Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31371445-20170222233857/@comment-27136653-20180831014638

"While this is true with the intro vs monster plaques, (long BATTLE versus hardly a WAR), there's really no way to make both of them true.."

Oh, that's what you meant. Well, if the intro says that, and later we learn otherwise, I say the intro was wrong, due to the order in which the information was presented to us. If it was the other way around, I think I'd say the battle was indeed long.

"He can't anymore. You're the last human. If he kills you, the barrier breaks, and he likely still believes another war would break out:That's WHY he wants everyone underground. (Toriel makes it clear he'd rather have everyone trapped underground, and meekly hope another human never arrives. That's my main evidence for the Asgore charade, by the way.)"

Yes, that's what I agree with. But if we're talking about any kind of hope, we could say that hope kept him alive. Even though there were many things he gave up upon, something was still giving him hope.

"Undyne proves it does. Specifically, Undying in Genocide versus death in all the other routes. And Asriel shows that applies to humans as well."

We're talking about humans. They work a bit differently.

"So why did Frisk only gain that power once they hit the underground? Why did Flowey have it until then?"

It doesn't exist on the surface... at least not while the barrier is up.

"Nonsense:We don't even have to eat monster food ONCE in the game."

Then it was healing. We did get healed a few times.

"From..? Where's your reasoning?"

The only people who can retain memories are Flowey and our friends. Flowey, of course, is the best at it.

"Their essence is now within your SOUL."

I think it has been there even before, since where else would it be otherwise, capable of communicating with our essence? (I mean, either it was rooted in the brain, or in the soul; either way, it had to be connected to the central nervous system somehow.)

"We know somebody did, but we don't know who. Probably Jerry. Just about nobody likes him."

Plural: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gS2LPXdIc5NkJZZEFvVFFXYjA/view

"I wouldn't say the same for green magic"

Green magic is chromatic magic, just like the soul modes. We don't see all monsters casting it, just like we don't see all monsters using orange or cyan magic.

"Me too: Hence the conclusion that hey; maybe they DON'T ignore it, and perhaps they want to kill you after all?"

Which would go against what Toby had in mind, that sparing them is the only way to win. You don't see him complaining when people praise the true pacifist ending and don't kill the characters he created.

"HP seems to be common knowledge, that's taught to students over time.. This particular one doesn't quite understand what HP is just yet, though."

Sure, but monsters lose HP when they get hurt like us. Humans lose HP only when attacked by magic. So once again, they are accustomed to their attacks not dealing damage if they do not wish to harm them, but suddenly, our soul doesn't ignore that attack and gets hurt by it nonetheless. So they do know about HP, but they don't realize their attacks have been hurting us, most likely since they didn't bother to check, since they're used to them not dealing damage. Or maybe they expect harm to get shown, but that's not the case, since we're human - soul scars don't just get projected outwards like that. Like, once again, they confuse us for a monster.

"And I've got the Boss Human theory, which at least has SOME merits (about as much as human essence)"

And Camila Cuevas has her Glitchtale, where she explores a world of humans dominated by magic. Heck, she even believes some monsters escaped the war. It's all about different interpretations. The wizards were a third race in my interpretation, they saved the monsters from extinction by this act. And that's because they created them... and also gave humans souls. Before they came, souls didn't even exist yet.

"By the way, why do YOU think he objected to calling the bad route the Genocide Route, if it's not because he didn't think it was a genocide?"

Because he's not insane and simply disliked the term.

"Yes, you're correct that it was never a rule."

Nothing ever objected against this information, so it's a rule. Because why else would Toby put it into the game? He never had in mind a detective hunt for information like Scott. Not if he's never gonna answer the questions.

"I don't follow that slippery slope, because I've drawn a strict line on how far we are to take this."

And what about your rules that dictate what falls above and under this line? What if something can be both interpreted as meta and non-meta? Such bridges are often the conficting points. If turns are real, then buttons and text are real, and therefore all text in the game is real, meaning the intro and outro are real too, meaning code is real, meaning only the stuff we see on screen exists.

"How do you see the intro narration of other stories?"

I always consider these conflicting points to take a chronological order. So if the intro is contradicted, the new information takes precedence. And if there was an outro that foreshadowed that this new in-canon information may not have been entirely accurate, I will then believe the outro.

It's often the author pulling a plot twist (even a minor one counts). So why disregard it and stubbornly stick to his original claims? Unless they were trolling us, which should be more or less obvious most of the time.

"Because Sans makes use of that, by aiming bone attacks at the buttons, and Asgore destroys the MERCY button. If it wasn't for that, I'd say the buttons weren't real either."

And as I said, Asgore's action was a metaphor. And as for Sans, he's just doing what no one else is doing - giving you time to breathe. I'd argue those others that wanted you dead had their reasons for giving you these "moments to breathe", like, Undyne challenging herself, the Dogi being confused, RGs being preoccupied with themselves, Asgore doing it on purpose, etc.

And lastly, Sans's final turn, well... The outcome of that turn is always his death. So maybe, he had nothing else and was exhausted, so he tried to weird us out, to get some more time and gather strength for dodging, perhaps even teleporting away. If he take his battle at a face value, we would literally have to take all the other meta things at a face value too.

Why argue that Flowey mentioned Chara watching, when Toby's intention was to point at us, a meta joke? Similarly, why say that turns are real as Toby wanted it, instead of arguing with the above?

"What IS that?"

What is what?

"We can both agree that trapping the monsters behind a barrier is better than flat-out destruction of one of the two races."

I don't. Besides, a human could refuse to cooperate with the monster, if they were to absorb their soul, just like Asriel did with Chara. Such a conflicted beast would be easy to take down. The chance doesn't justify denying someone their freedom. They wanted to execute Eren for that same reason in Attack on Titan, for being "dangerous".

Why not just accept that monsters ARE filled with love, hope and compassion? Then, we could settle on a simple "trust".

"See above, the second half shows that Asriel and Omega Flowey proves it's for humans as well. By the way, there's no reason to assume that humans are some special exception, or that monsters are some special exception."

I have already explained that human souls are used as a metric, so they most likely are an exception and their DT doesn't fluctuate.

"They make sense to all the Undertale characters, because they ARE living it. There you go."

We're talking about a game here, dude ._.

"He MADE them. Pretty sure he knows what they are."

I know it too. An experiment to make literally everything canon, resulting in a great deal of meta.

"We don't point to the presence of gravity, they don't point to the presence of turns."

They have to. When you do something the viewer may not understand, you explain it. I too got incredibly confused at first when I started reading Homestuck exactly because of this. In this case, we got no explanation and very little addressing. So the existence of this stuff is questionable to me.

"Seeing as the buttons are outside of the box, you won't be able to use them:Thus, all you can do is dodge."

The funny thing is, you can jump between the buttons, but cannot jump between the box and the buttons.

Sure, you could say that the box strips you of jumping and makes you "crawl" instead, but such rule is brand new. With the HUD, we are creating so many brand new rules, I feel like this system is turning into a metaphor for the geocentric model of the solar system, where absolute precision can be reached just by employing an arbitrary amount of epicycles. We can therefore never be wrong. And similarly, here we add an arbitrary amount of rules to account for all the anomalies the HUD is producing and voila, done. Totally ignoring that the HUD is simply incompatible with the overworld, and there is no way to explain it with the overworld rules. Instead, we must resort to arguments such as, "the buttons pop up 'just because' ".

"The very nature of his plans is shrouded in darkness."

I am starting to have doubts about that too. It would seem more logical to leave the rest of the story for the fanbase, truly. I don't think he can produce anything better than it at this point.

"Flowey most certainly shouldn't have had the power until right when Frisk falls."

Err... why?