fuck

When Was Papyrus Born?

So, trying to figure out where exactly the skeleton brothers are from is an exercise in what seems to be futility. However, there’s one thing I haven’t seen analyzed much. And that’s Papyrus’ username. I don’t think I need to explain it, but, normally when someone ends their username with two numbers, it means that they are using the year of their birth as shorthand to make the name unique and theirs.

What ‘95′ could Papyrus be referring to, though … ? We know Chara’s fall takes place in 201X, and that Undertale takes place in the somewhat distant future. Unfortunately, we only get one reference that could imply how much time has passed.

So let’s go with that. 100 years, putting us somewhere in the ballpark of 211X.  That means that Papyrus’ birthday is either 2095 or 1995. Given this context, the easiest date to jump to is 2095. But … I’m not so sure anymore. Papyrus and Sans seem to be somehow related to Wingdin. Gaster. Father or grandfather, the fact that both brothers have blasters speaks of a connection with him.

But, moving on … Alphys, the first Royal Scientist since Gaster, made it her mission to unlock the power of the SOUL using the human SOULs and DT. And it apparently took Asgore a very long time to replace Gaster in the end. So that puts Gaster, and therefore Papyrus’ (and sans’) birthdates back. It seems 1995 is the most recent date that works.

Sans And Chara

Toby has gone on record talking about how, in a japanese translation, the word used for sans should be ‘older brother.’ During 201X, Papyrus will be … 15/24 years old, and Sans will be older. Sans, with his mysterious badge, secret lab and photo albums full of people we do not know, seems to have very likely been an adult, to have worked in an offical capacity. And his close (if secret) association with Alphys, and his love of science fiction (especially when it’s real) makes it just as likely that he worked with Gaster as a scientist, more or less.

That means that, in 201X, when Chara falls, Sans will be employed (indirectly) by the royal family. It seems startlingly likely that Chara could have met him. What would their relationship be like? Well … Let me draw up what I think like this. Sans has a whole system of childish code phrases to use when interacting with a friendly time traveler. He has a diverse and varied knoweldge of surface foods despite having never been there himself.

He likes bad jokes, to the point that he exalts those who make them …

… And the narration, which narrachara says is all Chara, is completely full of bad jokes.

And, lest we forget, Chara is the only main character who is established to draw … 

… And what do we find in Sans’ lab?

While we’re here, there are a few other links I would like to draw as well. We know Sans hates making promises, but the way he talks about the one to Toriel seems to imply that he HAS made one before, to another person like Toriel. (who shares Chara’s pun passion and ‘greetings’) And that he doesn’t like making promises because, like he says at the end of the kill-all, he ends up breaking them. It seems to me like he made a promise to Chara a long time ago.

But the way he says that a person who likes bad jokes HAS an integrity you can’t say no to tells me he never felt that Chara let him down, or he would have revised that opinion. As far as he knows, everyone he knows who likes bad jokes has been excellent. So, Chara didn’t ‘betray’ him and make him regret his promise that way. 

It seems very likely to me that Sans made a promise to Chara. And Sans, in the end, failed them. 

If you accept that Chara names the songs in the Soundtrack …

Look at the period in that song title. Undertale’s soundtrack is normally very sparse with punctuation, and the other themes that have a character name in it, Undyne, Alphys and ASGORE, lack the period. It creates the impression that, after speaking their name, the writer of the Soundtrack falls into flat, deliberate silence, or that they spit the name out like a bullet.

So, I was checking out the old Kickstarter description, and took a look at the story. Pretty typical. That’s Chara’s fall into the Underground, right there, just like the opening shows us.

… One moment, actually, let’s take a closer look …

Rain, rain … where have seen that before? Where is that important?

The song that plays during Sans’ date with you. The song that plays when you visit his workshop.

I think I've peaked in art

into the gersonverse my new multiverse au heh

All three are given the title “____ of justice”, and all have yellow eyes and teeth!

(sans also kinda fits the pattern since he gets the yellow eye at a thematically similar moment but I don’t know how to fit him smoothly into this post)

Bonus:

definitely believe the theory that the SOUL temporarily leaves Kris whenever we think about what Susie is up to.

in fact, I think that's the first time Kris has prompted us themself (rather than Ralsei, and if you believe non-dialogue game text in parenthesis is Kris's thoughts and feelings) to think about Susie, probably because we could get to her faster to protect her!

whether or not they could follow after us in the pitch dark by some trail only they can see, or they just followed the sound of Susie freaking out, well. who's to say? it's a fun visual regardless

all dialogue is taken straight from the game btw!

growth that immediately is ruined by reunion. for no reason at all, all her friends and lover(s) forget about her honesty at the turtle … and max just lets them, and will continue to let them forget, forever. she breaks up with vinh/amanda for vague reasons and stops talking to them. chloe gets revived and max gets her arcadia bay and her blue-haired girl — and she becomes obsessive, fixated, pathetically attached to chloe and her hero complex all over again. she lives and breathes chloe and spares no more thoughts towards caledon or arcadia bay besides vague notions of playing savior. she allows chloe to diminish her friends ( safi, always, and vinh depending ) and turns a blind eye to their suffering or even gets angry at them for causing problems. it goes back to how it was before : max, secretive, refusing to be open to anyone besides chloe and one other person. max, claiming that chloe is all that matters. max, who was previously tired of running away and had taken a shine to teaching and caledon, suddenly running off to play band photographer and loving every second of it. there’s no implication she’ll keep in contact with anyone besides moses. safi? amanda? vinh? reggie? diamond?? gwen? they’re blips in her life now. instead of being a permanent place in her heart, they were rendered as placeholders for chloe.

max’s flaws are revived and worsened tenfold and the game never challenges this like it did in de. it’s just so, so fucking disappointing. max was finally at a point of healing, of moving forward instead of looking back, and reunion gave her a ghost and an amazing new reality and dragged her back to the start. chloe and max’s bond doesn’t change. it goes back to what it was, maybe even worse. everything max does is for chloe now. in fact, the writers manipulated de’s ‘merging realities’ incident to make it about max choosing to save chloe and not safi. like … what? the writers wrote safi calling max out on this, and max’s two responses all but confirm it, as it’s a weak excuse or an even weaker apology. i guess safi was supposed to look selfish somehow with this dialogue instead of reasonable and hurt.

i need to talk about this scene so bad cuz toby fox has once again perfectly captured grief through asriel. the thing that really gets me about asriels character is the fact that he has no choice but to keep living even though chara is gone and won't come back because that is the reality of grief thats why this has always been one of my favorite scenes!! but then this dialogue happened!!!!

i like to imagine that chara was someone he only knew for a little while. i think them only being down there for a year or two would really show how strongly people and our love for them can affect us. you could know someone for a few months or even days, and think about them for the rest of your life. love is a weird thing. time flies by so fast and things change so quickly and some of the people you lost all those years ago will never get to see it. it really has been a year, five years, ten years already. you have to live through it without them. eventually the grief just becomes the norm of everyday life. sometimes the amount of time you spent grieving someone surpasses the amount of time you knew them for but that doesn't mean you love them any less.

because asriel is so focused on what he lost rather than looking to the future, he never really gets used to the grief. grief always comes back, whether its anniversaries or holidays, but it's something he's constantly thinking about, almost like a form of self punishment. he can't stop thinking about chara because they're not here to see this and that's not fair. why should he be allowed to live if chara couldn't? he's sitting there thinking about what he could have done differently, how maybe if he had done something differently he would have gotten a happier ending, what it would be like if chara was still here... but that won't get him anywhere. ten years have passed either way. time passes whether you want it to or not. he's so focused on the happy times he spent with chara and what could have been that he's refusing to live in the present. everything he loved is getting further away and he's desperately grasping onto a time that is long gone.

understanding that there's a whole world out there that has yet to be seen and loved is the most important change in his character. it shows that he acknowledges that he needs to keep living for himself. up until now he's been living as if he's dead, stuck in the past with the idea of chara. chara will be someone he loves for the rest of his life but he needs to remember why he misses them so much. they aren't just their death and the hole they left behind. they aren't the key that will fix everything. chara was only one person and there are so many people like chara and frisk out there who are still here. chara was a person that he knew and loved for a little while. they'll be with him forever despite being gone now, but flowey's still here. despite everything, he has to choose to let go of his grief and keep living.

sometimes i think of people who never made it to the tenth anniversary and all the things they've missed. so much has happened that id love to tell them about it some day, but there would be nothing to tell them if i were too busy focusing on what could have been. the past is the past, and it can be painful to know that things can't be changed and that some people aren't coming back, but there's still so much to experience even though they're gone. there's so many things and people to love that you haven't met yet. you can't hate the world that you're going to live in for the rest of your life!! the world is as big as you want it to be!!!

Actual canon:

Furthermore:

Jimmy got stuck in the laundry basket…