its lonely out here, socrates

what is a kiss (17 pages)

cont. below - CW Blood + Gore

So the name 'Ralsei' originates with 'Ralse', the name of a character meant to represent Toby in a video game made by one of his brothers in RPG Maker when they were kids, and predates UTDR entirely.

But then 'Ralsei' becomes 'Asriel', named for Azrael, the Islamic angel of death.

But THEN, 'Asriel' breaks down into 'AS' 'RIEL', in canon named by Asgore by combining the names 'Asgore' and 'Toriel', meaning that Toby must've derived the names 'Asgore' and 'Toriel' FROM 'Asriel'.

But then the name 'Toriel' is, itself, a joke on the word 'tutorial', since she's the tutorial character in Undertale.

We don't have a definite, confirmed reason for Asgore's name, but there's a few explanations out there ('Aegros', 'Sage or Murderer', etc).

That it wasn't what led to his divorce from Toriel. That we're not doing a direct parallel behind the termination of their marriage in the 'Undertale' Universe (by having Asgore do a Very Bad Thing and Toriel leaving in moral outrage and disgust), but instead subverting it by going for something totally mundane and ordinary. And that actually, it's Asgore divorce came first and that led him to spiral down and lose his job.

And I've been thinking about this theory again after Chapter 3. With Tenna, who is on some level a stand-in for Asgore's Divorced Behavior in a similar fashion to how Queen was a stand-in for Carol's overcontrolling parenting, self-destructively tanking his show and his relationship with all of his employees in a desperate attempt to keep the Fun Gang and Toriel from leaving him...

if you look closely, ralsei is in front of both susie and kris here.

ralsei is the only one to not have a solo boss fight (kris vs spamton, susie vs gerson...also kris vs eram).

the color green is a recurring pattern in the trailer, asgore is all but stated to play a major role in ch5... ralsei hasn't had any solo focus despite susie and the narrative wanting to find more about him...