Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-30088034-20170108152544/@comment-27701762-20170110020654

Yes I&#039;m single wrote: '''oh, so it's similar to the question "why is the most determined being deserved to save". it's just how the world works.''' Pretty much. Since there aren't any other occasions where a monster absorbs a human soul and then dies, and there isn't a lot of information about how human souls operate independent of what we experience, there's not much information to explain what are essentially a variety of "what if"s.

'''well, i've heard somewhere that flowey solves the puzzles. there's a discussion about it somewhere. maybe you should check it out to clear it up. i don't know where it is, though. it could be long gone. ''' I'll at least see what I can locate about it.

wow, i just don't see how he can act nice. Well, if you see Chara as genuinely evil, then they could act nice as a way of getting what they want, which is the destruction of humanity. Even if not evil in total, but just incredibly misanthropic and bent on killing humans, that acting nice could still just be manipulation. If you see Chara as depressed or bipolar, then their niceness would certainly be genuine, but would just require a very complex explanation of their motivations.

'''wait, did flowey reset, so people still kind of remembered him, or true reset, where it completely wiped out everyones memories? ''' It's not clear, though presumably it would be a normal reset. Flowey is aware of the nature of True Resets, and where he got this knowledge is completely unknown. Regardless, the way that resets work is that characters have a very vague notion about what happened in the other timeline. It's like a feeling of deja vu, where you think you've experienced something before even when you haven't. So characters wouldn't really be aware of Flowey across the various resets. It's the kind of thing that could be easily shrugged off as a bad dream.

'''wait, if you get every monster soul, you can cross through the barrier? i know a human and a monster soul can, but doesn't all monster souls equal one human soul? it doesn't make sense.''' This is why I said this all was incredibly unclear, because how everything works is defined in terms specific to what actually happens in the game. But using massive amounts of speculation, the requirements for crossing the Barrier is one human soul and one monster soul. However, we know that the combined power of nearly (but not necessarily every) monster soul equals one human soul. If soul power is perfectly transferable (a big if), then Flowey could absorb the souls of almost every monster until he has enough to equal one human soul, then absorb an additional monster soul and have the requirement to cross the Barrier. But again, that is nothing more than idle speculation.

'''that's confusing. so you think they could save, but not as often? but since flowey wasn't there, weren't they always the most determined? ''' On the first thing, basically. Or they could not save and reload in the same capacity, so perhaps they could not save themselves from death like Frisk can, or could only do so a certain number of times before they would essentially give up and thus die permanently. Or another way is that they can only make very minor manipulations, so they can't bring themselves back to life.

On the second point, the best theory for a timeline that we have of the game world suggests that Flowey comes into existence a good time after the other six humans fall down, meaning that they don't overlap with one another and the question of "who is most determined" doesn't matter.

'''well, it had to be when the qeen left, and when alphys was a live, right? and alphys doesn't seem that old; she watches anime and stuff, so i agree with you. ''' While we're on the subject, I'll provide a link to a thread where you can find a chart diagramming what seems to be the best theory we have right now of when the game takes place.

'''i just mean in general. like when they were best friends. who was the most determined? chara or asriel?''' As in before Chara died? Chara would presumably be the most determined, since there is no indication that Boss Monsters have enough determination to manipulate the timeline (the whole "the most determined being in the Underground controls the timeline" isn't quite that simple). Asriel would not really be able to manipulate the timeline until after absorbing Chara's soul (presuming he ever gains that power in the first place).