Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31371445-20170222233857/@comment-27136653-20180623150238

@MysteriousMalice

I always read everything. If I don't respond to something, I have nothing to say. And I don't know what do you keep complaining about. This is how I respond to everything. Take it or leave it.

So, how exactly did you come to the conclusion that humans can use soul modes to fight? We've only ever seen monsters do that, and with our own souls. We don't even know whether applying a soul mode to your own soul is possible to begin with.

To steer away from the point for a moment, I see that nowhere in the game, with the exception of the ancient wizards, is it mentioned that humans can use magic. Just that their souls are powerful, when used by a monster. And the wizards can be explained, rationalized so that this stays true. For example, they weren't human (technically, the game didn't say those ancient magicians were humans explicitly). Or that the humans have lost this ability over the years.

@TheHumanAmbassador

"Canonically, it's LOADing. Other than dying, leaving the game is the only way to LOAD during gameplay."

But is loading by leaving the game ever addressed in the game? Actually, I think it is. But as I said before, there must be a more sensible explanation for this in-game than us pressing the Esc button. Maybe this action is represented via a RELOAD button or something. But alright, we can load during the final fight with Asriel. In the Omega Flowey fight, he saved his own SAVE file, and destroyed our own (or maybe that's what him creating his own SAVE file caused, so maybe it wasn't destroyed, it was just pushed down the save file matrix stack, which would explain why we can go back normally to the game after finishing the Omega Flowey fight). Either way, one of those things took the power away from us. In the final fight, Asriel did neither. Maybe that's why we could still go back during it.

"And the whole 1>6 thing is why I consider this as proof that red is determination-That's the only real way for this to make sense. Of course one is less than six, but if red is determination, Frisk would have a large abundance of it, around the same as the other six combined, sometimes more."

But why do you keep insisting that 1 > 6? We didn't defeat Asriel, we've convinced him to stop fighting on his own. And as I mentioned above, the fact that we could go back is not a proof that this is the case, as it simply might be a technicality. I mean, if 1 > 6 was really true, we could go back even during the Omega Flowey fight.

"The game is an obstacle"

The game is a game. The ball game is just a game that you play. And based on how you play it, it tells you your prominent trait. And the descriptions of those individual flags, either we can analyze them the hardest we can, or we can take them with a grain of salt. They're very simple, for sure they cannot be summarizing the entire meaning of each trait perfectly. They're meant to explain how the way you played the ball game relates to the flag that was assigned to you - you were patient, quick, original, struggling, careful, accurate, and red, well, red seems like the flag you get only when you try the game like a hundred times - since it requires speed and precision. And that makes sense, considering it is described as the sum of all the other traits. You're bound to get all the 6 others before you get this one. And then when you get it once more, it gives you the line that appears multiple times throughout the game, that despite everything, you continue to be yourself. No mention of DT, just this. Maybe the above is why red = DT, since you have to be VERY determined to get it, but the same can be said about red = perseverance. So which one is it, DT or perseverance? Why have two traits that are so similar to each other? While we know that DT is a quantifiable substance, we don't know about the other traits. So maybe, they aren't, while DT is. And considering all humans, as well as many monsters have DT, I think DT is universal. Kinda like magic. So it cannot be a trait, because it's not unique (and would cause a logistical conflict with perseverance, if it were).

We don't know what red is. It could be the sum of the other traits, but it's probably not DT, it's "being yourself."

But then again, both the ball game and the hole were labeled with the color red previously (but only if you haven't killed the Snowdin forest population, as then, the ball would be missing). So maybe, red is in some way the journey + the end goal. It's definitely not the task of seeking it, it's literally the end and the journey. I don't know about you, but this kinda implies some sort of a grand scheme for the color red, which is interesting, since the clam girl said something very similar to this. But whatever, none of this is making any sense yet. I just like to say that red is none of the other traits, while being nothing specific itself, while being the combination of all the other ones. Kinda like a neutron can both be a proton without its positive charge, or an electron combined with a proton, while having a 0 net charge itself.

It's complicated.

"Even when we give them healing powers and such, they're really not expressing themselves."

I still find such explanation very abstract. I mean, sure, monsters are atuned to their souls. Whatever they do with magic would be expressing themselves, similarly to whatever humans do with their physical bodies is expressing themselves. But I don't think the word here is about a creative expression. If you have something, and it composes you, manipulating with it is expressing yourself with it, because that thing IS you. Monsters don't have much physical matter, and humans don't have much magic (implied by the text which said that humans are mostly made out of water). I think this implies, that they cannot express themselves with these things, simply because they don't have nearly enough of it to make it any meaningful. Ergo, it's not about the form, it's simply about the quantity restriction. And considering the text implied that humans cannot express themselves with magic at all, I think this meant that they can't use magic, even though they have it. Similarly to how monsters have a little bit of physical matter, but cannot put it to any meaningful use. Not because they aren't used to it, but because they don't have nearly enough of it to be able to do that. And the same with humans. They may be aware of their soul, feel it even, but can't utilize it, for it has too little free magic inside it, unlike the souls of monsters.

And the question whether the humans can be categorized based on how good they are in using magic is not answered by the game. As I said above, the ancient wizards may mean nothing in the context of the present day in the game. In fact, all of the human souls are implied to have the same power (after all, they are being used as a metric to state the strength of the barrier), so they all MUST have the same magical potential.