Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31371445-20170222233857/@comment-27136653-20180705151537

"Seeing as nobody cowers in fear at absolutely everything, everyone has some bravery. So, if everyone has bravery, why SHOULD bravery be a trait? In what extra way would that make it any more special?"

... because it is a trait, as has been proven by the game. Yes, everyone has some amount of bravery in them, but only metaphorically, it's not literally a magical trait. It's not needed to be. Besides, we get back to the 7/N problem. What if someone's dominant trait is something outside this 7-trait system? Say, a sense of order? If justice can be a trait, then order can be too. Such person would always want everything to be perfect and aesthetically pleasing. And saying that this is just a form of integrity is the same as saying that perseverance is just a form of determination, so think about it hard. IS this system really tied to these psychological traits in a 1-to-1 correspondence? I don't think so, it makes no sense per any irl psychological trait study. A function with an unmeasurably high input N and an output of 7 cannot be based on a 1-to-1 correspondence.

So... all of this implies the names of the traits are not meant to be taken literally, because they are not defined literally. Patience may as well be knowledge, bravery emotions, integrity wisdom as well as originality, perseverance an unexplainable motivating force, green social skills and understanding, yellow accuracy, ego and goal seeking, and red some root stability (it can literally be anything). And these are the chakra definitions. This is how I managed to merge the two concepts. Alas, with the soul stone, that one controls souls, does it not? It doesn't just destroy souls, it's ALL about souls. Thanos used it to locate the real Doctor Strange after he multiplied, if you've seen A:IW. And is the blue power not this? Does it not control the movement of souls? It can certainly accomplish more than any other trait.

Another thing you need to open yourself to: the fact that purple is more than just about taking notes. Seriously, that would be the lamest trait of them all if that was the case. And it's not about learning per se. It's about persevering. So you take as many notes as you need to escape a sticky situation, no more, no less. Patience can be about broad learning (through observation) directly. Also:

- Orange is emotions, hence bravery. And I meant positive emotions. All the chakras speak of positive aspects of their definitions. A brave person is self-confident. That's what these "emotions" are referring to. Not crying and running away in fear. - Red is NOT your connection to earthly energy or whatever. That's bs science. At the start of a cycle, one finds their root, stabilizes themselves, and then starts expressing themselves (orange). Then yellow, then green, etc. - Justice is also karma. That's how the Vaapad form works, you turn the evil against itself. That's justice, that's karma. But in a way, being accurate also represents shooting for your goal, reaching for it, reaching for justice. Yellow is very expressive, but more specific than orange. It's not about overcomming struggles, as much as about seeking your goal, your target. - The difference between orange and purple, is that with purple, you at LEAST take some mental notes and don't approach a situation head on. Purple contains the sum of the previous steps, which are red, orange, yellow, green, cyan and blue respectively. It's a one-directional circle with a single unchanging starting point - red. Oh and purple has nothing to do with religion. It's about spirituality and finding motivation in literally nothing physical at all. However, is that not what motivates those islamic extremists we keep hearing about all the time? - And the difference between purple and CYAN, is that cyan is about observing. Observing is learning. And then putting that knowledge to use. This is unlike purple, which is solely oriented on persevering. If taking notes is what it takes to persevere through Muffet's battle, then so be it. I mean, those spiders were literally showing you the contents of the next round. That's why I said a long time ago, that the ball game rather foreshadowed this. - Any other questions?

Also, forgive me but I just cannot ignore this:

"I figured,if you were going to use these as your explanations, they shouldn't contin holes like that."

They only do if you take them literally. As I said, it's all about loose connections. I'm not trying to come up with a theory of quantum gravity over here. You are always nitpicking everything, as if Toby hid some grand design into this game. In reality, you're just wasting your time however. My theories will always be broken. You might as well stop pointing out the obvious.

"But, the will to live is purely mental, isn't it? And yet, it clearly manifests into a substance here."

Every single person who jumped down a bridge and survived said they regretted the decision in the instant they flipped themselves over the edge. The will to live is psychological. The power of soul persistence and the connection to the SLR ability is magical however, and is mediated by DT.

"meaning determination is.. The combination of the other six traits?"

It is in GT. But the more you think about it, the less sense it makes, doesn't it? So, is red not DT after all? DT is always spoken of as something concrete, not as some sort of a composite substance.

"But, let's try to fix this, by defining determination, and seeing how you might need the other traits to even HAVE determination."

It's all connected. You can find bravery in justice, you can find patience in perseverance, you can find kindness in integrity. Such approach gets us nowhere.

"Surefire accuracy? But.. That's a skill, not a trait!"

Yeah... my other point. How are the descriptions of these describing them, if they're derailing to such mundane concepts? Hence my statement that you cannot take the definitions themselves literally, but rather work with everything the word itself (e.g. justice) is connected to. In my case, it was to realize that justice can in the worst case be reached only by peeking into someone's mind, hence, that justice rules the mind, and could therefore be connected with the mind stone from the Marvel movies, which, coincidentally, is also yellow. Or that being accurate is striving for a concrete goal, ergo ego, goals, that is, the solar plexus chakra, the Manipura. Which, coincidentally, is also yellow. Or, the Vaapad form, which is all about being just and karmic towards the dark side. And it also has to do more with that, than with being accurate - all lightsaber forms require you to be accurate, one mistake and you're dead after all. So I defaulted to the other definition, that is, justice/mind.

Really, these connections with things outside of Undertale are just for my amusement, but at least they are a prime example to YOU of how you can extend the definitions of the traits past their mundane definitions.

"Nothing's changed, though. As Toriel pointed out, if Asgore REALLY wanted to free everyobe this way, he only needs one-He can take the other six from the Surface. The fact that he didn't do that shows his miserable state was like that AT THE EARLIEST since after he killed the first human."

Not good enough. This simply means he didn't want to be proactive. After all, then the guilt WOULD be on him, for openly starting another war. But being fed humans passively is a different song. They would have died eventually anyways. It wasn't guilt that prevented him from doing it this way, it was his cowardice. But guilt was the thing that made him lose the battle against us. For god sake he wasn't even dodging and yet, dodged every single one of Undyne's attacks. And no, the HUD plays no role here, remember, we are trying to NOT go meta here. Afaik, there's no proof that the battle interface is real. Sans's battle is an exception but then, what are all of our theories good for, if Undertale is just a "player vs. game" type of game? For the sake of sanity, let's drop the idea that the HUD is canon for now, alright? It ties to the concept of a player too much, and that would imply the world is not real, not absolute and therefore, not worth theorizing about, as everything is the way it is "just because."

"Just that there IS a narrator, because he can read the HUD, just as we can read Flowey's HUD when he's Omega Flowey"

I don't see any part of the HUD in that battle that would belong to Flowey's point of view. No, no one can read our HUD, not even Frisk. Frisk rather hears it. That's the in-canon explanation, and that's what we should be defaulting to. Text is not real, speech is.

"So, it's clear they too have yellow text be used for mood."

Yep. Now show red outside their personalized subjective genocide speech. Or any other color for that matter.

"In Toriel's case, "ASGORE" was red because that name was important-He was the one that would kill you. ASGORE was emphasized. Besides, "I unlocked the chain" was also red, and there was no irritation there!"

As I said, the end of the genocide run is irrelevant. Chara speaks in first person there, and THAT is emphasized with the color red. I see no compelling reason why would a single word elsewhere be emphasized like this, if it wasn't for the fact, that it's in the area which is ALL about colors and color traits. Asgore, yes, he wanted to murder us. Does the hole want to murder us or something?

"Yeah, a DT boost!"

You cannot indoctrinate me on backwards information. If a being with 7 souls is less powerful than Frisk, a being with only one soul, a being with 6 souls would be too. But that's not the case. Plus, a DT boost doesn't address the soul refusing. As opposed to Asriel TRULY having the ability to reset right there. Which goes against your DT boost theory pretty clearly.

"The battle continues where you left off, instead of you having to start all over."

It's pointless. A reload would accomplish the same thing. It did a hundred times before already. And me speaking of memories, that was to address the continuity issue. Yes, continuing like this would make the battle progress, as opposed to resetting, but Flowey could sense us resetting, and even remember it. It would still be the same. While no progress on defeating Asriel would be made, he would still remember, and we could frustrate him the same way we did by continuing without dying. Ergo, there is no reason whatsoever for our soul having to refuse, UNLESS, it cannot reset by dying.