#ceruleanalysis

kris's knife has been shown and focused on over and over again, most explicitly by aqua in ch5. this far into the game it is incredibly strange that kris's knife has not shown up in the dark world. or it would be strange, if "eram" wasn't kris's knife.

this mention of a knife (THE knife) was always suspect, but without further context it was just a one-off. now, we can use that in conjunction with the new chapter info.

aqua and eram are so similar.

her hair is similar to eram's silhouette

they both frequently laugh and are entertained by the dangerous situations they put kris in

similar personalities, similar appearances... if these similarities are an intentional choice, it's hard to find any other answer than kris's knife. what else could these two have in common but knives?

also, a huge part of this theory is: why does eram know who kris is? what kris has been doing? they know about the weird route. that's huge. how?

(even if the knife part turns out not to be true, i stand by this:) i usually see people write this off just by saying it's information eram has because they're a part of the knight's crew or gaster's pirate gang or whatever the hell. but even in ch3+4 era, this made no sense.

every player knows who the knight is. gaster speaks to you at multiple parts of the game and at game releases, he's huge. friend is harder to find but it is likely that a secret-hunting player can notice them appearing in multiple chapters before going online to watch secrets compilations.

eram appears in one optional boss fight. how are they a part of the major antagonistic/supporting team if they appear once? they're never even mentioned again. their mystery gives them importance, but not that type of importance. eram's personal knowledge of kris is a separate matter than any other group in the conspiracy or outside the game we know about.

so, why do they know so much personal info about kris?

they are clearly the knife.

this is a post i've wanted to make for... a while. i've thought about it a lot since i first ever played the game.

what in the world is going on with undertale yellow's robots?

a preliminary glance says they're not alive. they're robots, they don't have free will, and they don't have souls. the end.

but the more i look at it, the more i feel like that is not the case, at all.

UNDERTALE

you're not supposed to lead with your strongest point or whatever but who cares. even if this was my only argument i would still believe it wholeheartedly.

in undertale. first time playing. you meet the main characters, and if you kill them then it feels like killing. maybe justified, maybe complex, to the player, but there's that awareness the whole time of "that's killing." because they're like people to you!

and then there's the random monsters. you might not even have to justify killing these. they aren't people. they don't matter to begin with. they're just encounters. but then the game tells you, hey, a whimsun has just as much of a rich inner world as toriel does! you selfish brat. someone is dead because of you. and then you say, okay, so killing any encounter is bad, not just main characters.

and then there's flowey, who's a relentless killer and the game tells you he can't feel or anything because he doesn't have a soul. so it's clear to kill him? no!!! despite all the soul research in the underground saying what he should be, you can still see him feel and live and matter.

the best ending for monsterkind is understanding that everyone trapped underground, no matter what your first impression is, matters, and acting on that knowledge.

how antithetical to undertale's world would it be to have encounters that really don't matter? that really aren't alive? to have the only consequence to killing them be that ceroba (the kind of character that would matter even to a player on their first run of undertale) gets mad and you don't get the good ending? this wouldn't just be against what undertale stands for, that is downright disrespectful. that is spitting on undertale's message.

by the themes of undertale, these robots have to be real people. maybe of different intelligence or of different brain operations or of no soul, but real people nonetheless.

Slight Detour: Axis is Sapient

i dont want to dwell on this because he's less vague than the other robots and i feel this is more accepted and more blatant. like, if the developers put up giant signs with arrows pointing to axis and yelled "LOOK AT HOW SAPIENT THIS GUY IS!!!" itd be less obvious than his writing.

axis has so many things pointing to his sapience, not just the fact he is the only robot to give exp, though that one is huge. he feels joy and rage. he has opinions on his battle theme. he blames himself for integrity's death.

and, and and and and and when you spare him, he goes against his programming to give clover, an intruder, full permission to explore the steamworks. this is the only time any robot is shown to go against their programming. i've literally never seen anyone point this out because it is so simple and attention isn't drawn to it at all! he just violates his protocol because him and clover are friends now and the game doesn't say it like it's a big deal but it is! it is a massive deal!

the steamworks employees apparently had fear of romantic attraction making robots become sentient, which you could use to say daisy made him sentient, but he goes against his programming like this in a neutral route, where all clover does is be kind to him. it's not just romance that does this.

regardless of how you feel about the other robots, axis canonically has some degree of sapience.

Wait Oh My God I forgot to Talk About th E Sapience Supression System

i just finished thewhole post and realized i didnt actually talk about the above screenshots OOPS. OOPS.

so robots are not meant to be sapient! i mean that checks out, they were meant to be like, vinyl players and televisions and stuff, and also the axis line was meant for murder, sapience probably wouldn't help with any of that and that last one is actually probably impaired by being sapient.

i don't think this necessarily means robots arent sapient. like yeah the suppression didn't work on axis. but also the robot right next to the lil bot who talks about sentience supression says they want to go on a date with guardener.

they are ignoring guidelines. their asses are noooot having their sentience suppressed. but they are supposed to!

is these bots violating the rule against entering relationships akin to axis violating his protocol to apprehend intruders? ...i don't know, is it? the other two robot rules lil bot #2 says are "robots can't swear" and axis physically cannot and "robots have a programmed fixation" which is never contradicted- is "don't date" meant to be hardwired too? are these two romances actually going against their programming, is it far deeper than it first appears? i dunno! food for thought

okay onto the next

Who Says They're Not Sapient?

two characters say the robots are not sapient. the first is flowey riiiight here.

it goes without saying that every other word out of flowey's mouth is a lie. especially lategame, which means especially in the steamworks. some of his manipulation gets exposed later on, but i personally believe in this case it's just him literally not caring about the robots, a lack of care that neither him nor clover care to explore. you cannot take his words here at face value, but i don't see how i can dig into this any more. if anyone sees something i missed with this sound off.

the second is ceroba. the way she talks about the robots is FASCINATING. first off, here's what she says when clover talks to her after guardener.

this isn't a character sharing lore, this is a woman trying to convince herself to not look back. she is trying to tell herself it's "alright" you can see her trying to tell herself this! this ends up casting even more suspicion on the robots' lack of sapience- if they are simply not real, why does she feel the need to do this?

but it gets BETTER.

unemotional? axis? UNEMOTIONAL??!!!?!!!!?!? AXIS??!!!?!?!?!???!?! put sapience aside for a second axis is the most emotional character in the whole damn game! she calls him unfeeling! axis! unfeeling! is she even playing the same game? cerobas words on the robots can NOT be taken at face value and this alone proves that. and the guardener thing i guess. Unemotional. Ma'am give me a BREAK.

i thought i was done with this but i'm not omg "Closely resembl"ing emotions said about man who died in vengeance route because of his overwhelming all-consuming guilt. she's insulting clover's emotional intelligence here. she's insulting ME. square tf up ceroba

Okay Anyway anywany she says other stuff about robots that aren't directly cast suspicion on by the game but the stuff i said above covers why she's not reliable in those cases either. if you want more then read this section i wrote

god this went on way too long i just LOVE ceroba's opinions on the steamworks

(there is technically a third source that says the robots shouldn't be real- undertale's soul system. since robots have no soul, they're not real, right? that's something that's veery explored with flowey in undertale, while not explored at all in undertale yellow, so i'm not very interested in exploring it here. but with flowey it's not that simple. so i can also say it's not that simple here and move on because i simply see no other way that can be of use.)

but wait- did you know there's a character in undertale yellow who thinks the robots are alive?

it's clover.

they believe they are killing monsters the same as they're killing robots, because they're killing things that are alive, and they know it. they don't need to destroy this pile of scrap. it's already dead.

but just like the other cases, clover is not the most reliable narrator here. they're currently going on a mass murder rampage. just as one can't say flowey's straightforward "they aren't alive" is reliable, one can't say clover's straightforward "they were alive" is reliable. and just like i don't see how to dig in more to flowey's, i don't see how to dig in more to clover's.

i think clover's perspective here is really neat and often overlooked! there's a lot more to how characters talk about the robots than simply "well these guys say they're not sapient so they're not sapient."

What in the Fridge Horror Would the Point of Axis's Ending Be if He's the Only Sapient Guy

look i know he gets with a pile of garbage in pacifist, because he's a FREAK, but what about the full implications about life in the steamworks after he's spared?

he's not leaving, he's a murder bot, he'd be dangerous out there and the world would be dangerous back. the only place he can live is the steamworks.

him saying he's lonely is helped by daisy, sure, but it's not going to be solved by them, he needs to make connections. the shutdown of the steamworks means he lost his purpose, he's going to need to find a new one in the decrepit facility he lives in. how in the world can this

be an hopeful optimistic ending if he's so fundamentally different from the people he's surrounded by? if he's somewhere he will never belong? it wouldn't be! a steamworks where axis is the only one alive would be terrible for him. the neutral ending doesnt even give him daisy, his loneliness is not addressed at all. the writing says neutral is happy for him if he's spared but if he's the only real person there that would not be the case.

this doesn't necessarily mean the other bots are sapient! an "axis is the only sapient bot" interp would be really interesting to explore in depth im so serious!!!! but i feel like people don't really consider how the other robots not being real at all would affect axis, who definitely has some sapience. fanfic writers who make axis the only sapient bot, if this post has not swayed you, please heed my call! consider how that would affect axis's mental state!

idk how to end this

tl;dr:

susie has very little reaction to kris after seeing that prophecy- which, if she just saw they would die, she'd have to. ralsei seems very focused on susie not seeing the prophecy in that moment but doesn't particularly put thought into kris seeing it. which would make sense if he's distracted and it's not kris who is written to die. but even if he was distracted, if kris is the one who'd die, he'd still be thinking about them. and his speech when kris talks to him on the shattered prophecy is a very "ralsei should think about his OWN feelings too" moment, but he'd... still very much talk about kris, specifically, at all, if they'd die? but he doesn't. he just talks about them and susie as a group, and mentions their piano-playing at the end. the piano bit is the only reason i can see it at all but it's three textboxes, that is not enough to make me think it can be them.

a decent amount of susie's character so far has been around growing to be friends with other people, rather than pushing them away. the original prophecy having her make a heroic sacrifice for the world would be a fitting resolution or whatever, but that's not the story she would pursue. the story she would pursue would be about defying that fate. that would make her story all about herself again, when it's not just herself. it hasn't been only for her since she met lancer.

i know ralsei is the perfect martyr—he talks so much about giving everything to the party and taking away their pain!—but i'm the most certain that it can't be him, just based on susie's reaction. she's really worried about ralsei and how he thinks of himself as "lesser" throughout the entire chapter. when she says "and obviously [ralsei] wouldn't let it happen," that is pure confidence. if his lack of value towards his own life she witnessed over chapters 3 and 4 just got combined with the fact that the prophecy he believes in said he would die, she would be freaked out. but she has nothing to say on that. it's not him.

this is INSANE to me because she's WRONG

subjective mother in grieving vs objective narrator text? yeah she has something left.

other people have talked about him trying to get clover to fight the king. that's what he's been doing reset after reset. grim dreamer has a good video that discusses that here that i recommend if you're curious since i won't dwell on the "getting them to fight the king" bit.

i'm talking about one method he uses for this goal: he tries to plant in clover's mind that he's their only friend and the monsters around them can't be trusted. this happens throughout the entire game, but just gets more and more obvious as it progresses.

one of his earlier acts is painting martlet as a guard who ruined clover's plan and then ditched them...

and he progresses onto saying "Cowboy roleplaying's a stupid roadblock! You're better than everyone here and shouldn't spend time around them." that leads onto...

Good lord this part! "It's awful that fox lady is around you because it means you can't talk to ME! She ROPED you into a detour, hahaa like you'd WANT to go with her! Your non-friend is crazy!"

the most blatant one yet is actually in a different route from that, in neutral:

here he comes and says it outright: "You don't need anyone but me."

i don't know if i'm in a position to call this relationship abusive, but i think it at least ticks some of the boxes. flowey's trying to isolate clover from people who can and would help them, protect them, and lead them away from what he wants them to do. it's obvious he separated clover from toriel, even in timelines before he started tampering with the switch, but it's less obvious that he never stopped.

not only that, but clover cannot leave this relationship.

clover knows they die a lot, and flowey's the only reason they're alive. flowey repeats this a lot, but i doubt he needs to. it's apparent to clover that they need flowey to reach the king. (what clover doesn't know: when they try to abandon their mission to live out a life where they won't constantly die... yeah.) flowey holds power over clover, so they just have to deal with it. they have to listen to him shit-talk their friends.

there's so many other things he does along with this.

flowey paints many of the opinions he voices as things clover not only knows, but agrees with, while never asking their thoughts. (EXTRA fascinating when you consider flowey never gives clover a choice in any of his dialogue, while clover's other friends at least have some things they can say yes or no to.) clover never speaks out against flowey and only picks a fight when they know they can win (vengeance end) or know he's against them (neutral pre-final boss fight). this is probably a combination of flowey being in a position of power and flowey never giving them the chance to talk.

and then there's how he avoids calling any of their friends by name, favoring saying "that guard" or "fox lady"; and how he says opinions that the player knows is him lying, like saying there's nothing in the Lab; and how up until the ending he always paints what he's doing as looking out for clover or keeping clover's eyes on their mission...

[ID: two screenshots of undertale yellow. chujin is in bed, ceroba beside him. chujin says, "I haven't seen tears from you since we met at the crossing." ceroba says, "I save them for the moments that matter." End ID]

these lines are actually a LOT more deep than anyone ive seen point oujt??

ceroba and chujin both saying she doesnt cry often really puts into perspective how unwell she is when the events of the game cause her to cry so much, this is known. but like.

chujin hasn't seen ceroba cry once since they met years ago, like she NEVER never cries, and

(the more interesting one to me) she was crying at the crossing. because.

[ID: several screenshots of undertale yellow. clover and ceroba stand in the steamworks factory lobby and ceroba says, "Back when we first met, I lived in the mountains. My mother had sent me down to Oasis Valley for some crops. On the way back, I had to cross a rather large ditch. While on the bridge, I accidentally rolled my ankle and fell in. I couldn't climb out no matter how hard I tried. Even worse, the expensive crops were ruined. Felt like I was there for hours before I heard a jingling sound." End ID]

ceroba says here she wasn't so much concerned about her injury and her being-stuck-for-hours-ness as she was about ruining the crops. this was enough to drive her to tears, one of two times chujin had ever seen her cry in all their years of knowing each other probably better than anyone.

Model 00 by ceruleanwarbler2 on archiveofourown.org

(secret fun value flowey dialogue)

uty is way less meta than undertale itself. it's really easy to brush over the player because of this. however, the player undeniably plays a large role in this game... and i find that role larger than most people consider.

the player obviously controls clover, but it's a bit different than in undertale. clover can make their own choices. they shoot in the overworld without prompting in vengeance. they never reject martlet's final offer in neutral. they always give up their soul in true mercy. the player can't control them there. chara and frisk make their own major choices in the murder route, too, but that's not until the final boss, while clover starts going on their own way earlier and way more overtly.

take martlet in vengeance, letting her go of their own accord. or take the conversation with red, which aligns with what i said in an absolutely hilarious way to me. clover Will commit this social blunder you have No Control

in times when the player does choose what they say or do, it's never out of character. this is different than in undertale. unlike frisk and chara, clover's personality will visibly adapt to what you choose- sparing everyone will make them believe monsterkind deserves happiness, killing everyone makes them believe monsterkind is evil.

(yes there's a few hints and a lot of speculation about frisk+chara's character, but all of that stuff is vague compared to clover's overt motives. especially that bit about clover being more evil in murder route b/c of player: i fully believe chara is the same way but it is way less clear if they agree with the mercy route when the player does it than clover, who dies for it.)

but your choices don't always match up with theirs.

clover doesn't know this. clover would have no reason to know this. but the player knows this, and they answer pretty easily. this is a pretty obvious red flag that Hey! There's something else controlling clover!

the game LITERALLY POINTS OUT that clover can't see martlet's puzzle!!!!!!!!!!!! like the writing is DRAWING ATTENTION TO THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but we're so subtle, flowey barely registers us (see flowey fun value). in fact- the player hasn't been here the whole time. we don't show up until a later run where flowey's already been manipulating clover for some time. choosing to live with toriel, dying in waterfall and hotland, that's clover. and somehow, when this otherworldly entity takes over the body of someone flowey's been manipulating and controlling for untold resets... he doesn't notice. he doesn't know.

...does clover know?

if anyone would know, it'd be clover. (i mean besides ice bullets guy in one of the mo credits cutscenes cause they definitely know. just look at that face.)

they never seem to call attention to the fact they're possessed. but they never call attention to the flower that's bending time for them, either, so does that even mean anything?

i don't know if clover knows. and i don't think i have enough to speculate.

except ive been doing nonsense speculation the whole time! basing the existence of a player on flowey's secret lines? fine. basing it on the trivia monster in the mines? yeah that is kind of a stretch!! what, do i think alphys can edit the code of undertale because of that line about her crush in the code? no!! because i have a brain!!!

so here's a better question.

how are we able to reset after vengeance?

it has been commonly assumed that the being with the most DT in the underground can reset, but only to the point where they gained the ability to reset. it's why frisk can't reset to before they fell, it's why flowey can't reset to before he woke up in the garden.

clover gains the ability to save on the rooftop. they have to, because that's when flowey loses his ability to save. but when they reset, they reset to the bed of golden flowers. so ermmm what

well, three possibilities:

the i-guess-nothing-contradicts-it: the being with control over saves actually resets to when they first enter the underground. for frisk it's falling down, for flowey it's when he was born and being asriel didn't count, and for clover it's the start of the game.

the it's-less-meta-than-undertale: getting to the end and then not being able to replay the game would suck. so the devs didnt wanna do that. so they Just Didnt.

3: you know who DOES gain the ability to save and load when clover first enters the underground??!?????! YOU

when you reset after vengeance youre going back to when you first could save and load!! "erm that isnt til meeting flowey-" if you quit the game when fighting froggit and open it again you have travelled back in time to the start. you load your save. it's you. hell that's actually even good proof because why would flowey place a save point at clover falling down and why would he load to there without clover prompting him! that's YOU loading!!!!!!!!!!

you control the save throughout the game, you reset after vengeance, and you can make flowey reset after pacifist. the two times you can't control the save are when flowey loses it in the neutral ending and when clover kills flowey in veng. yes, these are without player input, but listen! we already know clover makes their own choices in spite of the player, and flowey makes his own choice here too.