Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31371445-20170222233857/@comment-32182236-20180917161342

"'Simple' is reserved for the quantum world, not a macro-scale phenomena. And once again, the macro scale world being quantized is reminiscent of a simulation, not a 'realistic' world."

That or magic used a separate system, and is indeed tiny.

"An amount of water you can hold in your hands could be considered a quantized amount of water."

I was explaining why damage is always integer-based.

"In the case of monsters, we're talking about souls, and they all look the same to me, so sure, precise measurements are involved. I have no problem against that. But magnified "bits" of data, as presented by the "HUD", that's a totally different story altogether."

Binary is not used at all, the quantization is the same as quantization of the quantum world-Only a multiple of a certain unit can normally exist-That unit has been defined as 1.

"But... why? WHY does the universe NEED to alter it? Also, HOW is it able to alter it?"

I should have been more specifc-It was an alteration overlayed ON TOP of the natural overworld. Essentially, it's adding a few new objects to it-Like the buttons and box. Everything else is explainable using the same ruleset as the overworld-The main difference is that you're controlling your SOUL now, and that's the reason behind the sudden shift to turn-based battle.

"You die. Simple as that. The HUD therefore cannot possibly be doing that."

The HUD isn't doing that, but rather, that is causing the HUD. (Well, actually, the FIGHT) You've got the causation backwards. Also, the rule you cited applies to monsters because monster SOULs can't persist-Human SOULs can, as described in the Waterfall Plaques AND Alphys' lab entries. Oh, and we get to see it for ourselves in Asgore and Omega Flowey and Asriel's battles.

"But it stil has legs you're claiming..."

Actually, those come from the Flee command. They dom't actually exist until you use that command. Oh, you're asking how the SOUL moves around in the box? I told you, there's enough magic there for the SOUL to use to move across it. It's easier to use magic to give yourself some accelaration than to literally teleport. Of course, the green mode was a way to block you from using that.

"I detect a head canon. There can be any explanation as to how and why that button is there. It's a totally arbitrary question."

You were saying it doesn't make sense if it's not a simulation, so I created this as a demonstration that it CAN make sense. Yes, this is a headcanon:As I had said before, we can never truly understand how it works. But this shows that it's possible for it to make sense, and I'll be using this as my personal hypothesis. But, if you think you can do better, go ahead and give it a try.

"Then let's hear it. I'm intrigued."

I acttually havrn't gotten there, I only knew they had to be similar to FIGHT and ITEM. But I suppose I'll try to complete my explanation..

First off, a question to think about:When have you ever seen a SOUL (with no host) ever speak or make any dialouge on their own? Odds are, the answer is never, because that doesn't happen even once in the game.

With that being said, in order to explain the MERCY button, we must first find out exactly what MERCY even is. Luckily, we have a Froggit to tell us.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gS2LPXdIc5dHVTSHZsS0ZzQk0/view?usp=drive_open

So, sparing is just saying you won't fight. And we already know what fleeing is. This means the magic contained within this rectangle must have something to do with escaping a fight, or perhaps, more generally, escaping a conflict (but the buttons only appear during a FIGHT, so this generalization is pointless.) The Flee button gives you an opportunity to leave the battlefield, supposedly back into your human body, causing the fight to UN-intiate, while the spare button does.. something.. To express that you don't want to fight. Whether it's giving such a message to the monster, allowing you to speak those words (remember the question I gave at the beginning), it's clearly something to allow you to escape the battle.

Either way, it uses SOUL power, and it uses enough so that there's not enough left for the protection field.

"Totally arbitrary explanation. We can just as easily say the universe uses our soul to read the soul of our enemy and generate the appropriate setting based on how would they resolve a fight were they not stuck in this dystopian setting."

..Um, what?

"And since no one is asking any questions, it must be a natural occurrence for both us AND the monsters, implying this power exists everywhere.

We don't need any ambient magic or whatever. Just blame it on the sentience of the universe itself, that's a much simpler explanation. Just make sure to lock away your common sense first."

Both are assumptions, but that last sentence is the problem with misuse of Occam's Razor in a nutshell. By the way, energy already naturally radiates from places with lots of it outwards, like how fire radiates heat, and have you heard of ambient light? This ambient magic is radiating outwards from the magic that makes up the bullets. And interference is a natural thing-Waves interfere with each other when they meet. So too would magic in this explanation. So think of it like that, and it should make MUCH more sense. (Also, think about how wireless signals can be interfered with just by being near certain other active electrical devices.)

"Dropping Toby, we drop his idea of a universe where all of this is canon and go back to the dystopian simulation hypothesis."

Which is a strawman Toby, which we can't use either. We need to drop the idea of a human designer creating this world as a video game all together. Remember the razor I used:If it's explicitly mentioned by a character within the story, it's canon. No exceptions.

"Though, consider, we don't need to do any of that. We can ignore the HUD at all times, except for the case of Sans's battle."

One exception is enough to break the idea of it being a universal rule, though.

"And what is simpler, ignoring this battle, or rewriting logic itself?"

And what is simpler, ignoring the double-slit experiment, or rewriting physics itself? (Quantum mechanics)

"If battles and speech bubbles are all governed by the HUD, and according to this interpretation, the HUD is a mere translation method, then what we see is just a translation of the original, which could have been and probably was very different. So much so, it may have even been in accordance with these alternative rules."

Once you take into account that this means FRISK is seeing it that way when it's totally different (we ARE Frisk according to canon, just like we're Link in the Legend of Zelda), you'll start to see the problems that come with that.

"It's literally there on the screen in front of your eyes, just like the buttons, just like the battle arena, just like the speech bubbles."

Unlike all of those times, nobody actually mentioned them, or abused their mechanics.

"I shan't then. Saving, exp, lv, all of those are canon. And nothing else concerning the HUD is. Moving on!"

There's definitely more than that. "Such as" was there for a reason, you know. It implies that these are the KINDS of things that are canon. It defines the category, clarifying the kinds of things he's talking about. So, tell me, what do they all have in common?

"Then let's agree, Flowey spoke of YouTube viewers at one point."

..That's not exactly a trope, though. And how is that supposed to be "an integrated part of the game's world"?

"And what kind of a lame ass deductive logic is this again?"

Look. Every time a HUD mechanic was canon, SOMEBODY abused it. Sans, Asgore.. Gerson at one point. Because they can be deduced. The effects of them are clearly visible, even if the mechanics themselves aren't. Now, how is it reasonable at all that the Royal Scoentist who made the CORE, wouldn't think of the very SIMPLE solution to just put a very small gap that any monster could cross with ease, but would act as an impassable barrier to humans? (Remember, Monster Kid fell off a cliff. So the rule can't apply to monsters.) Why wouldn't he figure out that humans can't cross cliffs, if he COULD figure out all about turns and buttons, and a way to attack a human when it's the human's turn? Or, if you think Sans figured all that out himself, making him possibly smarter than Gaster, why didn't HE think of that?

"To my knowledge, you repeated the same thing they did."

Do you mean the plaques by "they"? Because if so, yes, I did. Then I analyzed it.

"No u. The power of a soul = soul's power = soul power. It is not my fault you nitpick."

But it's not the power of a SOUL. The first plaque was talking about the SOUL's "strength". (Note:Not its power, its culmination, nor its magic, just the immense strength it has.) then, the second plaque is referring to ITS power. So no, it's not the power of a soul, it's a power of a strength of the soul.

"Nowhere in the game it is said that souls have two distinct forms of power. No, when speaking of its power, the word is about its strength. And the plaques define soul strength as the ability to persist after death."

Exactly-STRENGTH of the SOUL.

"This is a definitive proof that soul power is determination, besides the obvious correlation between the two."

SOUL power =/= SOUL strength

"What else do I have to say? Your entire counter argument is based on the fact that the two phrases, "soul power" and "the power of a soul" are not the same gramatically speaking... as if that actually made them semantically different."

You messed up on the latter of the two. It's "a power of a strength of the soul." My real argument is that "the strength of a SOUL" is not soul power.

"That is horrendously weak, and correlation does not imply causation."

"'Weak' is a subjective term, and although true, correlation does not imply causation, it also doesn't deny it."

Sure, it doesn't deny it, but the lack of evidence that it's false is not proof that it's true. Technically, there's a lack of evidence that Bigfoot doesn't exist. And a correlation that has a 1 in 4 chance of happening anyway (and another 1 in 4 chance that you'd get a similar correlation, but with MONSTERS being better in both, adding up to a 1 in 2) is horrendously weak. There's a reason why 5% is the standard for being statistically significant.

"Besides, we were kinda left with no choice before. The correlation was there, nothing was pointing against it (not even your theses about a DT flux, since those could have been easily reexplained to fit this correlation), so I kind of assumed this has always been true."

And it being re-explained in a rule just to make it make sense is exactly what flat-earthers do to this very day.

"The Earth looks flat, so it must BE flat, and all the evidence against it can surely be explained!"-FE

Seriously though, I'm waiting for the day when they try to explain why circumnavigating the south hemisphere doesn't take longer than doing it in the north hemisphere (since their model places Antartica as the outer wall, that model would predict that going around the south hemisphere would take longer than going around the equator) I'm sure it'll be filled with more ad-hoc explanations that just start to become hilarious!

"But now, I have a factual proof. Wait no, not "I," we do. This is our proof. This is canon. This is what the game is saying."

By assuming that the power of the great strength of a SOUL is the same as just SOUL power as a whole.

"Nah, the media is faster. Remember his notorious laziness?"

What lazy developer could create a game this polished? Also, the reason why Toby doesn't respond to these headcanons is the same reason why he doesn't just reveal the entire story in one big blog post. He's not going to ruin the mystery. Remember that file where Toby said not to datamine the game and share the files?

"He never said that he's Asriel."

He did. He took everyone's SOULs, transformed into Asriel Dreemurr who had the SOULs being absorbed, then called out his name.

"And Asriel never said that he's Flowey. Just something about """some""" flower. All of us of course knew he's talking about Flowey, but it's still an implication."

Not when we flat-put watch the transformation happen, and know for a fact that FLOWEY is the one who absorbed the SOULs.

"I bet I could redo the entire plot line of Undertale, fully referencing myself to the canon, so that Flowey wouldn't be Asriel. I bet it would be possible."

Alright, you can get started! I'll get back to you on here once you've made your story! For your sake, I hope you'll do better than the flat-earthers!

"That comes bundled with being the "previous royal scientist", I didn't forget about those two facts."

Alright then. Then we agree about Gaster. At least until we uncover more references to Gaster.

"Referencing soul power and DT in different contexts but never as a single thing at the same time?"

First she talks about SOUL power, the thing locking the barrier. Then she wanted to find something to make the SOULs last (If DT was SOUL power, she would have known the solution already) Then, she discovers determination (If it was SOUL power, she wouldn't have just discovered it, as she knew what SOUL power was in Entry 1. Her saying that THIS is what she believes causes the SOULs to persist past death supports the previous interpretation that she was trying to find out what causes it, so she could make the monster SOULs last.) Then, having seen both DT and SOUL power, knowing what both of them are, she gives this substance the name of "DT", instead of just sticking with SOUL power, meaning it is certain that Alphys believes the two to be separate things, even after she knows what BOTH of them are. If they were the same, then if she didn't know at first (why wouldn't she know about something that even the ancients did when she's the Royal Scientist?), she definitely would have learned after extracting DT, seeing for herself that they're literally the same thing.

"Alphys wins, because the True Lab is way past Waterfall."

"Once again, I have to repeat myself. You use that rule only if the two possibilities have the same weight. Earlier, we've had two true-by-default statements clashing against each other. Now, we have another such statement, but against someone's spoken word instead. If Alphys were right, that would not disprove the plaques."

Technically, one is lab entries, the other is a specific interpretation of the plaques that you insist is the only possible one. And yes, Alphys being right doesn't disprove the plaques, we just shift to my interpretation of the plaques. Which is another reason not to believe that Alphys is wrong.

"They have no reason to be lying, else their existence would be pointless."

I could say the same about the lab entries. And they're not lying here.

"So that would rather imply the laws of soul mechanics have changed over the years. Which is a moronic assumption, as we can all guess."

Or we can just say that the power of a strength of the SOUL isn't the same as just plain SOUL power, which is almost certainly magic-based, since it's used as a metric for the power required to break the barrier (and from its creation)

"Ergo, Alphys's spoken word must have been wrong."

Not spoken words, written ones in lab entries.

"We don't know where she pulled that information from, and we know she was wrong several other times too. Go figure the rest for yourself."

She LIED several other times. She was only wrong twice, the first was the mistake that caused the Amalgamates, and the second was a result of Mettaton rearranging the CORE to make her wrong. She never got something this basic wrong before.

"Technically, that's not a save. Unless by a "blank save", you mean "nothing.""

It kind of is. If you LOAD before you ever make a SAVE, you're back at the beginning. This is the same as a RESET. Therefore, this is a fixed point in time that can be loaded from.

"Tl;dr, Asriel had more cumulative DT than Frisk, but couldn't reset right away, since the composition of his soul laid out one more hurdle for him to overcome, and that is killing Frisk. But Frisk didn't want to accept this, so instead of their soul shattering and accepting its fate, it refused, which in itself was not an act of a superior determination, but merely the resolution of the full potential of a human soul, the power of determination. They were not more determined than Asriel, but were determined enough to persist. Same thing happened to Undyne in the genocide route. Not in control, but not dying either. That's all there is to it."

We still have proof that humans have DT fluctuations, though. And you still fail to explain Frisk's ability to LOAD. (Not by exiting the world, mind you. Just using the same methods to LOAD they've been using this whole time whenever they're not dying.)

"If you say it this way, you completely eliminate the problem Malice has been presenting."

You only eliminate HALF of the problem. You have to eliminate the FULL problem.

"And why wouldn't it? Why wouldn't "soul power" and "the power of a soul" be the same thing?"

It's not even "the power of a soul".

"We're already assuming that the "DT extractor" extracts determination and not for instance deuterium+tritium, so what gives this time?"

The former doesn't create problems later on in the story. Also, Alphys conducting DT extraction experiments is how we know it's a determination extractor-We were able to explore the whole lab, and no other candidate exists. Therefore, it has to be this one.

"Sure. And then compare that to Frisk's DT spontaneously multiplying seven-fold."

Not seven-fold. Did you forget about red being DT in my take on the matter? Frisk likely naturally has the DT of maybe for or five non-red humans. Their DT didn't even double in Asriel's fight.

"A literal anticlimatic Mary Sue/Deux Ex Machina moment"

Which is common in fiction, and no, it's not anticlimatic. If Toby really is as lazy as you say he is, Deus Ex Machina is not against his character. Besides, this is technically just another case of Undying. Let's call this boosted state "the Undying state".

"versus the addition of a pretty basic rule. The one thing still bugging me though is reloading. Perhaps you could explain that. How exactly do you want to "turn canon" the fact that in order to reload/reset manually, you have to quit the game, without actually changing what the game shows us?

I'd add a new button that Frisk presses instead of literally quitting the world, just like I added that rule with composite souls."

Something like that, yes. We press Escape or the close button, Frisk presses a different button.

"And while at it, I'd also tweak Chara's world-killing attack accordingly, so that it doesn't have to be so "meta"."

I don't see how it's meta, unless you're talking about the interpretation that they're attacking the game. (I don't use that interpretation.)

But if you take into consideration how much damage they just dealt, then tried applying our universe's physics to it, you'd get enough energy to make a blast traveling near the speed of light, stronger than a hypernova. Seriously, count the nines and find out how many units of damage Chara just did. I don't think anything could survive that.

But Chara did, and we did, so that doesn't suffice.

"Internal/psychological dedication. I reckon the same happens with humans, except they don't create any new DT, they take from the pool they already have. The pool which makes their souls persist after death and occassionally heal them."

While I recon the same happens with humans, exactly-As in, they make new DT as well. And this is what happened to Frisk the Undying to allow them to surpass Asriel.

"I meant the definitions themselves. For example, integrity and justice are very similar, as they both deal with what is right and what is wrong. Of course, integrity is originality, but only according to Toby Fox. The dictionary would disagree."

And I've decided on using the flag's definitions, and THOSE definitions don't collide, do they? Also, when I say the six traits, the six virtues, I'm talking about how the flags portray them.

"Why ARE these the main attributes? Why not some others? Why is it all so arbitrary?"

Can you think of better attributes than the ones described by the flags? For me, we have bravery, order/justice, (com)passion, patience, creativity/"integrity", and perserverance.

"Not exactly. It's a conjecture. I'm not actually introducing any new elements into play."

You are-The rule itself.

"Once again, I have to repeat myself. He managed to push through it at first. He was telling himself this was his duty as the king. But with us, he finally mentally snapped. No particular reason why, it had nothing to do with us, it was just the timing. You could say we were lucky."

From what Gerson had said, the reason why Asgore didn't want to fight was because if they did get freed, there would just be another war anyway. And it's also his duty to keep people safe.

"Heh, I mean, if Toby didn't want this to become a plot hole, WHY did he affirm those abilities to the previous children at all?"

You mean mention about feeling like you were meeting an old friend ("Chara") for the first time?

"In the end, we can only speculate, but we must always hold in our minds, that Asgore defeating between 1 and 6 children who all had the SLR ability IS canon."

Maybe Kindness and Justice. Perserverance? Not so much.

"The DT is burned as a fuel. The product is pure magic. That's what fuels the refuse process. Magic™."

So DT IS being created after all? (To restore the lost DT) Why can't they make even more, and continue the process?

"Our access to the world. It was purely meta."

..And that's the problem. There not being an in-universe explanation.

"Yes. That's because the power of DT is soul power and nothing else. This is what the plaques have been referring to. It IS clearly JUST the power of DT, because soul power is literally nothing else. There is no other hidden variable, this is it, this is soul power."

My point was it never actually mentioned SOUL power at all. If they're separate, therefore, there is no problem with what the plaques said.

"We know they have many traits that go by many names. Assuming they're humans like us that is. The question whether any of these manifest as physical substances, aside from DT, is unanswered however. And I'd not dare to assume so, it's a bold claim after all."

DT is what you get when you combine the six traits (and everyone has all six traits, so everyone has its combination, DT).

"And I have rejected it, because one, it doesn't take into account our soul doing weird shit. If the soul doesn't want to shatter, then it must mean it would not take the control back if it were to do that... just as Asriel hinted."

I've already explained this:Refusing is always more strategic than reloading.

"If we truly had the control, nothing would be at stake during that battle."

Other than Asriel obliterating everything, of course.

"And two, according to your theory, Frisk > Asriel > Omega Flowey > Frisk."

How about I restate that so you can see how that's not as strange as it seems to you?

Frisk the Undying > Asriel > Omega Flowey > Regular Frisk

It's true that Undyne the Undying > Regular Undyne, right?

"A particular interpretation that is also the only logical one"

See above

"and a terribly weak correlation that is deadpan simple and unshaken by the rest of the game's content."

Until you start having to make new rules just to explain it all. Like the system of epicycles in geocentrism.

"Even Nochocolate has admitted this as a canonical proof already."

That's the "argument from authority" fallacy.

"No shit Sherlock. That's because soul power, "ITS POWER", is DT and nothing else."

Clearly you didn't understand fully what was being said. Its power is NOT SOUL power.

"Improbable. Stupidly improbable when you think about it."

Let's see, to reach that level, you have to kill more than 100 monsters all by yourself, including a boss monster, a "true heroine", a death robot, and someone who's great at giving filthy murderers a bad time. After the war, only seven fell before you, and all the boss monsters lived, so it's clear they didn't try to do a Genocide Run. During the war, the humans fought the monsters together, so the odds of ONE human being responsible for this many kills is quite small, considering the ratio of humans to monsters. And before the war? Seriously, how many people have committed more than 100 murders?

The only reason why Frisk can kill that many times is that there are ONLY MONSTERS where they are, and monsters are incredibly weak when compared to humans that want to fight. Pretty sure in the times of peace, humans would get sentenced to death for murdering monsters, just as with humans. (Think of the time in history that the war appears to be set in.)