Talk:Chara/@comment-172.74.58.76-20151003145954/@comment-25255699-20151017092745

At the time that I added the information about the genocide path (which I had labeled "no mercy"), the game had still just come out, and the various communities were new and trying to determine what the best nomenclature is; I cited the Tumblr fandom as one particular example of where there was a disagreement.

Since then things have settled down, and it's not just "Tumblr being offended" but the fact that this game had only come out recently and people were still trying to shape the terminology. As far as I know there still isn't an "official" name for the different paths - nowhere in the game (or in Toby's Twitter etc.) are they called pacifist/neutral/genocide.

Anyway, since then, the general consensus has emerged that "pacifist" is kill-nothing, "true pacifist" is befriend everyone and go through the Alphys/True Lab/Asriel sequences, "neutral" is kill-something, "no mercy" is kill everything that attacks you (but don't seek out additional encounters), and "genocide" is kill everything that you can find, and I think pretty much everyone agrees on those terms (including most of the Tumblr-based fandoms, although there's still a few holdouts that insist on calling it "no mercy" instead).

tl;dr it wasn't Tumblr "trying to change things," it was a fragmented fandom still trying to establish what to call things in the first place.