Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-39447774-20190514202810/@comment-27136653-20190606000327

>Sorry but he says that he still cares about Chara BEFORE regaining the souls"theres only one person i can care about ",even though he cant "truly care"about them,he still has attachment to them.

But that wasn't my point. Sure, he cares about them, but he cannot feel.

>Plus the whole "i care about you more than anybody else"line comes BEFORE you save him

No, it comes after. You press the button, and then he begins saying that.

>And if he could feel compassion at this point i doubt that he would condemn everyone.

Whom is he condemning, and where?

>I dont say that he can feel love but theres difference between attachment and love.

Obviously, but that wasn't the point I was making.

>But still toriel and many sentient creatures and i doubt that anyone can love a character as a real person.

Then you don't know how people work. Is it silly to care for, to love someone that isn't real? That's a question for another time. But saying that it has never happened is simply ignorant.

>He explictly says that he was talking about conpassion and not any other emotion

I'll mention this below in a bigger detail. For now, know this: Toby made a mistake when he wrote that line.

>And Asgore found Asriel crying in the garden when he first awake,so it appears like he can feel sadness.

Crying, as in "screaming." Because Flowey was screaming - out of fear, as he said himself: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6gS2LPXdIc5WmhvOFdvLXJjdGM

>And sorry but ive never heard anyone ending their life out of frustration,its often out if depression

Because no human has ever lost the ability to feel, just like that. This isn't Undertale, silly.

>And wahtever they are ""primal "or not,anger and fear are still emotions like any other one

And explicitly stated to be independent of what he lost.

>(and according to many psycologists,joy and sadness are also primal emotions and many ethologists argue that most of animals can feel joy and sadness aswell)

Undertale goes against this, by stripping Flowey of the ability to feel joy, while retaining his sense of fear, so this argument is irrelevant to what we're discussing here.

>Again,its unlikely,the whole "Not in a world without love ,not in a world without you"sounds more like sadness than anything else and i've only heard suicides cases that are result of depression and not anger.

I mainly argue that sadness is similar to joy in its purpose. If you cry for someone, it means you care for them, it means you love them. Ergo, Flowey cannot feel grief, else he would have to be able to feel love too. The two, grief and love, are two sides of the same coin.

>I mean,he would feel immensely guilty for the pain he inflicted once he regained to love and empathy

So you DO agree that he lost some of the negative emotions too, not just the positive ones?

>He can feel regret too,after all he literally says that he feel "sorry"in the post credits dialogue even though he lack of any soul.

That's due to his own sense of integrity, his own compassion. Again, I'll explain below.

>So anyone who are happy with playing games,movies,have passions arent really happy according to you?

People in real life usually don't lack the ability to physically feel love and everything associated with it.

>And yes he killed himself but many people do,which doenst mean that they cant feel hapiness,just that they dont feel it in the moment of their depression.

Why do you keep comparing Undertale to the real life? I'm just stating my observations about Undertale and arguing for a few things that the canon did not mention, since it logically follows. Such as, that if Flowey lost the ability to feel love, he also must have lost the ability to feel grief, but also many other positive emotions, not just love. It's pure logic, not rocket science.

>But i never said that,i just said that he COULD feel joy in other suffering

But he doesn't. He feels entertained by it, that's different.

>AND that he enjoyed their company at first

In what sense? He hoped they could make him feel love again. He didn't enjoy this period at all, and the longer it went on, the more he loathed it. So no, strictly speaking, he didn't enjoy it at all. He even said that spending weeks with Asgore was a waste of time. He HOPED, but hope =/= joy.

Do you now see how monumentally wrong you are about everything? You don't seem to understand anything about Flowey.

>Do you insinuates that real life people who kill themselves do it just because they cant feel joy?

Who ever said anything about real life people. In real life, people can have their super ego completely crushed, for example by rape. And without a convenient reset button, such things can never be fixed. They can keep feeling joy, but they are marked for life. And they may choose to stop living such a life.

That said however, losing all means of experiencing joy is, at least in my humble opinion, a totally valid reason to commit a suicide, although it has never happened, because it cannot physically happen, as we don't have souls, we don't live in Undertale.

You seem to be very good at generalizing statements. When I say one thing about something, you immediately think that this is my stance on all things related too. No, it isn't. It cannot possibly be, because I'm not some bozo who knows nothing about psychology.

You know what, here's a good psychology lesson: stop second-guessing people, you will make more friends that way.

>BUT HE LITERALLY SAYS ITS FUNNY

That means he's entertained by it. It does not have to mean that he finds self-fulfillment in it, like he did with love.

>But why would he see new things if they dont give him joy?

Because he's bored. Boredom is such a strong driving force, it can make you hurt yourself just to feel entertained. You don't have to feel joy to be entertained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqKdEhx-dD4

Of course, the difference here is, that this experiment makes people hurt themselves, whereas he chose to hurt others. But that only becomes understandable after you remember that Flowey began hurting others after he discovered that he can undo it. In essence, the exploration of timelines was his form of entertainment.

>Again ,you shows how much youre bad at psycology:this IS a behaviour that you can find in maany people.

Who... exactly... explores timelines in real life, according to you?

>Things give joy for some people for a certain time but they get bored and are looking to new ones.They are satisfied for a while but it wouldnt keep them always satisfied.Thats basic psychology.And Floweys behaviour is also similar to the player's completionist tendencies

Granted, that is true. This slippery slope became inevitable for someone like him, and there probably wouldn't be anything that would make him stop other than love (since we know that it was love that prevented many players from undergoing that same route; many stopped at Papyrus). So maybe, this wasn't the best argument. That said however, his actions could still be considered a distraction from the fact that he cannot feel love, since he immediately stopped with all the megalomania once his ability to feel love returned. So I'd say it's debatable.

>If Flowey couldnt feel,why would he feel anger and fear??Why not other basical emotions??Why are they so special according to you??

Because the game has explicitly shown how those are different from the other emotions.

>And yes,animals can feel them,but they can feel many other emotions aswell(given the tests with scanner and according to many ethologists,fear and anger arent the only emotions that they can feel)

Well, Flowey can also feel boredom. That's one more in the list of things he didn't lose.

Ultimately, I argue that he has lost his ability to feel true physical joy that love brings and everything associated with it, which includes things mildly related to joy and love, but also the direct opposites that result from the lack of thereof, such as grief. Everything else stayed.

>Proofs?

My argument is my proof. If he can feel grief, then he can feel love. Ergo, his emotions must be the result of frustration, not grief. As I said, it's logic, not rocket science.

>He need a soul to feel compassion.And the first definition of compassion you get on the internet is this one

Toby made a mistake on that part. The fact that Flowey helped people at first shows that he didn't lose his compassion. What he actually lost, was empathy. Or perhaps, Toby did this deliberately, but I don't see what purpose would that serve, so it probably was a mistake after all. Also, I know my definitions very well (all taken from the cambridge dictionary):

Empathy: "the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation"

Sympathy: "an expression of understanding and care for someone else's suffering"

Compassion: "a strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for the suffering or bad luck of others and a wish to help them"

Let me break it down for you:

Empathy is the ability to share someone's emotions and to be able to imagine them, even though you are not experiencing them right now. But more than "knowing", it's about inducing that same feeling within yourself. In other words, it can be summarized as "I feel what you feel". And the keyword is "feel".

Sympathy is the ability to understand someone's feelings. It stems from prior knowledge, learned by empathy. Unlike empathy, it's less about "feeling" the same thing, and more about knowing and recognizing it. It can therefore be summarized as "I know how you feel", and the keyword is "know".

Compassion, as said, is sympathy, combined with the desire to help. In other words, it is about: recognizing distress and attempting to resolve it. It can be summarized as "is there anything I can do to help you?", and the keyword is "help".

Now, Flowey. Looking at these three things, Flowey obviously cannot feel empathy. That's basically how his condition is defined. BUT, he's able to feel sympathy, because sympathy doesn't stem from feelings, it stems from knowledge about the said feelings. And he does have a considerable knowledge about feelings, which he attained in his previous life. Even as a soulless being, he's still able to recognize when someone is in distress. And not only that, he's also able to help. That is the definition of compassion, to use sympathy in conjunction with help.

So in other words, Flowey cannot feel emotions, but he's still able to address them and attempt to resolve them. In this regard, Toby Fox was wrong.

Oh and if you think I am wrong, then you better think that these people are wrong too, all 300 thousand who have reblogged this post: https://blessedharlot.tumblr.com/post/133073135451/pinxiedust-ourcollectivefantasy

I don't remember which one of them said this, but it's something I personally agree with: many people who aren't very good at being empathetic are usually very compassionate. I know it, because I am one of such people. Despite not being good at the... ugh, emotive stuff, I do not mind helping other people. In fact, I oftentimes feel obligated to do so, as it is in my humanity.

Now that you know this, you can read this, where I employ this fact:

>Euh what??I mean i didnt knew that we can entertain ourselves without feeling joy lol.Honnestly you force your definition of joy and on the sole purpose to make it in accordance with your logic

What is your definition of joy then? I am trying to describe that one feeling that is the result of a high serotonin and dopamine rush that many regard to be joy. Love produces this feeling. Love without this feeling is just plain old compassion. When Asriel lost this feeling, when he lost joy, he was no longer able to be empathetic, but he could still transform his efforts into compassion. But it no longer felt the same to him, he, as he put it, could no longer feel love. He could give love, but not physically feel it. That's what then drove him to suicide, etc.

The point is, that he lost what mediated love, he lost joy. Many other things produce joy too. So he must have lost those as well. If he found such an incredible fulfillment in love, or rather in joy, in the FEELING that love brings, then he could have simply found ANYTHING ELSE that could give him joy instead, in order to get back that feeling. I mean, love without joy is basically... nothing, just empty words.

It's clear that he was unwilling to embrace love, if he himself couldn't feel it too. He lost the feeling, he lost the JOY of love. If there was anything else that could bring him joy, he would have stuck to it. But he didn't, because there wasn't anything. This is why I'm saying that entertainment is not the same thing as joy. Because if entertainment made him as fulfilled as love did, then he wouldn't have commited suicide. Normally, entertainment DOES bring joy. Many things do. But when you lose the ability to feel joy, many things will suddenly become pointless, and you might as well kill yourself.

Once again: love without joy is just compassion. Flowey didn't want to live in a world that couldn't give him love. He didn't want to give out love for nothing in return. Giving out love = compassion. Feeling love = experiencing joy. He lost the ability to experience joy.

>What would you say now?

I say give me a source where he explicitly confirms that he feels joy, that he's not confusing it with entertainment, and that he fully understands the subtle differences between joy, entertainment, love, and compassion.

In short, you can't, because he never said it. We're left to guess the meaning of his words. And this is my interpretation of it. I think it's correct, because it makes sense to me, when I take into consideration all the relevant facts and also common sense. Whether it also makes sense to you, that is entirely up to you to decide.