, right?

flowey literally did the same thing. he explored the entire underground. he discovered everything this world had to offer until there was nothing left. then he started killing people. then he started killing everyone. people can recognize this as wrong, and an example of how twisted flowey had become - but they don’t understand that the point of this is to reflect on THEM.

honestly, people get so worked up and upset about a “ruined game” when…the only difference at all is a few seconds after the credits have ended. there are so many tutorials literally titled “Consequence Avoidance” that take so much effort to do something that will modify nothing but a few seconds at the very end of the true pacifist route.

(and also what chara tells you at the end of a second genocide route, but that isn’t particularly important to anyone.)

it’s because they don’t want to admit it. they don’t want to face the consequences. they feel guilty for killing people they have befriended, but it’s not really them. it was chara. flowey specifically calls people out on this, but no, “It was Chara! Chara did all of this, Chara was controlling Frisk!” etc, etc.

the thing that amuses me is, “Chara took your soul because they want to go to the surface and kill everyone there!” chara doesn’t want your soul. they want the world to stay dead, but you, as a player, have more power, and that’s the only consequence they can take.

They would make friends with the grouchy old grocery clerk because they are the only competent worker of their age group.

Chara gets promoted to front end manager despite their request to be transferred to the store bakery so they don’t have to deal with customers.

Chara ruling over the front end with a fist of iron, takes no crap from the other workers, but is also super supportive and patient with the ones who are trying to do their jobs and will defend them from ornery/impatient customers, and is not afraid to wage psychological warfare while wearing a store ordinated smile on their face.

But when they finally quit their job (or get fired for wrestling a violent drunk out of the store) they get Asriel and Frisk to roll them out of the store in a shopping cart chariot yelling “Farewell, peasants!”

* i’m sans. sans the skeleton. of course i’m a monster.

There didn’t seem to be any harm in telling the truth. He stood slowly, not wanting to alarm any of the soldiers. The sheer number of monsters would overwhelm him if they panicked, and a simple warning shot could be an unintentional death blow for him.

* that thing was supposed to be a time machine. now it’s just a pile of junk.

He kicked the remains of his work angrily. How stupid did someone have to be to make the same mistake twice? Enough of their questions, he wanted answers of his own.

* Uh. Aster castle, dude.

The tallest rabbit then looked to the smallest of the set, she was stereotypically the brains of this particular team.

* Sans... We need you to come with us.

As the small pink rabbit spoke, the others moved to close in on the debris of the ‘time machine’ and block any attempt of Sans running away. Despite the action, they weren’t overly aggressive, there was some trust they had in him for being a fellow monster.

* We will escort you to the queen.

So my seven year old brother loves Undertale. Whenever he wears his winter coat, he puts his hands in his front pockets and giggles while quoting Sans. It’s adorable.

Well, today, I was drawing something to post later when he taps my shoulder. So I look over, and he just lays out these four sheets of paper…

…Do you recognize that last one?

Its Omega Flowey. He drew Omega Flowey’s intro, complete with evil laugh.

So he looked at me, all excited, and said that it was his “Undertale comic” and that I had to put it on “the website” so that people could see it.

   Such a selfless child she had. Well, that wouldn’t do. She would    have to make sure her child was given a wonderful first Christmas    in the underground. Perhaps she would get Asriel to give her ideas    later. Perhaps, though, she could take Chara out to help her pick    out some gifts for Asgore. That could always help her to    understand her child further and get more ideas. 

      “ Hm… Well, I’ll let Santa know then. I’m sure he             already has ideas on what to get you anyways. ”

   She spoke lightly, offering a light smile. Sure, the child was getting    to the age to know Santa was not real, but she didn’t want to risk    stating that if Chara still believed. After all, Asriel still believed and    had been quite excited seeing Santa was a Goat Monster as well.    Toriel picked up her purse, looking back at the child.

Oh... Toriel either didn’t understand the hints she dropped or was persistent in keeping the magic alive. Understandable for a magical person, Chara thinks but... it’s hard for her to play along with it. In her hesitation to tell Toriel that Santa was not real, an invite to get a present for Asgore offered.

“Oh--yeah, sure.”

She was already dressed and was already in a very warm sweater with warm clothes underneath, she could walk out the door right this second but...

yet most people are more than willing to forgive flowey’s crimes and accept he’s a three-dimensional character with a really hecked-up tragic story… but they won’t do the same for chara, simply insisting they’re “a demon” or “a representation of a completionist mindset/the player’s evil actions” or whatever, because in a merciful playthrough chara simply sits peacefully in the background and doesn’t make their presence terribly obvious, unlike flowey

flowey tests your empathy, but it’s what the game wants you to do, and it’s obvious it’s what the game’s expecting you to do. you can spare flowey before knowing their tragic backstory not because you actually want to, or because you think they deserve it, but because you think it’ll lead to a happy ending, or because you heard the game’s about pacifism so you know it’s the Right Thing To Do, or for a million other reasons.

even after knowing their tragic backstory, you can still go through the whole process of sparing them and talking to asriel and being like “OH MY GOD ASRIEL I WISH I COULD SAVE YOU” and even then still have learned nothing. you can still reset the world and go for a no mercy run just because you can, even though it proves what sans say about you not caring about good or evil. even though it undoes everything the true ending stood for.

and toby knew that. so he puts in another character who, as flowey acknowledges time and time again, is flowey’s mirror image. but toby doesn’t ask you to be kind to them. he doesn’t ask you to think about what they went through. he doesn’t put in front of you their tragic backstory, or a choice to spare them, or a big boss fight where they monologue about their real feelings.

instead, he does the complete opposite. when they talk at the end of no mercy, their dialogue is menacing. they call themselves a demon. in their backstory they hurt a character you care about and seemingly laugh about it. they seemingly murder all the characters you care about if you try to “fix” things after doing no mercy. they literally steal your soul.