Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31536324-20190117214835/@comment-32182236-20190315005957

...I'm going BACK to rejecting your take at this point, Malice. Of course.. Only parts of it. You still get a lot of things right. You're better than the strawman simulation hypothesis that Tsskyx created and then said was still better than yours, but it has a lot of the same flaws as his own fake hypothesis does.

The player has indeed never been mentioned once. There is no player.

I already gave an adequate explanation of the HUD on the previous thread, which assumes no simulation whatsoever. Why SHOULD we keep this meta, when we can adequately explain these moments, without changing a single word? Why isn't Flowey talking to Chara in the final speech, and why isn't he talking about the narrator when he says someone's watching?

I suppose it might seem hard to justify him saying that there are people (plural) watching this, but he could easily be talking about the monsters who evacuated, since it was confirmed that Alphys has cameras that watch over you, and we never destroyed the cameras!

...I might just have to make a thread all about why the simulation hypothesis simply is not backable by canon. It'll be for both of you. Mostly for Tsskyx, but both of you nonetheless.

Oh, and by the way, in the parallel universe where the player does exist, and isn't Frisk, Sans still doesn't know about them. He looks at Frisk when he makes his judgement, and asks THEM if they want to have a bad time-Not us, the player.

--- Now, over to Tsskyx for a moment..

"It is necessary for what I'm discussing. I'm not even discussing the story anymore, I'm currently talking about the mechanics of the UT world. And Toby must be factored in for that."

You got it exactly backwards. The meaning of the story is where you'd factor in Toby (though I don't focus on that when theorizing), while universal laws do not.

"It's not impossible, but it's improbable. Why shouldn't a game-like universe be a game? Look at it through the POV of the UT world itself. There's probably some nerds speculating that their world isn't real, just like here. Except there, it makes much more sense, since their laws are actually reminiscent of many HUD-driven games, like Pokemon."

What if my explanation for the mechanics is correct, though? About turns not being a fundamental property at all, but rather simply the result of not being able to act while trapped inside of the battle box, and lacking the magic to leave it until you've absorbed ambient magic? And before you say Toby wouldn't think of such an intricate detail, this is exactly how TP works in Deltarune. Which, by the way, is what you use to cast SPELLS. So it's MAGIC.

If anything, they should be theorizing that the games were based off of the world!

"I'm guessing him. As anyone else does. Nothing wrong about that. And it's not like I'm making up some bullshit claims, I am making educated guesses."

There's nothing educated about them. You don't back up your claims. You can't just guess him and then say that makes your theory more plausible. That's not how it works. If you don't provide evidence, it might as well be made up, because it's worth about the same. So instead of going around in the sea of speculation, with no clear goal, we seriously need to go back to assuming death of the author. You're better off assuming what the game tells you, because in every case, that is more likely than some random alternative.

"Most people would for example unanimously agree that Toby prioritized feelings over deep worldbuilding during Asriel's final battle."

That's "Argumentum ad populum". Seriously, we all need to stop with the fallacies. No wonder we're not getting anywhere, we're not even being logical!

"It's only when some theory REALLY grinds my gears that I tend use unorthodox arguments. And assuming bs about the story's message is one of those things."

Assuming that there's a message at all, and the game wasn't just made to tell a compelling story like more than 80% of fiction is. *ding*

Really, though, if you take my HUD mechanics, you'll find that even taking as much canon as I do, you need not assuming that simulation hypothesis. We both agree it's bad, it's just I'm offering the exact alternative you say you're looking for, and you favor the simulation hypothesis.

"I'm adamant that this is not how Toby meant it, so your explanation is wrong, even if it assumes the death of the author."

"I say it's wrong, so it's wrong"-Tsskyx

Argument by assertion? I didn't think we'd even reach that level!

"Because it fucking sucks compared to the one that assumes that this was just a plot hole, since in that one, Frisk doesn't need to be a mary sue of determination for the story to make sense, since we're dropping out the nonsensical part."

I've said it several times, this ISN'T Frisk being a Mary Sue. And while we're talking about Toby Fox.. I'll be using a quote that Mago thankfully gave us (it's from a 2017 interview, and it is real-You can google the first sentence or two.)

""Undertale has a few themes, but I guess "Determination" is the one that's come to represent the game. The word "determination" has a lot of nuance in English. In Undertale it primarily means something like "force of will," but it can also mean "judgement." DETERMINATION is the power to control your own destiny... To shape reality according to your judgement and desire. So you could say it's a pretty important power to have. People without determination just drift away on the waves of life, right? But that said, what I want to get across is that although determination is a necessary part of life, it's not always a good thing, you know? If someone is TOO determined, if their will is too firm, they could end up impacting the future of the entire world, all by themselves. And there's no telling whether that could end up good or bad..."

Determination literally has the power to shape the world, and this is a focal point of the story. It's also the firmness of their will, which of course WOULD rise when Asriel is trying to erase literally everything you've fought for in the entire game! Taking this into consideration, it's not that farfetched to say that YES, Toby intended this to be Frisk overpowering Asriel in determination.

...Now, can we go back to death of the author? We can both argue all year round about Toby and neither of us will get anywhere because you can argue anything at that point.

"Another way to think about it is that everything has its limits. Technically, you could assume that Flowey eventually repeating after resetting enough times is a plot hole too, or rather just the impossibility of making him say a new thing every single time (and then, in your style, say that he's actually repeating to piss you off... huh, yet another terrible attempt at resolving an obvious plot hole)."

No, the argument that you said was my style is actually a good argument. Here's the last thing he says BEFORE he starts repeating himself.

"Why do you keep coming back here? You don't REALLY want to be friends, do you...? No. I get it. You're just like me, aren't you? You don't care about anyone. You're just bored. You just want to see what I'll say. So you can laugh and throw me away like a broken toy. Well, TOO BAD! I'm not LIKE everybody else. So, from now on... You're not getting ANYTHING."

He specifically says you aren't getting anything else. So him repeating himself over and over, asking if we have anything better to do, is him fulfilling that word. So not only is this plausible, but we get hints that this is actually what's happening.

"This has nothing to do with Toby, this is how I personally feel. I only talk about Toby in regards to the plot hole of Asriel's battle."

Argumentum ad passiones? Can we just stop with the fallacies already?

"A world that works exactly like some computer game..."

At first glance.. Until you look deeper.. Just like with the SAVE ability...

"Which is it then, was the player called out, or were there no 4th wall interactions whatsoever?"

That's a valid question that I actually agree with. I choose the latter, though I wonder what Malice is going to choose...

"I mean, isn't it obvious? They can act on their own (and not just in the genocide route), they supposedly say things that we never did (they sometimes ask about more than what we originally did), they display their own emotions and whatnot. Plus, you know, they have their own name... There is enough proof that we are deciding their path, rather than being them."

So.. The player IS their own entity?

...Here, have this:http://saveloadreset.tumblr.com/post/137916924148/my-only-issue-with-the-oh-the-player-doesnt

We're separate from Frisk in the same way that we're separate from other game protagonists that have their own backstory.

But yes, Frisk is no puppet. So you still get the point, since you debunked Malice's take, the one you were actually arguing against.

Either way, it's clear that many aspects of their character really is up to us to decide. Like whether they're a nice pacifist or a genocidal manaiac. But really, that's no different than how we can decide how good of a person the Fallout protagonists are.

"Hmm?"

Exactly what Malice said before:There are no official, canonical sources which state that Undertale is canonically a game.

If you were trying to point out an apparent contradiction between the two lines, they don't contradict each other. A world that acts like a video game is just that. It's not canonically a video game, just a world that acts like one. Using my take, though, it's even further away from that.

"Good! Now, onwards to explain everything else in a similar manner, mainly the HUD. Try any explanation that works, except for video game tropes."

Here, have mine!

Really, though, Intelligent Design is another possible scenario. And that doesn't require it be a game. What's wrong with that hypothesis? We have a pretty good candidate for said designer. *insert scene of Annoying Dog going through the wall. Scene quickly jumps to the Dog Shrine, and then to the underground kingdom ruled by the dog, who makes everything better by doing nothing*

And one more thing. If Toby's own words shouldn't be taken into consideration, then why should your hypothesis on what he was thinking about be taken into consideration? Is the author dead or not?

Now back to you, Malice. That was a lot longer than I expected.

..I'm actually out of arguments against you. But as we're just one step away from each other, compared to the five or so distance between either of us and Tsskyx, that makes a lot of sense.