Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20190131130037/@comment-32182236-20190304013731

The library in Snowdin says monster SOULs contain love, hope and compassion, and remarks that the true nature of SOUL is unknown, especially since humans have proven their souls can exist without these things.

Since the library can’t even spell its own name right, there’s some debate about how accurate the information inside is. As in the human would, the difference between what monsters think they know, and what they actually know, could be enormous. And while it does seem like most monsters are much nicer than humans, they can still do some questionable things.

Exactly. Which is exactly why we shouldn't go saying monsters can't be filled with darkness.

As likeable as Doctor Alphys is, she lied and manipulated many people during the game. She forced Mettaton to act as a bad guy in her elaborate scheme to try and trick Frisk into befriending her, putting Frisk at risk and eventually driving Mettaton to turn heel on his own. She told the families of the Fallen Down monsters that they were back, and everything would be fine, then didn’t answer their emotional pleas for information when the Amalgamates formed, and everything went wrong. And whether she realized it or not, she turned Undyne into a science experiment by feeding her ping glop that wasn’t actually ice cream.

..How do we know it's not ice cream? Undyne was just as passionate as a little kid as she is now-Do you recall the story Undyne tells you when you hang out at her house? She was a hot-headed kid who loved to fight, then tried to fight ASGORE. Natural determination has the same effect as injected determination, as far as I'm aware (though perhaps there is a difference, and that has something to do with why Undyne didn't melt as quickly.. But I'm keeping my "Amalgamates have much more DT than Undyne" hypothesis for now.)

So not everything is as it seems in the world of Undertale.

Exactly.

This sprawling complex is built directly on top of a lava field, and requires a wolf to constantly throw ice into the river to keep it cool enough to avoid melting the structure. And according to Alphys it was supposedly designed for a single purpose: to provide “magical electricity” to the rest of the Underground.

Yep. Pretty hard to power four cities with just one power-plant. You'd need quite a massive building, and a LOT of hard work for that.

.*insert image of the CORE here*

Oh. The CORE is exactly that.

But for a mundane power plant, the security inside is paranoid. Massive laser arrays are prepared to immobilize anyone traveling through the structure. Force fields block access to areas. Steam vents, which Undyne says were designed to help cool down the Core, double as a mode of transportation, an incredibly dangerous system that only a Mad Scientist could love!

But it's not a mundane power plant. It's literally the ONLY ONE in the entire Underground. The monsters don't exactly have a replacement. So if something happens to it, it needs to be rebuilt again, and during that process, NOBODY has ANY power. The security, therefore, is actually a lot more reasonable than it seems at first glance. (No guys, it can't be to protect the capital.. Since there's literally an elevator right to it that skips the CORE.)

It’s impossible to draw a complete map of the Core’s internal rooms because the rooms themselves are designed to rearrange themselves as a security measure. And it’s quite likely there are many rooms that Frisk or even Alphys have never seen.

That is true.

The difference in technology and architecture between rustic Snowdin and it’s “LIBRARBY” and the futuristic Core is staggering, it’s hard to believe the same people built both structures. And the Core’s mundane mission of acting only as a power plant comes into question when we learn of a very special facility with it: A portal to warp time, space, and dimension.

We never learn of such a machine. But considering that Gaster created the CORE, as the Gaster Follower tells us, this is not surprising.

Doctor Alphys reveals in the first Mettaton encounter that she’s been doing a lot of research into alternate dimensions. And since it took her only seconds to turn Frisk’s phone into a double bag of holding by installing a miniature dimensional drop box into it, she’s gotten very good at it.

That doesn't mean the CORE transfers things between dimensions. It means Alphys found a way to do it, probably from Gaster's blueprints.

The Core was commissioned by King Asgore at the request of the earlier Royal Scientist, the legendary Wingding Gaster. The same Gaster who became shattered across time and space by falling into this very creation. One doesn’t just fall into another dimension by accident, Gaster must have been doing his own research into dimensional travel at the time, which somehow went wrong.

Yes, that is indeed what happened. But that doesn't mean it happened at the CORE.

But in spite of Mettaton’s joke that Alphys searches other dimensions as the only way of finding a suitable date, her research, and Gaster’s, had a high-minded goal: To find a way to bypass The Barrier without resorting to the grim business of soul harvesting.

That's a nice hypothesis:That's mine as well. Hopefully we can find evidence supporting this hypothesis.

The idea is simple: If a person could warp to another dimension where The Barrier doesn’t exist, they could simply walk through it on the other side, then take a second portal back to the original dimension. Two portals, and the Dread Barrier would exist forever as a colorful glowing reminder of why building intolerant walls is never the answer.

Nice, that was my idea too! Well, not quite, mine was simply warping past the barrier by going back in time to before the war. In fact, I'd even say Gaster might have wanted to find a way to prevent the war, or WIN the war. Remember, Gaster was shattered across TIME and space. He was researching time travel as well.

Still, Alphy’s research on large-scale portals that could transport the entire monster population came in handy. During the No Mercy timeline Undyne informs Chara-possessed Frisk that Alphys is evacuating the remaining monsters into The Core, and plans to send them somewhere where Chara will never find them. Considering that Chara destroys her entire universe when she wins, the monsters would have had to flee to another dimension in the multiverse to avoid sharing this fate.

What makes you think Alphys even KNEW that Chara was going to destroy the universe? Odds are, she took them to the True Lab, as implied by the Alphys Ending, and they all died when Chara destroyed the universe.

"I... I realized I needed to do something. Even if it meant everybody would... Have to learn the truth about me."-Alphys

And then there’s the lingering question of what happens to Frisk on a Neutral ending.

Easily solved:Frisk never makes it past the barrier, Flowey tells them to reset for a better ending, and they do!

And yet, whenever Sans tries to call Frisk at the end of the game, Frisk is always gone, and Sans has to leave a message.

Sans' battery nearly ran out. Frisk's might have REALLY ran out. Or, as I hypothesized earlier, they went unconscious banging their head on the Barrier.

An elevator to the True Lab is right next door to Asgore’s lair. If Frisk knew about The Core Portal, and how to reach it.. He may have sent himself back in time to try again.

Or they literally just used the RESET option!