Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27907368-20160428221757/@comment-27701762-20160430185044

That's an interesting reading of the story, but I must raise the question of whether this is properly an interpretation or a mapping. If we wanted to try the former, we'd have to attribute to Toby a great deal of knowledge of some of Nietzsche's works, and yet very specific holes at the same time. Such as Alphys's line "the resolve to change fate," since an important part of the eternal recurrence is the adoption of amor fati or the love of fate. Or how Nietzsche is generally calling for the expression of will to power through art and, perhaps most importantly, philosophy. And how there would seem to be missing some element of the perspectives on truth that is equally central to Nietzsche's thought.

I'm not saying that you've said anything incorrect about Nietzsche. Nor would I claim that what you've provided is uninteresting as a sort of mapping: we can reinterpret the story and world of Undertale though the lens of Nietzsche's thought, just as we might do with another philosophy, or with some other paradigm (to more or less success, depending on what is chosen and how much thought is put into it).

But for this to work as an interpretation, we need either some evidence of Toby being familiar with and inspired by Nietzsche, or else some stronger connection between the concepts in the game and Nietzsche's concepts. I must not only remain highly skeptical, but in fact reject these claims qua interpretation until then.