Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28128661-20160404143233/@comment-27701762-20160416090106

GetYourFix wrote: So, when we say "determined", you have to realize that that is Flowey's understanding because he is utilizing Alphy's name for what he was injected with. These are some interesting thoughts. I'm going to skip over the question of whether the red soul is specifically characterized by determination or not, since A) you made another thread about it, and B) the discussion would kind of go back and forth without really getting anywhere.

While the nature of saving and loading is presumed to be tied to determination by virtue of what Flowey tells us, I don't see the reason to distrust his explanation. His claim that the power to control the timelines is tied to determination seems to be justified by what we experience in the rest of the game. Put another way: the initial premise for us going in is that determination is a property which Flower and Alphys have sufficient knowledge of such that we can trust their exposition on it in the game. So what justification is there for rejecting this premise?

Flowey also is able to reload his save file up until he tries to attack us (I think). Recall that he says BULLETS and then this changes to "friendliness pellets"... this is the only instance in the game where this dialogue switch occurs. This is an interesting point, but I'm not entirely certain what the implication is. You want to use it as evidence that Flowey retains the power to save and load up until after the fight, but couldn't I respond that this is simply a fourth-wall-breaking moment from Flowey, who is aware of the way dialogue is being presented and changing it? It certainly doesn't rule out the reading you want to take, but I'm highly skeptical of this detail being more than a little joke.

The 6 human hearts (neutral ending) allow him to make save files and load them. We also cannot reset during this time. This implies that the human souls combined outweigh the redness of us. However. Neither Flowey nor Asriel ever resets. This caviat may be miniscule but it seems like a key as to what redness actually is.

While it is true that neither ever resets the game, there are several reasons for that. Not the least of which is that it would ruin the entire experience of the game, since any progress would be wiped away continually. At the very least, Asriel makes mention several times over that his plan is to reset the world once he is done toying with Frisk, so there doesn't seem to be reason to doubt that he has the power to reset the timeline if he so chooses.

I feel it's also worthwhile to point out that Flowey in general does (or more appropriately did) have the power to reset, since that very process is what he is describing at the end of the Genocide route.