#out-character

Interuniverse portals :

Have you ever wondered how the characters in the Undertale multiverse move from one alternative universe to one other?

Depending on the stories, comics and headcanons, the possibility of access to the AU's is very relative. There is no creator of the Undertale Multiverse, so there is no canon regarding the links that can be made between universes. A number of paths have been observed; firstly, with specific and precise ways:

Through the gates of the Omega Timeline (which is fairly limited, you can't travel anywhere other than your own universe (I think, it's not very clear, so tell me if you're sure of anything)),

Through scientific machines, programmed by Gaster most of the time, as in Chancetale with the plans taken over by Ace and Alphys,

Through characters with the ability to create portals or teleport naturally, like Dream or Nightmare.

Secondly, the paths... Without any explanation. In some stories, the characters can travel from AU to AU without questioning, without rules, without precision, we just know it's possible. Secret passages, teleportations, etc., you can imagine what you want but it will never be mentioned. Frankly, I only agree when it's for One-Shot or crazy stories with no stakes, because... Trying to find logic in everything is my hobby, you'll have to get used to it ＼(☆▽☆)／

But the most interesting way comes from characters who can directly open portals/teleport, such as Ace, Color, Error or Fresh, in the context where this is considered a special power –There are plenty of others, but those are the ones I'm most familiar with–. It raises a lot of questions, especially when Ace gets this ability overnight, even though his creator seems rather thoughtful about consistency. The only solution in line would be his ability to break the fourth wall where he could jump from frame to frame... But that's not what he does, he teleports or creates a portal. But how? Why does he do this? Why all of a sudden?

I thought and thought, and then I found a correlation between these characters that might turn out to be causation.

They are all Outer-Characters. In other words, characters from outside reality, with no AU, no world to merge their codes with.

Ace's universe was destroyed by Error and no longer exists.

Color has been erased from his reality, as has Gaster, so his code has become detached.

Error has been literally expelled into the Anti-void and transformed into a glitch creature (more on that later).

Fresh is a parasite without a maternal universe, so we're not sure where he came from, but in any case, as there is no official Underfresh, we're sure he doesn't belong to any universe.

Like free electrons (free spirit) passing from one current to another, exiled between the blocks that shape universes, no longer possessing a fixed point, they benefit from a freedom of movement that the others don't have. Out of space, and for some (Core!Frisk, Gaster), even out of time.

So, they have a fairly close relationship with the Multiverse, their codes aren't 'stuck' to blocks, and that allows them to zigzag between the AU's. But how?

Simply considering that the AU's are themselves interconnected. The Undertale Multiverse is a web. Timelines that eventually break away to become AU's in their own right (Aftertale, Dusttale, Horrortale), concepts that are similar (Underswap, Storyshift), and even the most distant ones, they are all connected to each other. And it is from this point of view that I propose the theory of gaps.

There are thories in our world to the effect that cracks in reality exist and sometimes allow strange things to enter from other dimensions... Extraordinary creatures, curses... And mystical places with high concentrations of weirdness like the Bermuda Triangle would be just such places. Abracadabrious for our world, but in the world of fiction, why not? Cracks... After all, what story is perfect? What lore is flawless? What game doesn't have any bugs? These anomalies, these little mistakes that we make, would form cracks that it would be possible to open in a portal dimension. The Outer-Characters, by virtue of their nature as free electrons, would be more sensitive to these cracks and would be better able to spot and exploit them. On the other hand, not only are these rifts not found everywhere, but some of them are anomalies beyond our perception of reality, and would have their own place in space-time. This means that they could be present for a certain period of time and then disappear, or only be available in a specific place at a certain time on a certain day. We could also imagine that some universes are more 'closed' and inaccessible than others... (I personally give this to Multiverses/AU's, AU's that brings together the main characters of the Multiverse like Vampireverse, Empireverse, Minuscultale, AU Schools, etc.) That way, we can easily invent stories where the protagonists are confronted with constraints of time and space that prevent them from running away at the drop of a hat!

Script excuses offered by the house, don't thank me (☞◖■ᴥ■◗)⁠☞✨✨ !

It's a pretty big deal, and there's a lot involved... Let's see...

So, does that mean that, for example, all the inhabitants of the Omega Timeline whose AU's have been destroyed by Error would be able to open breaches as they please?

Well... Yes, technically. But you can think of hundreds of reasons why they wouldn't. Opening a breach requires training and experience, it's risky, dangerous, leads to errors of course or coordinates, or then they simply don't know they can do it. Just because you technically have the human capacity to do back somersault doesn't necessarily mean you're bound to do it.

And Geno, is he an Outer-Character? Mmmh... Good question. Technically he's stuck in the Save screen, which doesn't mean he's been kicked out of his AU. More from his Timeline, but that doesn't make him an Outer-Character either.

For Ink, it's quite interesting, there are several possibilities. His AU technically exists, it's just incomplete and forgotten all about. However, he could be an Outer-Character due to the fact that he erased himself when he tore his soul apart, or, given that he seems to open special portals instead and that he also teleports in ink, because that's part of his powers acquired from the Creator via "magic paint", after all some versions say that he can't open a portal without his paintbrush. Personally, I prefer this, because if we subscribe to the theory that he still has a soul (the goppy blue soul in the illustration of "Broken Truce"), but that it's detached from his body, that would solve the paradox.

Unless he's fully an Outer-Character because Error destroyed his AU a long time ago, that's quite possible too.

As for the characters who usually travel between AU's, like the Postman (Post!Sans) or UnderEat's Sans, or even Death sometimes, there are two hypotheses: either they've simply learned to open cracks even without being Outer-Characters (because I think it's possible, you just have to be very talented, very sensitive and very determined), or they have this ability by the very principle of their existence. The Postman and UnderEat!Sans were created TO link the AU's (I don't even know if the Postman has his own universe, actually), whereas Death... Well, it depends, because I've never been able to work out whether his "Grim Reaper influence" was just specific to his AU or whether it extended across the Multiverse. If it's specific to his AU technically he shouldn't have that privilege. But if the gods of Reapertale, whether it's him, Toriel, Papyrus, Gaster or Asgore, are looking after the whole Multiverse, then it makes sense that they should all be able to travel between AU's as they see fit.

What about the others? Well, in my opinion they're just not capable of opening breaches, and characters like Sans, Red or Blue shouldn't have this ability. Least of all those who have no knowledge of universes. Because if anyone could do it, it would still be a big, big mess. Even, scenaristically, it would be a bit annoying if everyone could go where they wanted when they wanted and get away just the same. But that's just my interpretation of things.

But it's not over yet! Let's extrapolate a little. Can we link, in Undertale's Multiverse, this story of cracks and links to something we know? Is there a dimension where all the AU's meet at the same centre? A dimension to be the Core?

Huh?

Of course yes !

I'm obviously talking about the Doodlesph– the Anti-Void.

What really is the Anti-Void? We've never had an exact definition by Crayon Queen. We know it's a mysterious white nothingness where Geno landed when a Determination experiment went wrong. It's called the Anti-Void because the color is white and not black like the Void.... But that's all. And that's not cool, because white Voids are a dime a dozen. Most of the time, they're empty AU's with nothing left, Chancetale, for example. Empty AU's, but not destroyed, because in Undertale during the Genocide route, we know that when you destroy the world there's nothing left, it's the Void. Black, cold, silent. The Void is the darkness that makes up the stars in the sky, the absolute vacuum.

We can deduce from this that these empty, white AU's are more likely to be the result of an AU that is dead of content, but still present, like X-tale or ___tale (this is contradictory with Chancetale, which is destroyed, totally destroyed, but it's normal to have a few contradictions when you're talking about a world created by hundreds of different people). What's certain is that the Anti-Void doesn't fall into this category. It's not an empty shell. It's something else. You can see it in what it does to its tenants, literally turning them into amnesiac, deranged glitches. You can see it in the window that Error opens up, leading into his old memories. You can see it when you realise that it's a way, after a while, of hearing the voice of the Creators.

The Anti-Void is the exact opposite of the Void: it's the Whole, the Link where every path crosses. After all, how many characters have accidentally ended up there? Let's not talk about the hundreds of x-reader stories where the protagonist ends up in the Anti-Void by chance after some twists and turns 😂 and let's go instead to what happened to Geno, or to Ace's machine whose first destination it was. Just look at how Error has learnt to use the rifts... Each time he goes through the Anti-Void FIRST before opening a portal from one AU to another. It's the Central Station for crossings between dimensions. I'd even go so far as to say that it's an OBLIGATORY passage. Each AU is connected to another VIA the Anti-Void. Let's just say that most people take the shortcut instinctively.

But why would the Core be the Anti-Void and not the Doodlesphere? Yet it's a dimension that seems much better suited to this role...

Well... One doesn't preclude the other.

In fact, the Doodlesphere and the Anti-Void are closely linked. I've noticed that there are often two accessible points of view in the Multiverse: the "Code Part" (the Player, the algorithms, glitches and bugs, such as Error, Fatal, Glitchtale, etc.) and the "Spiritual Part (thought, faith, emotions, the Creators, Ink, Faith, Dreamtale, etc.). What if the Anti-Void was the coded Core of the Multiverse while the Doodlesphere was the spiritual Core? The technology part and the magic part?

Because there's the computer web and the painter's canvas 🤣 !

Mhrm-... my humblest apologies :'> (does this joke work in English?)

(Hay, no, shit, it's no "toile" and "toile". Well, now you'll know that the web and the canvas are the same word in french! "Toile d'araignée" and "Toile pour peindre")

Isn't it a strange coincidence that the two greatest enemies of the Multiverse, with similar pasts, should live in two habitats that resemble and complement each other?

The web... Ironic, really, that its tenant is a skeleton who wields wires...

Error is reality's homeless man par excellence, it's in his thematic and his design; alone in the middle of the Whole, it's quite perfect to describe him and understand his character. So it's no surprise that he's probably the most capable of spotting rifts in the Multiverse. He can pretty much do it wherever he wants whenever he wants, to say the least! (Which is why I think it's breakable, the fact that Corrupted finds Error canonically useless when he's precisely THE guy who can open to him the doors to all the AU's he wants, even the positive ones) After all, Error's been trapped within the Anti-Void for an indeterminate amount of time. Canonically, after a certain time spent in thos dimension, anyone can become an "error". No wonder, if you admit that it's the agglomeration of all the codes in the Multiverse! After a while, anything coded ends up jumping left and right, stopping and starting, dispersing and dismantling!

Partially ?

Entierly ?

After a while, would Error just disappear by dint of living in the Anti-void?

Would he suffer less memory loss if he stopped going there?

Er... take your pick. ¯(°_o)/¯ I don't really like the idea of dissolving entirely in Anti-Void, but why not?

Hang on, hang on... If the rifts are spatio-temporally related, and the Anti-Void is an amalgamation of all these dimensions, and Error was able to create a window to his past in his comic, then would Error be able to travel through time???

Uh..............uuh... (＠_＠;) it's true that CQ has already mentioned the hypothesis that there could be several Error at the same time, but...uh....I...

I dunno (⁠•⁠ ⁠▽⁠ ⁠•⁠;⁠)

Dunno...

Maybe not, or at least nobody except Error, given that if they are detached from space, they are not necessarily detached from time? Maybe he can just look at it, but not enter it? Is he even aware of it?

But then... Could he still see any future and past? Or only what concerns him?

I

Don't

Fucking know.

I didn't get that far xD

But hey, that's not a bad start, is it?

(If you have any theories, headcanons or even if you've spotted any inconsistencies in what I've said, don't hesitate to let me know. It's a headcanon, but it's not perfect, so I'd like to tweak it as much as possible :3