Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31981697-20170722123329/@comment-32182236-20170914003703

1)Determination is life, or at least one of the elements that together cretaes life. Flowey proves this. So no, nothing can persist without determination. They can have a very small amount of it, but it can't be zero. However, you do raise a reasonable point when it comes to the fact that since it takes nearly every monster to reach the power of one SOUL, the combination of every monster SOUL would actually be slightly over one human SOUL in power.

Its life cycle makes the SOUL powerful. So it appears that simply by being more powerful, it can persist.. This does seem like a strange occurance if determination is what life energy is (Well, there's a few points towards your SOUL power=determination theory, which could explain it simply-They have more power/determination, and can persist. Though we still have the fluctuation paradox, which we'll discuss when we get to it)

The human SOULs being too exhausted to persist actually makes sense! I don't have a real headcanon on how exactly SOUL persisting works, I consider several different possibilities to how it might work. They all are very similar "on paper", and result in the same outcomes with Boss Monster SOULs, but when applied in practice with human SOULs, the results vary drastically from hypothesis to hypothesis. The simplest of which is just what I said with nothing added-Determination is drained away, and when it runs out, you stop persisting. In this scenario, human SOULs do naturally perish after a certain amount of time, but the glass jars could allow for the determination used to bounce off the walls and go right back into the SOUL. Then it never runs out-It gets back what it used. (Conservation of DT!) There's also one involving "determination magic"... But I'll get to that one later. (And while I don't have one defintive headcanon, I generally go with the one I mentioned-In fact, I didn't even think about the second one until I saw your theory in Point 11. The SOULs appearing to vanish does seem to support this second hyothesis, though...) Either way, I agree it is possible for the human SOULs to have stopped persisiting eventually.

Actually Asriel still weilded the SOULs as he destroyed the barrier. We can see him using the SOULs to destroy the barrier. It is only after the Barrier broke that the SOULs were gone. So no, he wasn't just using like ~99% of the SOUL magic "left" inside him, because he still had the SOULs proving it for him. So, he actually had a little over 7 SOULs of SOUL magic within him, that he could use. Also, the minigame lasts for only about 2-3 minutes. Not really that long. :3

We can see Flowey's SAVE file interface, though, before he destroys it. (It's not our interfact anymore). Also, strangely, during said Omega Flowey fight, our interface is almost completely gone! Our HP bar has changed (Actually looks pretty similar to the infinite bar, just without it displaying your HP), our LV is never displayed, and we can't ITEM or MERCY. The box doesn't exist, and we can only ACT or FIGHT when the buttons arrive. The battle's not turn-based anymore either. This is also the one time where an enemy is in color during a battle. So, what's going on here?

I do have an explanation, though a complex one. (Not as complex as I've been before, but still quite complex) Now, we know for a fact that Flowey destroyed the SAVE box, we literally see that happen. And the SAVE box is a form of the HUD. So, perhaps Flowey.. destroyed the HUD! When that happened, it shattered into pieces (We also see it shatter), and so, only bits and pieces of it exist, never in its full form. The HUD, as we know it, is gone. The part that turns opponents into black-and white? Gone. Whatever makes things Turn-based? Gone. The box? Gone. The buttons? Mostly gone, only two remain, and they're not bound to their original positions on the HUD, but instead move as if they were entities of their own. Of course, when we get our SAVE back and reload it, the HUD would be restored as well. I do agree that Flowey sees us reload our SAVEs though:That's part of how he could tell that YOU have the power to SAVE (he mentions that he knows you can SAVE and LOAD if you kill and then spare Toriel, or spare and then kill Toriel.) This is the only time we see Flowey SAVE and LOAD, because it's the only time he could when we were playing.

2)......And, how can we tell that? More cherrypicking, it seems. Besides, "Thinking about this, feels you with.. relief". Most jokes would just stop at the punchline, saying they're all this dog. And yes, evidence does have match up with the theory-Otherwise we should just go back to Newton, and stop using quantum mechanics and Einstiens theories. If evidence goes against a theory, then it is wrong. The mushroom does not exist in the Undertale logo, therefore, it cannot be the Undertale logo.

Also, he's not foreshadowing an upcoming game. He probably doesn't even know what game that is, or anything about it-And he almost certainly didn't in 2015. If anything, it just means that he will keep making games. The identity of the game in question, has not been determined yet. Do we know anything about what movies Disney will release in, say, 2027? ...No? They haven't even came up with any ideas yet? ...Same thing here. We don't know what that game is, and Toby himself probably didn't know what game that would be. That's why we don't get to read the actual name of the game. And if the game takes place in the far distant future, than that would just make it even less plausible for the game in question to be Undertale-Then it could be literally any game that Toby makes within the next few decades-More likely being one he would have made around 95-98 years from now. (Sure, as of right now, people don't live long enough to get that far, but if the singularity happens, we could reverse aging before 2060.) So don't think of it like a teaser, but simply as a message that we will continue to get games from Toby Fox. We learn nothing about the game in question-Toby himself probably knows nothing about the game in question-Just that it exists, because he will continue to create games. Also, the dialouge only says the holes have rugs that need to be "patched". Actually, the holes are getting larger, according to the dialouge, so there's no reason to assume this is a metaphorical representation. And no, the game itself isn't actually referenced. Not even once. The closest you get is a game that has a logo that just so happens to be similar to that of Undertale, but CAN'T be Undertale's logo, because the mushroom underneath it does not exist in Undertale's logo. And yes, this is Toby being represented. But he's clearly not represented precisely, and there are a few differences between Toby and his avatar, so we can't day that just because Toby does something in real life, that the dog does the same thing-There are differences. Besides, this is future Toby, not Toby from 2015!

3)Actually, the singularity is what happens when we get AI that's smart enough to make AI of their own. Humans won't be the ones making new generations of AI, the AI itself will, much more efficently than we could ever hope of achieving. And in a capitalist society, a rival company could always sell their AI cheaper, and get more costumers, threatening the other company bankruptcy unless they do the same. The prices would drop this way for quite a while, until it gets close to the actual cost of the AI. And then the "smarter" AI will make its own AI, even more efficently.

We can double the processing power of computers about every 2 years. But when we have AI that's twice as effecient as us, they can double it twice as fast-in 1 year. That new AI, twice as efficent as its predeccessor, would then be able to double it again in just 6 months. Then 3. That's why it's called the singularity. If we make that first AI in, say, Februrary 12, 2034, the intellegence doubles 2/12/2035, then again half a year later, (8/14/2035) and the time it takes to double continues to get cut in half. So, what happens on 2/12/2036? A singularity.

But AI won't be expensive when it can be made by transhuman AI instead of people.

4)Well, DUH, of course there was an entrance. That part's obvious. That's my evidence against the plaques-They missed something this obvious. Also, this entrance was never "sealed" in that sense-We actually leave through this "Barrier" at the end of True Pacifist. If you mean sealed as in, well, the monsters are trapped and can't cross the barrier, well.. let's take a look at the plaques again. "Anything can enter through the barrier, but only someone with a powerful SOUL can leave". Anything can enter. Including fallen humans. It's an entrance. The fact that the plaques say there isn't one just goes on to show how ignorant whoever wrote the plaques are-They're not trustworthy. That's right, the plaques acknolwdge that anything could fall through the barrier.. Then just say there's no entrances. The barrier is a giant sphere surrounding the Underground, that's why the monsters can't just dig to the Surface. So really, they didn't look everywhere. They were ignorant. Also, nothing says they "rebuilded" anything. They established their own city of "HOME" after reaching the end of the caverns, and expanded outwards afterwards. They never crossed snowy land, waterfalls, or hotlands until after they expanded-And so, there were never cities there until after the expansion started. The monsters likely entered the Underground in the same hole that we do. It is an enourmous hole, after all. https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/0B6gS2LPXdIc5Zll6YzVna3dZQms/0B6gS2LPXdIc5TjBBRDdLU0s5RTA?sort=13&direction=a

Also, I have yet to see one piece of evidence against Alphys' theory on the human SOULs. And the plaques are not 100%, because they no human will ever fall, and there being no exits.. And both of those statements are false-We DO fall, and we're the eighth to fall, and it's pretty obvious that there is an entrance (The barrier entrance that they went through in the first place.) Also, the thing is, that actual living characters are flawed-They make mistakes. The game, however, doesn't get its own story wrong. And the intro itself is no legend-It only speaks of them, saying that legends say that whoever climbs the mountain never returns-Which would indeed be mere legend at this point, as nobody had actually climbed the mountain and fell yet.

Of course the castle was in New Home, that's why New Home was the ending destination. But the hole that they fell through was in the Ruins. They had to walk all the way back to the castle, before the two collapsed. Asriel had plenty of time to tell the story of what happened on the Surface to the monsters on his way before they collapsed. Their room (with two beds) being in New Home is why they walked to New Home in the first place instead of staying in the Ruins until they collapsed! So this is not an inconsistency. Undertale has none of those.

Chara's SOUL was damaged because it was inside Asriel's bodies. While they were two separate SOULs, they were both inside Asriel's bodies, and would both be damaged. Asriel did say that the two combined their SOULs together, though.. That does appear to be evidence supporting such a fusion, though. I suppose I could argue that Asriel meant they combined their SOULs, as in, the combined the powers of their SOUL, and used them both as one, but that seems quite farfecthed when there's a much simpler explanation. So I'm swapping over now-You've convinced me that Asriel and Chara did in fact combine their SOULs into one. However, this can't be what that plaques were referring to, being written before Chara fell, and thus before this SOUL absoprtion. Besides, it said those with a powerful SOUL, with no additional requirements, like it having to be half-human half-monster.

6)Please, tell me where you got that one from. I don't see a single piece of evidence within the game that an ACT necessarily has to be something visible. I do agree that checks are "visible", because of Aaron-It's actually one of the main premises that I use to come to the conclusion that the narrator can in fact be heard, and that Flowey would find out about the narrator. And yes, we are the ones intiating the check. But it is Chara that gives us the result, and not the monsters. So clearly, we're initating the check by having Chara look at the stats, and tells us the results. And since Aaron can see it, and Glyde can refuse, it's done by asking the monster what their stats are. And since this check is visible.. That must mean the narrator itself is "visible" in a way-They can be heard! That's also why Napstablook and Tsunderplane respond to the narrator. Frisk is initating the check by having Chara to do it. They are the one who chose "Check" after all.

Now, can you name me a single piece of evidence against the theory that the narrator can be heard? Or a problem that this would raise? (Within the game's story, of course.) Because as it stands, the evidence seems to support this theory, and it would give a reasonable solution to why Flowey mentions some sicko just WATCHING it all happen. That "sicko" is the narrator. And remember, since Flowey thinks you're Chara, that means he thinks the narrator isn't Chara, so he doesn't know he's calling his best friend a sicko-He just thinks it's some random narrator just, well.. watching it all happen. It solves why Napstablook and Tsunderplane react to the narrator. It explains why Flowey talks to "Chara" after knowing that you're Frisk, not Chara-At that point, he finally figured out that the narrator is Chara. It solves so many problems, and there doesn't appear to be a single issue with this theory.

Before, you said that Frisk's SOUL not being present was reason to believe that Frisk was not present using this menu, unlike the times when we use their SOUL to choose an option. "There is no soul, so Frisk isn't present. That's what I'm going with." But, perhaps you have retracted that notion since then, so let's give you the benefit of the doubt here, and look at your new take on this-Flowey's messages. You see, all of Flowey's messages make perfect sense either as a message to Frisk, or a message to Chara. I've already explained my stance on the messages.

Neutral: It's to Frisk. Genocide: It's to Frisk, and he's referring to the narrator when he mentions the "sicko". Pacifist:It's to Chara, the narrator.

There's no reason to insert this third entity "the player", when it can easily be explained as a message to either Frisk or Chara, depending on which message we're using.

8)Director Chara tells us how it's supposed to be. Chara pointed out that Napstablook missed the memo-He's supposed to be harder, not the same difficulty as normal. But, if Chara doesn't object to it, then it was not a mistake, and therefore, it's canon in the Hard Mode storyline.

If only were we allowed to travel just a little bit further. Just after Hard Mode ends, Flowey would mention Chara in Normal Mode. We would get to see concrete evidence about whether Chara exists as their own separate entity in Hard Mode. And we'd probably have a bad time with Sans, because since Toriel actually does wish to kill you in Hard Mode, she probably wouldn't have asked Sans to make that promise..

But yes, Hard Mode is all an act. But comparing it to "normal" difficulty of Normal Mode would make Normal Mode all an act too. We have the meta-canon of it all being an act, and the regular canon of what the story of the act is about. And it is this second canon that we're all trying to theorize about. Director Chara lets us know where all the mistakes are, like Napstablook still being normal difficulty on Hard Mode. (Napstablook, why'd you have to miss the memo? This is Timeline B-HARD, not A-NORMAL.)

9)Frisk not being kicked out of the ability to SAVE/LOAD, but still having it is why I argued that Frisk DOES have this power, and therefore has more determination than Asriel with 6 SOULs+monster SOULs. If red is determination, it fluctuated by at least a little over 16.666%, under the assumption that DT is SOUL power. (6->7) If red is NOT determination, then it's more like 600%, again assuming DT is SOUL power. (1->7). And technically, we were kicked out of the world in Omega Flowey because Flowey kicked us out himself, by LOADing his own SAVE. Every time we LOAD our save, we kick Flowey out. That's probably how he knows that we can do that-He can view our SAVE as well, since it was once his. Of course, he can't actually Reset, just as we can't in Flowey's World.

11)"How do you get that power"? Randomly! DT fluctuates! Therefore, your SOUL power would fluctate too, by at least 16.6666%, and if you wish to go by the argument that red is not determination, that Frisk's SOUL is just as determined as a normal human, then it's by 600%. Considering that there's well over a hundred monsters, you only need about a 1% fluctuation (actually probably less than that) to be powerful enough to cross the barrier. 1% is nowhere close to 16.6666%, let alone 600%, so such a fluctuation would be quite common. All you'd have to do is be determined to cross the barrier.. And you could cross the barrier. No monster SOUL required for thay extra.. 1% of SOUL power. And nowehere does it say magic is required to cross the barrier. It only says you need a powerful SOUL to do so. Nothing more. So no, it's not a fact.

I agree that SOUL power is what is required to break the barrier. Though SOUL power is also what would be required to cross the barrier, as it merely takes one with a powerful SOUL to cross the barrier. It's just I don't agree that DT is SOUL power, and that DT has no say in whether the barrier is destroyed or not. Same thing for crossing the barrier. It's just the SOUL power.

I already explained why I say that if DT is SOUL power, a monster SOUL is not required to cross the barrier-Monster SOULs are less than 1% of a human SOUL, and since DT fluctuates by over 16% (by your own red is not determination theory, it's 600%), it would fluctuate over the required amount to cross the barrier. You could quite literally cross the barrier just by being determined to. 116%>101% after all.

The impusles do not come from the SOUL. Flowey managed to get them too, despite the fact that he is SOULless. Once again, I stand by the theory that determination is pretty much life, at least when combined with essense-So it can indeed vanish, just as life does. That's why Alphys had to physically extract it, likely with special tools, to maintain it. It could theoretically be drained away the same way it can inside a monster and a human, through attacks, but Alphys wouldn't attack her own determination, that she's planning on giving to test subjects now, would she..?

And there is NO correlation between DT and SOUL power. The two are unrealted. SOUL power dictates how powerful your SOUL is, while determination is the will to life, the resolve to change fate. Determination+essense=life. It can exist without a SOUL, like with Flowey.

Though, your theory is actually quite close with my "second headcanon" about DT and persisting.. Yes, the one about "Determination magic" that I teased back in Point 1-Now it's time for me to explain it. Similar to "SOUL magic", "DT magic" would be created by the DT within you, and it is "DT magic" that is used to persist past death. Monsters quickly vanish, as they can't create "DT magic" fast enough to keep up with the DT required to live, Boss monsters can last a little while with the little "DT magic" they already have stored, and humans can get "DT magic" at a steady pace, enoug to keep up with what's required to live, and basically persist forever. However, if all of that DT magic gets used up somehow, either by the SOUL themselves, or someone else absorbing them and using all their power up.. (Talking about you, Asriel...) well.. They still vanish. They need to have this "DT magic" every Plank second (maybe I should call them "frames" just to be simpler? But then that would imply it's a game.. I do mean the shortest amount of time that exists) just to survive. If at any point they run out, for any reason, they perish. That includes someone else stealing/absorbing it all and then using it. Of course, one could also say that the SOULs returned to their bodies, and woke up, being why the coffins are all empty, or that the SOULs just continued to persist, roaming about, or went off to the next plane of existence (afterlife?). If that's the case, then the capsules would have been made to "trap" the SOULs, and prevent them from escaping on.

Now, I know of something you might say in response to this take on it. "Well, what if DT magic is also what is used to weild the power to SAVE? Then, that would mean that our DT never fluctuates at all! Paradox solved, DT is SOUL power!"

Well, considering that the DT of Asriel wasn't all used up when he crossed the barrier, that would mean that it would only make sense if it was "DT magic" that is required to cross the barrier, so we actually have the same problem as before, as "DT magic" does fluctuate. ...Unless of course we consider DT and SOUL power as two different things!

12)...Really? All Asgore does is tell is to follow him when we're ready, show us the barrier and the capsules, and tell us we're the last SOUL. He never said that this was his declaration. He did say that he decalred war in a fit of anger, but not that when he did, he said they would wait for seven humans to fall.

13)And so, we shouldn't use this as evidence that Frisk was resisting the player, that we do not roleplay Frisk. We roleplay Frisk-We do not exist as our own separate entity.

14)...It kind of would be. And what Flowey says has to do with the story itself, so we can't just say this happens within the "meta-canon" that is Chara being the director and thus dismiss it. Ot being non-canon WOULD be weird. And actually Chara and us share that power. That's why Chara's name is on the SAVE file, after all... So technically, Chara always had the power to reset, just like we do. And Flowey would have figured it out by hearing the narrator, just like Napstablook and Tsunderplane do. The dialouge box, is, well, dialouge. It's clearly something audiable. Chara also interacts with Frisk every time they save. "X fills you with determination". Yes, EVERY time you save. So if you even save once, well, now Flowey heard the narrator. But, what about a run where you never SAVE? Well, in a Neutral Run, there is no reference to the narrator by Flowey, so we can rule that one out. In a Pacifist Run, well.. You need to complete a Neutral Run first, and Flowey would hear the narration "You called for help". Also, since you must reload your SAVE in order to complete a Pacifist Run, you can't finish the run without making use of SAVEs somehow. On a Genocide Run, well... In a Genocide Run, you have to kill every unique encounter, and kill over 100 monsters. So, all that flavor text we get about the monsters? Yep, Flowey probably would have heard at least one of those. And so, once again, the narrator is heard. :3

15)...Why is it nonsense that the universe of Undertale was created with intellegent deisgn? The evidence seems to suggest it, with EXP and stuff. Undertale's universe canonically has a creator who made that universe that way by design.

16)He was pretending to be surprised too. :3