Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31371445-20170222233857/@comment-27136653-20190115193210

>A problem is a problem, Tssykx-No matter how small. Relativity was made to solve a very small problem, and it turned out to be right. We need EVERYTHING to be correct.

Every UT theory is destined to fail according to this mantra. If you really want a complete explanation, the simulation hypothesis is the simplest one of them all which addresses everything. If you don't favor it, stick to your metaverse explanation and come up with whatever ad hoc rules you can whenever you come by a flaw in your theory. That's what I'm doing after all, except disregarding the meta as something that actually happens. In my humble opinion, the simulation hypothesis is the best of the three. But you don't have to agree with that.

>Why can't the cuttoff for REFUSE then be at 7, or 7.5? That puts Frisk clearly unable to REGUSE during OF, and clearly able to in Asriel's fight with DT left over.

If that's your head canon for how soul power works, sure. I don't believe in any cutoffs for example. I've solved it by splicing DT into two distinct phenomena. At least that's less arbitrary than some absolutely concrete and exact cutoff. You could say I tend to avoid the procreation of arbitrary if-else statements concerning the theories I make.

>And it can be used to perform all kinds of feats. But it doesn't actually go away when used.

Or maybe it does. To connect this with what I said above, the two components I think are present are the psychological feeling of being determined and the magical DT substance. The first one experiences fluctuations and allocates the second one, which is the one that does the actual magic, can be drained, and replenishes through whatever regenerative process that doesn't break entropy. And all of this stems from my head canon that the humans' bodies are what makes them function, with the soul working as an extra unit in there, somewhat unifying many different parts and aspects of the human body under one system.

>Really, it wasn't important at all.

Just like any of his other comments? I'm sorry, but given the situation, I think addressing the event after it had occured would have been rather a major story-telling priority for Toby himself. Consider resetting right after Asriel regains his emotions, but before the barrier breaks. If it's true that true reset, the thing that makes even Flowey forget, is just what the reset power mutates into after the barrier breaks, then Asriel should still remember all of this. Boy wouldn't that make for a rather awkward situation, when Asriel realizes he's Flowey again and he's about to attack all of Frisk's friends? After becoming regretful of his past mistakes once again?

He should feel betrayed by us at the very least. I can list lots of things he could say about our act of reloading or resetting during this entire period, which would range from confusion, to congratulations, and including betrayal.

There's also the theory which strictly sticks to the canon, and that is, that it's Chara who dictates who loses their memories and who doesn't, which could explain this situation. But it also raises so many different questions, I won't consider this alternative for even a second.

In conclusion, I think Toby just forgot to address this entire part. He implemented the mechanic of a stuck timeline for Omega Flowey, but forgot to realize what it would cause to not implement it for Asriel's battle, nor giving Flowey any post-event comments. I really feel like Flowey would have a lot to say about the entire fight.

>The episode, Your World is an Illusion, canonizes that the world itself is a cartoon and not real in the sense that we know it. But my original point of the world working the way it does because that's how it naturally works still holds up even with this.

Well then, it has a creator, and is also watched by someone. This doesn't differ that much from my postulation regarding Undertale, that it is canonically a game, and therefore has a creator and a player. Of course, we can always break the meta by saying that the creator and the player are an actual entity within the universe, and not just something that's interacting with the universe through the 4th wall. Either is better than saying that this is how the world simply functions. A quark may just poof into existence, but an egg can't. Egg needs a chicken. If you get my analogy.

>Futurama. A show where the main characters are very aware that they are a cartoon, but still live and follow the rules of their world because that's how their world operates.

I don't remember something like that ever being mentioned. But even if, it was probably just a joke that wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Even Family Guy breaks the 4th wall occassionally, but most of the time, it just seems to be doing its own thing. In other words, I'm looking for consistency. If the show or game or movie or whatever prefers jokes over realism and is quite erratic with its meta japes, then there's a chance that whatever you saw probably wasn't canon to the main story line. Example: Treehouse of Horror episodes from The Simpsons. Those definitely aren't canon.

In light of this, I'd like to introduce the meta meter, a convenient method of talking about whatever meta:

0: Ignore the meta, it's either just a joke, or a non-canon mechanic resulting from the limitations of the medium conveying the information (e.g. Toby's lack of skills regarding certain elements of game design). This category also contains all the universes, whose laws differ, but are still somewhat faithful to our own (e.g. time travel - not possible, yet not too abstract at the same time either).

1: Augmented reality. Anything is possible, but that's okay, because the next layer up is strictly rational, so the meta still isn't real yet.

2: Anything is possible, yet it's real. In the special case that the craziness of it all actually does begin to imply a computer simulation (i.e. level 1), make sure to strictly deny that. Since Undertale doesn't do this, you basically are left with no choice but to degrade Undertale from this level back to level 1, because you have no proof for this level, for it working like some surreal "looks-exactly-like-a-game-yet-isn't-a-game" reality.

3: Breaks the 4th wall. The moment this trope becomes canon, the world is immediately reduced to being canonically nothing more than what its own code entails. As for this making the story feel pointless, that is sadly the cost of this assumption. Such games mostly aim to impress, rather than to entertain through a crafty plot. Which I feel was one of Toby's main goals with Undertale, to not think about the structure, consistency and the world he has created altogether all too much, and rather focus on the stuff that a "layman" will find entertaining, i.e. how the game makes you feel. Example: OneShot. Still though, Undertale provides no proof of this level, as all 4th wall breaking moments can be somewhat rationalized. Though I'm not so sure anymore when it comes to the Froggits.

4: Borders a story, a meta experience, and comedy. Ergo, it usually tends to break its own laws, and quite often too, and generally doesn't take itself all that seriously. Example: Family Guy, with its 4th wall jokes. Although, some form of continuity is still present.

5: The story and continuity tropes are completely discarded. They can appear, but only for entertainment purposes. Example: Cyanide and Happiness, or any other similar comic strips. Specifically, those cases where the characters are toying around with the layout of the comic itself. These last two levels are identical to level 3 in terms of meta, because there's only one type of 4th wall breaking. The only thing that varies between them is the amount of emphasis on story and continuity.

You're welcome to make any revisions to this scale.

>Why must they be identical? Why can't we instead say that the physical substance is INSTEAD identical to the personality trait, and the soul trait is just decided by how everything is balanced?

Because for that, we must assume that the red trait is DT, which is a statement the game meticulously avoided to make. That's the main reason I sought other explanations.

>It seems simpler at first, but when you consider the ramifications, it's actually more complex and requires far more leaps of logic.

Another thing is that it seems unresonable for Frisk's soul to just jump in power as much as you're claiming. It seems like a cheap deux ex machina way below Toby's level. I mean, sure, DT is strong, but this kinda defeats the charm of Asriel's final battle. It was a struggle for the fate of the world - who will hold control over the timeline. Not something that was won before it even began. If you find Frisk getting determined so much as to defeat a literal god "impressive," then I don't think I can really convince you of anything else. We're probably just tuned to different tastes, which affect our logical thinking. You find this a plausible scenario written by Toby, I don't.

And since I headcanon that the body of humans functions like our own bodies, since, well, they are called "humans", with nothing implying that their biological vessels work differently from ours, I took the liberty of splitting DT into multiple parts according to this. I mean, how WOULD the body work otherwise? What are the humans, if so much of them is replaced by magical constructs? How exactly are we supposed to make sense of them? I simply use the real world for reference, so that I don't have to worldbuild any nonsense that probably won't make sense anyways, prompting me to make a BILLION more assumptions about how the world works in order to fix this.

See, that's another thing. Yes, if I do this, Asriel's battle will become slightly more complicated. But BOI will it simplify the amount of rules I must make up for the rest of the world! And in case you regard taking real-world mechanics and incorporating them into the story as "assuming things", then by all means, we can all just talk about how the world is canonically a game, about how Frisk is unable to progress past the pacifist ending due to the credits blocking their progress (just like in Glitchtale), about how aware the Froggits are of the player, et cetera. That way, we don't need assume anything more than what the game's code contains! Voila, 100% of the problems we're talking about here instantly solved.

>And yet, Sans doesn't appear to make this conclusion. Why didn't he?

Probably because the "meta laws" of this universe aren't actually real, but are a mere translation of the true complex real-world-style mechanics into a simple battle system that we can all interpret as a game interface and play it.

I mean, this is what I talked about originally, this is my original take on this entire meta thing. This is the meta level 0 explanation. And here's level 1: he hasn't realized this yet; but eventually he will, it's only a matter of time. Or perhaps, the game is dumbing him down on purpose in order to conceal itself. These two explanations also work for level 2. Level 3: lol who cares, the only person on this level with free will left is Toby himself, so it was whatever Toby's idea it originally was.

>So let's take this one step futher. What if we found what appeared to be game code, dug deeper, and found that these were merely a result of OTHER laws interacting in the right way, and came out of evolution?

By all means, if you can explain how souls came to be, I'd love to hear that. I'm especially interested in your take on the humans' biological bodies. Like, if we remove the physical DT from them, we're essentially removing epinephrine and dopamine from their bodies. What will be the replacement for that? If DT, then you better start thinking about how DT can function as a hormone & neurotransmitter.

>The HUD is a result of SOULs and their magic.

It literally bends the world, constrains everyone into this pseudo setting where buttons and dialogue boxes manifest into existence and whatnot. If you can explain all of this naturally evolving, kudos to you.