Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27677820-20160131035943/@comment-27573099-20160228224358

Okay, I do agree with you to some extent that Asriel isn't as good as everyone portrays him, but I think that for a different reason.

I do believe that Flowey and Asriel, are, in fact, the same person, FLowey is just a persona that Asriel uses to escape from his own feelings. To see why flowey acts the way he does you need to consider his life as Asriel, most specifically the end of it.

He agreed to a plan made by his sibling, who he loved and he believed that after it was done he could bring them back to life, but when it came down to it, he panicked, backed out and lost everything as a result. He lost his body, his closest friend was dead (which he blamed himself for) and he had to live in a world where people had (seemingly) moved on without him (flowey mentions how toriel will forget about you and find another child instantly). Desperate and miserable, he tried to kill himself but he failed. Consider he was a child at this time, are his actions really that hard to accept considering what he went through? He lashed out at the world because he was hurt, and when he can undo anything bad that happens what does morality really mean?

When he gains the souls in the true pacifist ending he's still acting like Flowey cause he's still hiding from his past, it's only when he's reminded of Chara and his family that he totally breaks down as he confronts his pain and his loss. He regains compassion not because he has a soul, but because he realised that all he wanted was his old life back, and he can no longer hide from who he is.

Essentially in the pacifist ending he takes the first step towards getting over his pain by confronting it, you help him not by restoring him to his previous form but giving him a shoulder to cry on. And I do think that while he'll never be able to fully get over it he'll come to accept it and having dealt with it he'll no longer feel the need to hurt anybody.

I'll end with one final speculation, at the end he asks Frisk that when he turns back into a Flower not to think of it as really him. I think he says this not because he and Flowey are different people, but because Flowey was never really him at all, and additionally saying this means that he does suspect that he may infact return to the surface to see Frisk once he has turned back into a flower, but he doesn't know if he really deserves to after what he did. But at that moment he just really wants to say goodbye to his old friend, and he'll decide what he's going to do from there.