Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5413572-20160521065337

Something occurred to me recently, and while it is admittedly a bit out there, I thought I'd get more opinions on it just the same.

So, during the date/hangout with Papayrus, examining his pirate flag causes him to state his theory that humans are descended from skeletons. While this is obviously played for laughs, I wondered if there might be something to the idea. Humans presumably have their own skeletons in the Undertale universe, and yet skeletons are also clearly a standalone type of monster. Why (outside of the obvious explanation of coincidence) would this be the case?

From there, we know that Determination can affect the physical states of humans and monsters.

-Save points can completely heal Frisk's injuries, and Determination alone can allow them to stop their soul from shattering (albeit only during the Asriel fight, but still).

-Six humans souls allow Flowey to assume his (somewhat fleshy) Photoshop form.

-The Amalgamates lose their physicality to a fair degree, but they also seem to become somewhat more durable, as they never fully disintegrate (that we've seen), when Undyne does.

-Speaking of which, Undyne can persist her whole body after death temporarily and even assume her Undying form, though she eventually melts as well.

-Though not explicitly chalked up to Determination, the ghost inhabiting the Mad/Glad Dummy is able to fuse with his mannequin body through "a moment of unbridled emotion," which seems somewhat similar to Undyne's description of how Determination affects her soul and body when assuming her Undying form. Mettaton logically fused with his body through the same or a similar process.

-Boss Monster souls gain the ability to persist after death momentarily, when normal monster souls turn to dust instantaneously.

So, we have a potential mechanism here for how ancient skeletons could have potentially gained enough Determination to fuse with or maybe even generate fleshy bodies for themselves.

The exact process for them doing so is more murky; however, we see that Alphys is able to turn Frisk's soul yellow and invert it (i.e. make it more like a monster soul), and the DT Extraction Machine was likewise a piece of technology that could extract Determination from human souls. So, it could well be that their Determination was gained through a similar method, be it technological or magical (or a combination thereof). Indeed, following the popular idea that Sans is a time traveler and/or dimension hopper, his mysterious traits could be explained through this.

So, in summation- ancient skeletons were somehow able to gain enough Determination to invert and strengthen their souls, while also gaining and fusing with new fleshy bodies, giving rise to humans.

Again, it's kind of tenuous and there's not enough concrete evidence to really make it all that likely, but at the same time, there are a fair few details in its favor.

Thoughts? 