What is your take on Sans’s “You’d be dead where you stand.” line? I know there are different takes on that, whether it’s an actual threat, or a warning not to push it (I personally like the theory that it’s him reading your expression because you haven’t died a single time, “what’s with that look. am i wrong?”)
What do you think was going through Sans’s head, what he was planning and what he’s goals where?
It's a weird line, and one that only keeps feeling more out of place the more we learn about Sans.
It's clear nowadays how hesitant Sans is to fight at all (especially after the UT anniversary stream) so it's incredibly unlikely that there was much weight behind the threat. Yes, he'll fight you under the most dire circumstances, but he already knows he's doomed if you don't just get bored or frustrated. I don't think he'd threaten/entice you into a fight he knows he can't win.
It was less clear at the time the game came out. How much did the promise change how he would've behaved? What are his real motivations? That sort of thing. Maybe adding to the mystery of Sans was also some of the "point" of the line being so intense. I've talked before about it being important for Sans to be a somewhat grey character for his judgment at the end to be effective.
So my guess for the context of that line now? He's not talking about himself, being eager to kill you or anything. He's saying that without Toriel caring about you first, he wouldn't have cared about you, and then maybe without Sans' slight encouragement Papyrus wouldn't have cared about you. Without Papyrus, you don't get the date with Undyne, and so on...
It's not "if I hadn't sworn otherwise, I would've killed you." It's "this world would've been crueler without someone caring." There's a Toby quote from the anniversary stream about "caring because someone I care about cares" being an important concept that I think ties in here.
The end of the Sans dinner date ends with the line "take care of yourself, kid, 'cause someone really cares about you".
It could be just Toriel he's talking about. Or-- depending on your run-- everyone in the chain, including himself.
So maybe it's a (spooky) reminder that one person being kind can cascade into many people being kind. Maybe he's trying to remind you not to take Toriel being the 1st person in the cascade for granted. He's hoping you'll keep caring, because a world where you don't-- a world where no one does-- is one that's bleak and ends in nothing.
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