probably rue

before i can talk about horrordust (my version), i have to talk about the other duos in the trio first 🙂🙂🙂

in my preferred kist dynamic, it's very much that they're also opposites of each other but also not. murder believes himself to be the savior of the underground - the angel that would free everyone - while killer (depending on which ending he got) believes himself to be the vessel for the angel (which can be either the player or chara, also depending on what interpretations you believe). in one of the posts i made about kist, it's interesting to see killer easily slotted into the role of the player/human in murder's story; and i also think it's interesting to see murder assume the role of chara/nightmare in killer's story. both of these scenarios will not end well or happily of course, but that's how thematically intertwined murder and killer are, how similar yet drastically different their stories are. again, i don't usually ship characters to be explicitly romantic - it's interesting to see characters interact, overlap, contradict, and transform each other. kist can have such a fascinating introspection angle when explored more deeply (in my humble, slightly fanon-adjacent opinion that is) - they both suffer from timeloops and player manipulation for enjoyment, they both kill people close to them, they're both changed beyond recognition.

and yet, the interesting thing is that deep down killer doesn't want to do it - he wants to be "sans" again, for whatever that's worth. and "sans", in killer's memories and feelings, is good, moral, happy, and doesn't kill. more importantly, no sanses would kill their papyrus. and yet, murder does, over and over again by his own willingness. and this is where that sweet contradiction comes in. by this rule, does that mean murder is not a "sans", not in killer's view at least? more fascinating is that murder does hate "sans", his past self that is. he wants to be detached from that version, but he can't, not fully. the past will always haunt him, because he keeps repeating it - the same days over and over again until nothing is real anymore but his single goal of stopping the human forever.

i think the question of identity, of what "sans" is supposed to be, is further complicated by horror, who is, by all means, a sans. if my kist dynamic is the interplay of sex and violence, all vitriolic against each other in an attempt to dominate and win, then horrorkiller is the more psychological game of memory and identity. murder and dusttale are utterly disinterested in the past, but horrortale is very much hinged on the question of who is the one responsible for the debacle that tears them apart: is it sans, undyne, or alphys? how could horror live with the fact that he might be responsible for the way the underground is right now? maybe like the other two, he has to compartmentalize it - to blame someone else, something else, for his involvement and failure. but he doesn't cease to be "sans", unlike the other two. he's himself, he's fully himself when he decides to doom the underground in his revenge. because, unlike what killer wants to hear, "sans" is selfish. "sans" is a coward who only knows to retaliate when things get terrible for him. "sans" doesn't do anything to save anyone unless he's forced to. "sans" is not the moral good that killer wants to believe in, no matter how much he wants to fix it. horror is a sans, but it's not the "sans" killer is looking for.

and i think this is where horrordust might get interesting - there's a discourse between them about the meaning of sacrifice and salvation. murder takes it unto himself to be the savior of the underground, to burden himself with knowledge of so many timelines, so many deaths, so much senseless cruelty to end what he thinks is the "evil" of the world - and here he's the "good" side, the lesser evil to vanquish the bigger evil. and horror needs someone else to save him and the underground, because he sure as hell won't do it. his life, in his mind, is not worth it - not worth saving everyone over. there's an inherent selfishness in horror that would claw at murder for sure. maybe ignorance is not bliss after all - it's just blindness to the suffering you've caused.