Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31536324-20190117214835/@comment-32182236-20190129230306

@MagomaevaAmina:Here's a quote from my ORIGINAL post to explain why these specific six traits were chosen.

"Besides, the traits have to be broad. There's only six elemental traits, after all, and as we all know, personality traits are far more than just six. But these are the pure elementals, and only deal with your ability to overcome obstacles."

"But, then, why? Why is it specifically these six traits that are used? Sure, we know what leads to them, but why was this system chosen?"

"Well, that's because Determination may very well be one of the most important things in the entire Undertale universe! Determination is the will to live, and the resolve to change fate. It's what gives the human SOULs the ability to persist past death, and can even work on monsters, as Undyne proves. As a result, simply staying determined when one is sick, can actually lead to them healing, if they're determined to live. This is why Asgore told Chara to stay determined, and why it took Flowey's "I don't want to die!" for him to first discover his SAVE ability."

Now to some new, additional argument, I'd like to expand upon this. Clearly, determination, the fusion between the six SOULs, is what one should strive for, right? If they focused on each trait individually, and mastered all six of them, that'd combine into a HUGE amount of DT.

So, the SOUL color.. It needs to represent SOMETHING, right? What's the best thing for it to represent? What gives humans the biggest evolutionary advantage? Well, what if it represented which trait you've become dominant in? That way, you know what other ones to work on, to reach the balanced, determination state, while at the same time, knowing what your current main strength is, and thus, what kinds of obstacles you can easily overcome?

If a team of six humans, all with one of each of the traits, all worked together.. They'd be just as strong as a team of six humans with the determination trait, because they'd compliment each other.

H1:(100, 40, 50, 70, 60, 80) DT=40 (as we know, DT is the MINIMUM of these six traits!) H2:(30, 100, 80, 50, 75, 40) DT=30 H3:(50, 50, 100, 30, 45, 65) DT=30 H4:(60, 40, 70, 100, 60, 40) DT=40 H5:(70, 80, 30, 60, 100, 55) DT=30 H6:(60, 65, 60, 50, 60, 100) DT=50

You might expect it to add up to DT=220, as that's what happens when you add up all the DT values. But that ISN'T what you end up with at all! While we don't know much about how SOULs interact with each other, Deltarune sets a precedent that they could link with each other, and massively so-All the Darkners only aim at Kris' SOUL, but can damage the other members of the party this way.

But let's add each of the columns up individually.

In total we have: (370, 375, 390, 360, 400, 380). The minimum of those is 360! So the DT of the whole team is 360, not 220! We get a significant boost just by forming a balanced team! This is why UNITED, the humans were FAR too powerful, and yet Kanashi was able to absorb the first human SOUL, and Asgore was able to kill six humans.

So, the SOUL color being determined by these specific six traits is evolutionary advantageous. Hence, those are the ones that form the SOUL colors.

Besides, every other trait can be derived from those six, when you consider the Ball Game's description of them. For instance, purple mentions taking notes-So analylists would belong there. (Makes sense, the scientific method involves trying and trying again until you find the theory that gets supported by experiments-So if you're a scientist, you DO have perseverance!)

Surefire accuracy is yellow, and from that, order can be derived. Given that justice is one's sense of moral rules (just and unjust), rules themselves are an expansion of this concept, which is a kind of order.

We can do this for just about any trait there is! (Though sometimes, we instead end up with the inverse of a trait instead, which means having that trait is TAKING AWAY from one of the traits, responsible for the amount being so low.)

-

So, yeah. These specific six traits being the ones used is not a problem, but in fact has a purpose. Which once again points to the red trait being the most important trait of all. The one that should be strived for, the balance between the six traits. And.. how is that balance NOT determination?