Polly put the kettle on

Okay, so do you remember this fucker?

Karkat Vantas, from the webcomic Homestuck by Andrew Hussie.

A lot of people, back in the day, used to fucking WORSHIP Karkat. He was the most cosplayed, he was the most roleplayed, and the most drawn. Particularly heavily in angst, too. 

And here we have Sans the skeleton from Undertale by Toby Fox.

Both of these popular characters are self-loathing guys who can see the differences in their timelines. Both struggle from mental illness. While it’s easy to say “Karkat’s just angry”, that’s the same as saying “Sans is just lazy.”

You know why these characters should be glorified?

Because they help kids and adults alike find themselves. 

Relatability is important in modern media. Undertale is a big statement, with a canon Nonbinary main character, and several queer characters to boot. Homestuck was in a limelight on it’s own, back in the day as well. 

But I want to redirect my point back to Sans, in particular.

SPOILERS: Sans, in canon, has lost all hope. He’s got 1 HP; But the thing is, the motherfucker sleeps SO god damn much. And in game, if you sleep for even a few minutes, you gain an extra 10 HP. So Sans, whose always napping to some extent, might have a single point of Hope, but his health is through the roof.

That’s why if you kill him in the no-mercy run, his “death” isn’t considered on your counter as a legitimate character death. Because he didn’t die.

Sans has been taken through the hands of the Undertale fandom. Maybe he’s been put on a popularity cycle, but why would he be so widely accepted if it weren’t for the fact so many people see themselves in him?

For another thing, to debunk the theory that Sans lives vicariously through Papyrus: No. No he doesn’t.

I don’t want to say Papyrus is weak, but Papyrus has substantially lower power levels and defense than Sans does. Papyrus has no source of income, and isn’t considered to be a true sentry(See his cardboard hut he built himself). Undydne won’t make him a Royal Guard because she knows he’s too soft. He’s got too big a heart to do what’s required of most guards. 

And acting like Sans never had a happy moment in his life really speaks to how much you don’t know about the skeleton. He admits to telling jokes to a door because he likes the laughter he receives on the other side, through Toriel. When they meet at the end of the game, Sans smiles and stands beside her.

Sans loves his brother unconditionally. And that says a lot to his character. Sans can see indefinite timelines and knows everything will be reset. He knows he’s gonna have to make that damn costume for Papyrus again. He knows he will never pay his tab at Grillby’s because it will always exist. He knows Toriel will laugh at the same jokes over and over again. He knows he will see everyone die or some monsters die or even the surface, again and again. But he still continuously supports Papyrus, even knowing the day will never come where the timelines don’t shift.

If that isn’t strength, I don’t know what is.

Also: Referring to his attack against Chara in the no-mercy run as a “suicide attempt” is blatant lying. As my point above, Sans doesn’t die. He tries to stop Chara, sure- but I think that’s because he finally breaks down. He admits to nihilism, and how he’s given up on everything, but:

He’s. Still. Fighting.

Sans is a goofy motherfucker, who sleeps a whole lot. And he tells jokes to cover up his insecurities, sure, but maybe he genuinely likes to see people smile. Maybe he likes to see people laugh. You know who else liked to make people feel good and also suffered from depression?

Robin motherfucking Williams. He was my hero, from the time he played Peter Pan in Hook to being Mrs. Doubtfire, to being Teddy Roosevelt. 

My final point?

Sans is important. Sans is an important character for people to look up to and relate to. Sans needs this limelight because people like me would have been lost without him. 

Man, this is such an interesting exchange, cause, like… in most stories, when a character says they'd like things to go on forever, that they want something eternal, they're pretty much setting themselves up for a very rude awakening. You know, nothing lasts forever, sometimes you have to learn how to let go, sometimes you need to move on. I mean, that's one of the core themes of Undertale.

Flowey/Asriel's whole motivation in the Pacifist Route is to make the Game go on forever, to put the ending eternally out of reach, to trap Frisk in an infinite time loop because he just can't move on from Chara's death.

Part of the narrative is that if the Player RESETs a Pacifist Route then they are no better than he was, since now they are also yanking everyone away from their Happy Ending so that we can play with them again, because we can't accept the game has Ended. The Murder Route is less focused on that whole theme but you replay it over and over again Chara will basically call you a weirdo for your obsessive clinginess to this world.

Part of Undertale's themes is the importance of an Ending to a story. A True Pacifist Player's true and final act of selflessness is to let go of their desire have things keep going for forever, to give up on Eternity… for the sake of the happiness of every other character in this world, for the sake of their Happy Ending.

On the other hand, as a Wise Dog once said…

Both Undertale and Deltarune love exploring the ways in which the world of a game is different or similar to the real world, how the perspective of a Player is so different from the perspective of an actual character living in this world and... Real Life doesn't have a clear set ending.

The Player is the only one from whom the story just ended. Everyone else just kept living their stories of friendship together, although they probably never experienced something as high-stakes as the events of 'Undertale' ever again. And... when endings do seem to come, they're not going to be as clear-cut and satisfying and clearly communicated as the Game Ending is to the Player.

…But on the other other hand, it is still true that some things in life do end and we do have to accept that. Like… you know, the most famous Ending in life… is Death.

Gerson hears Susie talk about how she wants things to go on forever, but he already decided he has no interest in Eternity himself. He knows that the Three Heroes are here to seal the Fountains that revived him, he knows that when they succeed he'd go back to being a dust-covered hammer, probably never to be revived again and… he's perfectly at peace with that. He's an old man who died from natural causes, he had a long, full and satisfying life, he already had his ending. What's happening now is some weird glorified epilogue, but he knows it will end soon. And that's fine by him, because the time for his story has ended.

He does have one major regret in life, his failure to properly support his son's writing, and he spends all of the time the Dark has given him to try and make up for it. But it's really just a matter of asking Susie to deliver his message. He doesn't try to maintain or expand the Dark World so he could make up for his mistakes or try to pull Alvin in so he could meet him again or find a way to come back to life in the Light World somehow… I wonder if Someone was expecting him to do something like that and that's why they tried to give him that Shadow Crystal, but we all know that didn't work

In a way… we've already seen Susie's rude awakening for her desire for a 'forever'. She formed such a powerful bond with "the Old Man", she definitely would've wanted their time together to last longer, to last as long as it could, to last forever. But that's not possible.

And even his appearance in the Third Sanctuary was kind of a surprise stroke of luck that shouldn't be taken for granted.

The whole point of the Second Sanctuary is that Susie realized that Gerson was dead in the Light World, and trying to cope with this idea, went straight to a kind of denial.

Well, she can just pop over to the Dark World and, like, ask him what the Door Code is, right? No big deal! I mean, it's not exactly like Susie and Kris were really at a dead-end, there were plenty of areas in the Church they haven't checked thoroughly at all (not just the Fire Extinguisher)…

It wasn't because she HAD to do it for the Door Code, it's because she had to do it to reassure herself that her new friend isn't really gone, that maybe he'll be there waiting for her in his study if she just High-Key Stab Reality and Unleash the Flow of Pure Darkness Energy…

But it wasn't that simple. At best you can say his appearance in the Third Sanctuary means that he can manifest in any Church Dark World created by the Knight… but seeing how Susie's whole goal at the moment is to stop the Knight from making more Dark Fountains, that's not exactly increasing her chances to see the Old Man again.

When they go to seal the Fountain, Susie muses about her 'stupid dream' that things will just… stay the same. That she'll keep having fun Dark World adventures with her friends through eternity. But she knows that although Kris fully understands her, that's not what's going to happen. It's both about how the stakes and seriousness of the story have been so overtly raised for her, the Knight and the Titans aren't just an ominous background detail. She has fought them both. But it's also because she is already experiencing an Ending right now. She knows that when Kris seals this Fountain, she will probably never see Gerson again.

…But despite all of that, I don't think the narrative completely rebuke Susie's desire for Eternity. After all, Gerson heard her say that, fully knowing his own fate, and he mostly seemed intrigued? It doesn't seem to waver his belief that she's the one who should be writing the story, that he could count on her to defy fate in the name of Justice. Y'know, Susie wasn't really thinking of the Inevitability of Death at that moment, she was just thinking that… she would like to keep having fun adventures with her friends in perpetuity. And is that such a bad thing to wish for?

I mean, just because something was a theme in Undertale doesn't mean that Deltarune can't use Susie to drive home the point of 'well, yeah, you're not wrong, but it's a bit more nuanced than that", there's precedence, in fact.

I'm thinking about, like, the Tenna storyline in Chapter 3. That was also about someone who needs to move on, Tenna is clinging to his happier past in unhealthy way and wants the fun of his game show to last forever. He also wanted his own version of Eternity. But the game still draws a contrast between Ralsei, who just tells him to remember the happy times and accept that everything ends, including his use

And Susie, who is the one who rejects this mindset. Her solution still has some level of moving on and accepting that the Dreemurr-Holiday Family Unit has ended, but that doesn't mean he's just got to lay down and accept that his whole life is over. She comes up with a plan that ensures the continuation of his life and his dreams. It's an Ending of sorts, but an Ending that has a continuation attached to it. And it came specifically from Susie's distaste for endings, from her aggressive rejection of going gently into that good night.

likewise and yet more specifically i'm chewing on the corollary idea that, perhaps, chara saw their best friend spiraling over the part he played in making his father very very sick and thought: if they could model playing the whole fiasco off as a nothingburger, that would help. they'd be doing it for themself and him. neither of them would have to fall to pieces over this if it could be helped (not that it worked, though obviously something about chara's response stuck with asriel):

anyway,

would be a hell of a thing to see this echoed in a time and place where the stakes are ostensibly higher, by several orders of magnitude

right?