Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31371445-20170222233857/@comment-27136653-20180702035703

You once again assume that a SOUL would only want to refuse when it needs to, despite it clearly being advantageous compared to LOADing."

It is really difficult to pull that off. For the soul, it is easier to just reload.

"We just ran away from the battle, and FLOWEY gets to do the loading."

But why did he load for such a trivial action? .3.

"Why didn't he?"

Exactly. Why. Maybe he was too excited about his newfound ability to feel? idk

"...They didn't have a reason to."

It was psychological. They literally wanted to die, after so many vain attempts at leaving the underground.

"Actually, since Asriel was the one to absorb Chara's SOUL, he would have the power."

I meant Chara killing themselves. They managed to die without going back in time.

"why was Chara told to stay determined?"

If I recall, it was Alphys who first named this power. So in that case, them saying that was probably just metaphorical.

"Or, they just didn't have as much DT as Frisk's, and therefore, neither was the boost."

Frisk's boost was circumstantial, and so was the lack of DT for the other kids. There is no proof that Frisk's DT was any different. As I said many times already, if they had the DT, the battles against Flowey and Asriel wouldn't be any different from their usual battles. It is unreasonable to assume that Frisk's soul has more DT capacity than 7 human souls (one of which being the combination of thousands of monster souls) combined.

Sure, they didn't have the DT. But they didn't lack it physically, they lacked the motivation to utilize it. This is how an absence of DT is explained with humans. Monsters may be able to generate it, but human souls are so precise with their levels of DT, that they're used to measure soul power (which is nothing but DT, may I remind you, there is no hidden element at play here). Ergo, for them, it is the amout of DT their bodies can utilize at once. If they lack motivation, they lack the ability to extract from this large pool and use the DT physically. I like to believe that DT is physical, because it can be extracted. Ergo, it is found in humans, and so, any fluctuations cannot be due to the DT disappearing, but due to the levels of it changing outside the soul, as it flows in and out of it, or something like that. Monsters must generate it for themselves, as they cannot have large amounts of it in them permanently. Humans don't need to generate it, but having it locked within the soul is useless for them.

Moreoever, please explain to me again, where did you get the idea that red = DT from. All the other children could save, load and reset, and the only thing they failed at is Asgore. But that was just Asgore in his natural form. In fact, it was Asgore who failed. He failed to defeat Frisk, for his own faults. So naturally, Frisk wouldn't stand a chance against Asgore either. Of course, then there's the fact that their soul refused, but that was technical. They couldn't go back by dying, but didn't want to die either. This situation never occured for the other kids. Those never lost their ability, while in the middle of a battle they needed to win, while being motivated by a ghost. Those rather gave up out of frustration. So I don't see any reasons to believe that the red soul is any special, really. The things it accomplishes can be perfectly rationalized without giving it any fancy abilities, and that's the completely reasonable Occam razor principle. So idk why do you keep insisting on such a redundant idea.

"If it died out early on, that's probably why."

It never did. It was simply accepted as the common truth and people moved onto different questions rather.

"So.. Why did it split in the first place?"

Because it died. When you drop a glass, it shatters.

"Persisting means it doesn't split at all."

When a human dies, the soul persists due to DT. Conversely, when the soul is shattered, the body dies. Here, the soul effectively restored itself thanks to its DT, before its death could harm the body. You could say the essence never left it, never disconnected itself from the body, so it didn't harm the body in any way.

"We ALMOST died. We didn't ACTUALLY die."

When the soul shatters, the body dies. We did die every time. And maybe the same happened to Flowey. He did die, he just didn't know it, because the moment it happened, he was already transported back through time, and when you die, you lose your consciousness, so even if he was dead for more than a mere instance, he didn't remember anything from it.

"That right there is why I say he DIDN'T have the power."

Which makes no sense, considering he had more soul power than Omega Flowey. And as for the reason why, I think I stated that already. Besides, we couldn't really fight back. And all he wanted was to keep us in, to prevent us from leaving the undeground. Leaving the battle is exactly what he wants, although he also wants a reset. The only way we can go against him, is to endure the battle. If we die, he resets, good for him. If we leave, again, good for him. So the only thing left is just to... not die, I guess. Hence the refuse.

"Um, no. We can't LOAD. Flowey SAVEs and loads. Us and Flowey have swapped places-We have to kill Flowey to get our powers back."

I don't know what does this have to do with resetting.

"Fact is, he erased the saves. So, why couldn't he load any of those blank saves after erasing them? Doing that would be identical to a reset."

A reset would trasport him back to the moment he first gained consciousness, when Alphys returned his body to Asgore's garden. What are you even talking about here? Also, the topic of erasing the saves is a bit flimsy, since ours definitely wasn't erased. Maybe he did erase the saves of the other children, since he had their souls, but then again, it wasn't the souls themselves that were doing this, it was the combined system, aka Omega Flowey doing this.

"You're saying the power is.. Sentient?"

Why do people yell at their computers when they lag? Are they sentient or something?

"Hmm.. So we're moving onto that actually being like code. Okay then, time to move onto computer science!"

Technically, yes. I believe this system was created by Gaster, and he worked with some sort of a computer code, to generate the basic "if else then" statements for this power. But I still don't believe that the power looks exactly as we see it. I mean, chaning one's vision to a black/white screen, restraining your movement to buttons, manipulating the opponent into thinking that fighting in a white rectangle is normal...

I'll address this point in its entirety now, if you don't mind.

You see, none of that is necessary to explain the plot, so I'm not accepting it. In fact, it's harmful to the plot, because if this were true, then that only confirms that Undertale is self-aware and that nothing we do matters. Toby wanted to integrate this system into the in-game world as a way of saying "screw the gaming meta", not to create more gaming meta.

Yes, this does contradict what Sans's battle presented. However, that route was all about the meta, that is, playing the game like any other RPG game (e.g. more LV = the goal). If you believe that turns are real, you may as well believe that what Sans was saying was literally what was happening. I take it as if his battle was the highest point of Frisk's delusion, because what is all this theorizing good for, when we can simply say "because Toby did it so"..? You can use this argument anywhere if you believe in such meta. But what if there's no meta, the battles don't work this way, but rather the same way that combat does irl, what if there's no Toby, no creator whatsoever? In short, if you believe the world works like a game, then it is a game. Saying it is a game, while not being a game, is an oxymoron.

Lastly, back to my Gaster head canon, some people, like Camila Cuevas, believe that Gaster literally turned the entire world into this meta world, where all of this does make sense, because it has simply been said so. I refuse to accept such belief, because no mortal being could possibly have the power or resources to accomplish something like this, that is, change the LOGIC of the universe itself (even if it applies to the underground only).

I merely accept the idea that this power uses computational methods to allocate the essences within its scope, and may have troubles distinguishing between singular units and composite systems, because it wasn't designed for such task. Which also means that the only reason that Flowey/Asriel had more power than us was because the power wasn't completely mechanical, and could, at least to some sense, adapt (which would make sense, considering it works with essences, and essences are the brains of a soul - they store the consciousness of a being).

"It lagged to the point where the request to LOAD doesn't make it in time before you're fully dead."

My explanation would be, that the least significant if else statement would get scrapped first, in the case of a contradiction. However, I don't believe that it works based on a computer code per se. Such code wouldn't even ADDRESS the idea of combined soul systems. No, it is something much more organic, but nothing sentient/moral either. Remeber that Gaster shattered across time and space. Maybe it is the leftover of his essence still trying to do its best even though it has no idea what's actually going on anymore.

"Yes, 600% is a stretch. But if red is determination, it's not 600%. It's more like 50%. (5*1.5=7.5)"

Frisk's soul power is equal to 1. That's how Omega Flowey could do what he did. If Frisk was stronger, that wouldn't have happened. And the same goes for Asriel. Also, you're multiplying. An "increase" requires you to add. If you add 100% of something to that thing, you've got a double. That's why I said 600%, because 1+6 = 100%+600% = 700% = 7.

"You can replicate resetting by loading a blank file"

No, a reset is going back to the moment of your inception in the system, as proven by Frisk, who, upon a reset, spawns in an area with no save point. Also, you are forgetting again, the game demonstrated that the two are separated in the case that the bearer of the power has a composite soul.

"Flowey's the one who does the honors of loading, when we decide to come back."

He does nothing. We come back to his save. If not, we would come back to our last save - before the fight with Asgore.

"So now you argue it's fully sentient? Well, that'll deduct some Occam points."

I couldn't care less about the opinion of someone who thinks the monsters are so dumb they don't even realize we are stuck in a white box each time they fight us. Or who believes this to be the case to begin with. No, the power is not sentient. It allocates the essences in its scope like a machine would, and then simply compares them.

"How would it know?"

The essence was not torn away from the soul the moment it cracked. So it quickly refused to prevent dying.

"Also, after we refuse, we can still LOAD again."

Not by dying.

"How, and WHY?"

Because that's when we last saved, and because Toby programmed the game so.

"This means it was clearly FRISK who LOADed here."

Yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about. When we do that, we get moved to where we last saved. And we are Frisk in-game, not Asriel. Aren't you getting a bit tired from all these discussions pehaps?

"That's not how "running away" works in Omega Flowey's fight-You don't even get to SEE the HUD then-You only get to see it BEFORE the fight, the FIRST TIME (Within the current True Reset)"

Yes. Because Flowey saved in that fight.

"Though that would give Asriel around 325"

Only those who have previously saved have a file. No saved file = LV 0, and such LV doesn't exist. Since as Sans said, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gS2LPXdIc5NTYxUjJEbXowUFE/view - if our LV is 1. We never gained any. LV 1 = the default, therefore.

"Also, Star Wars' telekineses was my specific thought."

I was gonna write lots of stuff here, but I'll cut it short. In all those movies, physical objects were moved. So I don't think it's fair comparing magic in Undertale to them. Summoning magical attacks is most likely way different from controlling physical objects with magic. Sure, with them, you need to focus on each boulder you want to lift individually, but that's not the same as simply throwing pure magic attacks about. Having to focus on every single piece of magic we summon would be unwieldy. So much so I don't think the humans would find magic very practical, let alone be able to summon a spell no monster would be able to break. Remember, they have an essence. If everything they need to make their spells automated is encoded in that thing, then the problem's solved.

>representing oneself expressing

"by having a bullet pattern"

By having a birthday card summon a bullet pattern. Else it's not a card. You can't exactly "open" a bullet pattern either. It's doing whatever its creator wishes it to. How does the creator know when someone touches it, and whether it is the person they're sending the card to? Why not send a normal card with a bullet pattern included in the first place? That would be akin to creating an artifact: a magic-imbued physical object. Which would make more sense. Afaik, there are several objects in the game that could be considered artifacts, from the items of the previous children to Burgerpants's hat.

"THIS is what you need to have humans do if you want to show a contradiction."

Only that? Can't I for example suggest something that debunks this, as well as something else? Perhaps, the entirety of magic? Because that WOULD aamof include all the cases of birthday cards made out of bullet patterns... or any other kinds of bullet-pattern cards, sheets or whatever objects for that matter. I don't understand why we must be bullet-pattern-resembling, birthday-related, and card-shaped specific on this one.

"If would. Except the intro says they can, so they can."

And the books say they can't. So they can't.

One of them is not correct. And I choose to believe the books, considering how the intros can be misleading, or don't always have to tell the full truth. Also because I see no point in false, contradictory information appearing later on in the game for no reason. You can say the books talk about a very specific case all you want, but all you'll get from me is a thesis on how very blurry the line between what counts as "expressing yourself" and what doesn't is. I am also avoidant of the intro, because it's not canon to the story. It is just an intro after all. It's no one's memory, vision, or anything. Just something to explain the basic story to the player. And the same goes for Flowey manipulating with the intro, as well as manipulating with the game's name (this goes for Mettaton's musical too) - not canon. This is on a whole new level than Sans speaking of turns, or Flowey supposedly talking to the player at times - those can be explained within the bounds of the story, albeit through ways I am not very fond of. But this one is a pure no-no from me.

"You'll need your version of Hogswarth's."

Another reason I don't believe that humans have magic. Their cities look too much like our cities.

"So that's the literal meaning."

The deadpan simple one I meant rather. Since you're being nitpicky again.

"It does. The intro."

Those weren't humans, even though they looked like humans. Kinda like boss monsters look like goats, while not being actual goats. There, now let's move on.

"Hmm.. A manipulative megalomanic is their only source? Well then. =)"

I never noticed them lying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"It's less farfetched to just call them Boss Humans than to call them a third race. Unless we're using the names to determine how bad the theories are, because that's an Asgore name. (But at least it makes my intentions obvious.)"

You didn't address the thing you were replying to here at all.

"I said the POWER of their whole SOUL"

Then how come the souls of the 6 humans didn't persist after the barrier broke? It's clearly stated that the absolute, full potential of 7 human souls is required to break the barrier, as that's how much was used to seal it. I mean, the souls are used as a metric. So the variation of their absolute soul power must be very minimal or non-existent. And I don't think the power of 1 human soul refers to the maximum amount that can be taken away from it without the soul dying, since that COULD vary from person to person.

"the SOULs do not vanish, though. In fact, they return to their bodies!"

False. The game proves this in no way, and logic is telling us that their bodies are already decomposed at that time. There is nothing the souls can go back to. And if they were to persist, we would see them - I see no reason why would Asgore hide them away from everyone again. So since we don't see them, the truth is simple, they did not survive the attack that broke the barrier. And here's why the other souls did: the monster souls are said to be equal to just over a single human soul. Ergo, not all the soul power of each one was used up for this. That's how they survived. However, with the humans, they had no choice. With the monsters providing 1 soul worth of power, the 6 souls had to provide a full 6 souls worth of power. They couldn't share the burden among themselves like the monster souls did. 6 - 6 = 0, ergo, they died.

In any case this head canon of yours is idiotic. Also, yeah. They didn't kill themselves. But still provided that full power of a single human soul. How's that possible? They weren't humans, but someone far stronger. If the game speaks of "the power of a human soul" - and using that as a metric, I conclude it means the soul in its entirety. Not the amount needed to """kindly""" take away from the soul so that it """kindly""" doesn't die.

"They know all about what happened at the war, after all."

DO they now?

"These big governments likely WOULD take them all for themselves, so that they would excersize more control."

Not for more control, but to constrain the power. These artifacts would be the only last remaining magic left in the human world. New generations would grow up oblivious to magic and believing in science. That's why these would get hidden away. To keep it simple for everybody.

"You did when I said the seven traits were personality traits"

Oh, you meant that. Yes, I do think that constraining humans to just 7 types of personalities is ridiculous.

"Because if there's no mixing around, there's LITERALLY only seven behavior types."

If there's no soul mixing, then there's only 7 pure types of souls. At this point, we can either say that all humans of a certain soul color are the same, because no mixing = no variation, or we can go the hash way and say that every type of personality falls into one of these 7 cases (my interpretation). If you like trait mixing, sure, that could explain the large variety of personalities, but the traits themselves (e.g. patience, bravery, integrity etc.) don't make any sense. Why these, and why 7? Why did Toby not choose the big five, or the HEXACO system? (google those) Hence my argument that such system is unwieldy, silly even. Why would the traits mix, if the game didn't imply such thing at all? And why mix, when you can simply introduce new ones into the system?

When you're already adding the headcanon of mixing traits, why not make it even simpler and say there's more than just these 7 traits? That would certainly make explaining new types of personalities a lot easier.

...

I choose not to add any more head canons into this. There's 7 traits, no mixing, and the way you reduce the human mind down to one of those is through a hash function. I keep it simple. Do you?

"And Red cannot be zero."

You're still giving red a special treatment. Stop that and we can continue being friends. Honestly, at this point, you're in pure denial.

"But other traits can, and even be negative, by employing their opposites"

When your theories start sounding like the Glitchtale lore, that's when you should stop and think about yourself. Camila Cuevas pulled her ideas out of DeviantArt's ass. Literally every cringeperson in there believes in that crap. Also that Gaster is the daddy of Sans and Papyrus, also that Papyrus's magic is orange, and that this means Gaster's magic is purple or whatever. OH, and haaaaate is blaaaaaack! Because obviously we NEED to have a black trait!

Tell me, truthfully, why do you STILL insist that Frisk is special somehow? The game presented us the proof that their unique accomplishments weren't so unique after all and you still keep blaming it on the HUD (which is very questionable) and the incredible meta ability to stop the undertale.exe program from running (which is not even canon).

You choose answers based on questionable concepts over straightforward logical ones. Tell me, how much credibility does that give to your points?

"You do know what a hash function IS, right? It's a method of cryptography."

Yes. Due to the large variety of the human mind, two kindness people may be totally different. As you said, there is no connection. That's the con of reducing the human mind to just one of 7 cases. Even if the algorithm is logical, it's so complicated it's totally nonsenical. However, you are right in that a true cryptographic hash function changes completely if you make only a very small change. However, I don't know of a better term to describe what I mean. If you know, please, suggest it.

"Form 2-That's actually already mixing traits, something you said you wouldn't do. That contains elements of JUSTICE (surefire accuracy), and PERSERVEARANCE (taking mental notes) Not JUST patience."

Justice is more literal here. Accuracy, its other meaning, is therefore connected with patience. Dealing a resolving strike that's very accurate, you could say. And waiting gives you an opportunity to analyze the situation, just like failing repeatedly does. I connect patience with memory and intelligence, integrity with wisdom (if you are wise, you know what's right), perseverance with the divine (the last driving force, after everything has failed, is the prospect of a god), red with some sort of a basic concept (root), orange with emotions (sacral point), yellow with goals and ego - e.g. justice (solar plexus) and kindness with love, hope and compassion (anahata).

These are chakras. Another concept I've managed to merge the soul trait concept with.

"Form 5-Alright, that explicitly is split into two sub-forms. You can't do that when there's seven traits and seven traits ONLY. There's not two kinds of perserevance SOULs, there is ONE. ONE."

Form 5 is about defending yourself while attacking at the same time. Very aggressive, but not as stupid as form 1. If perseverance is an indicator of your stamina, if being filled with peseverance turns you into an unstoppable tank, then so be it. I have ignored the parts where these talk about any further sub-divisions, since that's not necessary. All I care about, are the things these forms are unique in, what distinguishes them, essentially. Idc about the details, idc which Jedi used which one and how they developed it, idc about any of that. All I care about, and I thought you would understand this, is the basic concept behind each one of these.

"Combination of the rest that came before? Hey, you're missing something. (Form 7) It also excludes Form 2, which you'd know if you read more carefully."

After the development of Vaapad, this one would include it. It takes the best from each one and combines it all under one method. THAT's the underlying concept for this one - the best of the rest. Again, idc about reading more carefully. Of course it won't be a 100% perfect match. But I managed to get the basic concept down at least. Which is all I wanted anyways, a loose but meaningful connection, rather than a mumbo jumbo of overlayed bs to make it all work together without an exception. Also, about the chakras, in case you're wondering how the hell does the sum of the other parts relate to a person's mental root, then remember, the chakras are a cycle. Your learning starts with red, then goes through orange, yellow, etc, until getting to purple. There, you employ the knowledge you've learned and shift yourself to a new cycle, which once again begins with red and you fearing the new horizons. Here: https://malavikasuresh.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/chakras-7-year-development-life-cycles/

"Chaotic and erratic is the OPPOSITE of surefire accuracy."

Chaotic and erratic is not a combat form to begin with. This one was meant to employ dark emotions to combat the dark side, to turn them against it - the karma concept, essentially (which is NOT the same as KR, which is based on the amount of times you get hit; no, I'm talking about ACTUAL karma here). If you were to extend the idea of yellow past the concept of bullet shooting, which is something you were meant to do since the moment you began reading that article, you would realize it fits perfectly. You keep talking as if purple HAS to be about taking notes, yellow HAS to be about using guns, et cetera. That's not how it works. Not if you want to extend this idea past its own scope.

Here's the table:

RED: the combination of all the others, providing a root.

ORANGE: strong emotions, fire.

YELLOW: energy, ego, using energy and ego to combat itself (something that requires you to be accurate, in a way).

GREEN: kindness, positive/social emotions, love, heart, defense.

CYAN: cold analysis, intelligence, opportunity, relativity (taking notes in UT refers to Muffet's battle; of course you're gonna take notes as you keep on persevering; but assigining it to cyan makes more sense).

BLUE: morality, wisdom, originality, aesthetics (as per Maslow's extended hiearchy of needs, the 3rd step from the top in this image: http://www.fengshuidana.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/maslows_hierarchy_of_needs-4.jpg)

PURPLE: strength, seemingly sourceless power, transcendence.

And just to top it off, here's the infinity stones I've assigned to each one of these, in the order above, for the lols: nothing, reality, mind, time, space, soul, power. - incredibly, 4 of them match the colors (well, the space stone is kind of ambiguous with its shade of blue, I guess cyan works too). If you're interested, say. This is a whole new area, that connects the traits to the magic. The above explained the traits, but this one aims to explain them in the context of monster magic, which ultimately allowed me to connect it with the infinity stones concept. So say if you want to know more about this, I've relieved you from reading 7 more huge paragraphs over here.

"The connection is simple-The modes are determined by the traits. Nothing more."

You are right in the basic point. Traits and modes aren't exactly the same.

"When?"

When it introduced the concept of human soul traits. A white soul is a soul without a trait. Which humans don't have a brain? Are you saying conspiracy theorists have white souls or what? xD

"I didn't mean the green mode, I meant the shield that appeared IN that mode. The shield ITSELF. You know, that thing that deflects Undyne's arrows?"

Yes you DID. Lemme quote that: "Same magic that makes the shield appear in green, and the webs to move across appear in purple."

Why were you speaking of colors when I talked about how DT transforms into magic under the yellow spell? But other than that, you are right, the yellow mode is not the only one where our soul's DT is used to generate magic. Thank you for pointing that out. But remember, that thing wasn't a shield, but a spear. At least, Undyne said so.

"You said it yourself, the modes and traits are connected."

Through how they're described, yes.

"Also, how would one create such an organized pattern?"

The same way a monster would. Through M A G I C. Do humans not have M A G I C ? They both have essences. Perhaps the essence could encode the instructions. It is magical after all, it would know how to process it natually, unlike the human brain.

"How is sinusoidal movement doable with physics?"

You're literally asking about waves at this point. Waves. While believing the UT world is a game. A game which features rectangle buttons, but for SOME reason lacks the sin function? Does your interpretation of human magic also include an extremely fast exhaustion and the range of shapes available being limited to drawings by 2-year olds, as well as the ability to sustain for a single SECOND the incredible amount of magical energy that would heat up a kettle filled with water by a quarter of a degree, while introducing the physical accuracy and dexterity of no one else but the famous Boris Yeltsin while at it?

Once you dive deep enough into it, you'll realize the only logical conclusion: humans cannot use magic, for all these exact complications. It is so impractical, beating a monster with a piece of foam polystyrene would be more efficient.

"Which is exactly how you would represent yourself!"

You can represent yourself with a piece of crap. The thing you're expressing yourself with is literally irrelevant. And if it isn't, then define the boundary between complex shapes, and simpler shapes. What counts as what? Hint: it's impossible. You can still try though, that'll make me laugh.

"While I'm not really seeing the solution here."

A pre-prepared array. I just said it. Just pull it out of your memory the last time you've cast it (albeit slower) and voila, you've got a fast pull-off. Though, if Asgore did it instantly, I bet he did the same thing. There's no way he summoned multiple objects that quickly one by one.