Board Thread:Applications/@comment-27834277-20170101164059/@comment-27701762-20170102001848

Mewtwofan259 wrote:

Mabian wrote: I mean...it's fine in terms of headcanon, but pretty much anything is. But it's not really a theory, because there's absolutely nothing to actually support it. There is no mention of a wife to Gaster, or anyone else related to Sans or Papyrus. While logically they would have to come from somewhere, and Gaster could be related if W.D. does in fact stand for Wingdings, moving from that to "this sprite is Gaster's wife" is a leap that is impossible in terms of the story itself, as absolutely nothing suggests that reading. The idea is pulled completely out of the air.

Again, that means it's fine for headcanon, since basically anything is fine for headcanon. It's just not a theory. That's what I was going for. Sure I have some evidence to back it up, but it's all circumstantial. This is only my take on it. There's a problem with this statement, which is that unless there is more to your claim that you have not provided, there isn't any evidence actually being provided, direct or circumstantial. In order to have circumstantial evidence, you would need a premise and conclusion which are not directly connected to one another, but which require some inference to make the connection. But the inference and the conclusion are one and the same: we don't know who the sprite is, so it is concluded to be Gaster's wife, and inferred to be Gaster's wife by assuming that it is indeed Gaster's wife. Even the core claim that the sprite is "feminine" is inherently subjective, since the sprite is nothing more than a white blob in some sort of cloak or coat - the sprite is the functional equivalent of a Rorschach test.

If we're going to use the term "evidence," we need something to corroborate the individual claims: that Gaster had a wife (while we might presume it to be true, it can only be implied if Gaster is indeed the father of Papyrus and Sans; there is a competing hypothesis that Papyrus and Sans are parts of Gaster that split off from his failed experiment, which would negate the inherent assumption that Papyrus and Sans had parents); that Gaster ever actually experimented with determination (since Alphys is the one that builds the machine, based off of what are presumably Gaster's blueprints); that Papyrus and Sans's mother ever had complications with childbirth and was a subject of Gaster's experiments; that Gaster's disappearance is due to what is essentially suicide (which is suggested to not be the case, since one of his followers says that one of Gaster's experiments "went wrong"); that "Redacted" is a term that comes from another character, rather than from Toby ("redacted" in general just means that something was removed, not necessarily for legal or security purposes).

If there is anything to suggest that these claims are in fact true, then it would be suitable to call it evidence, even if only circumstantial evidence. Absent that, all it really is is speculation.

To reiterate, I am only specifying this insofar as you are presenting this, in your own words, as a "theory," and hence as an explanation of what the sprite actually is. Insofar as the explanation and the character of Verdana are simply your own creation for your own headcanon, fanfiction, etc., evidence is essentially irrelevant: you can make up whatever you like for these purposes even if it flies in direct contradiction of whatever actual evidence can be provided.