Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27907368-20160428221757/@comment-27701762-20160505003346

GetYourFix wrote:

I trust sans more because he sees our actual STATS. Do you recall the 0 EXP neutral run judgement?

You've got something called "determination", and we need to hold on and do what's in our heart to, eventually, do what's right. Knowing that our 'heart' is Frisk's SOUL enlightens this judgement. He never says that we have DETERMINATION, regardless of run.

I do recall this line. But there's an important problem with your reading: Sans only talks in lowercase letters, except when he dons his "serious face." So we'd need to go back through all of Sans's dialogue to make sure that he refers to anything else in all caps. If he does, then we can claim that there could be significance here, though we are still faced with the initial problem. But if not, then it is unclear whether he uses the lowercase version because he differentiates between two types and is referring to one, or if the fact we see a lowercase version is because he speaks that way.

Otherwise, we would have to use the same logic in reverse for the various characters who speak in all caps, such as Papyrus and Mettaton.

Flowey tosses around DT and dt like it's nobody's business... None of Flowey's determinations go in scare quotes. However, he gains the scare quotes in his boss fight. The scare quotes mean that there is some skepticism to the term - they are seen predominantly in the True Lab and in the Snowball Game. They're the recognition that an abstract concept is used as a physical property or is jargon This (i.e. "Flowey tosses around DT and dt like it's nobody's business") is an overstatement. He only uses the specific term twice as Flowey, once capitalized and once not. If we expand "determination" to include other word forms, such as "determined," then we get to three instances, with this new instance being non-capitalized.

I have, however, thought of an interesting test case: if DETERMINATION is meant to specifically refer to the will to keep on living, then one important place where we should see the term capitalized on the Game Over screen: when Asgore talks to Chara, he asks them to stay determined/have determination. In other words, to cling to life. But the term remains in its non-capitalized form.

Now you might say that Asgore doesn't know the difference between these two forms, which would explain why he doesn't use the capitalized form. But in order to showcase a consistent difference, Toby needs to keep the terms fairly consistent. The expectation would be that someone would go through all of the instances of the term and catalog them to try and figure out what differences imply. And already he would be messing up those efforts by creating instances where the proper categorization is ambiguous (the same holds true for characters who speak in all caps or all lowercase).

Alphys definitely has experience with dt. sans may too, knowing that he and Alphys share ties. They both use "determination" consistently. I'm not sure if Flowey does. He asks us to befriend Alphys, but then again he asks us to befriend everyone. This consistency, though, relies on the initial presumption that there is a need to use the term consistently, by presuming that there is a difference.

We now enter yet another problem. Actually, a set of problems, but I'll focus on one: text as a medium for speech. So when we see SOUL capitalized, what does that mean for a character saying it to the protagonist? Did they yell it? Does Sans speak in a "yellow way" when he asks you if you've heard of a yellow flower? If so, how would that be represented in speech? Given that all dialogue is being represented through text, the differentiation between capitalized and non-capitalized forms is difficult to discern. What does it mean when someone says "DETERMINATION" and not "determination?" "SAVE" versus "save?" Hell, even the Sans line puts determination in quotations, but that would be following standard grammatical rules of writing. So when Flowey says determination at the beginning of the game, how do we know that the term isn't capitalized so as not to clue you as player in too quickly about paying attention to the term? Perhaps the capitalized instances in the rest of the game are meant to clue you in on how important the term is, rather than serving as a distinct form.

So, we've agreed on a triumvirate, then(?). Chara and Frisk are separate, and as a player we are not considered either of these identities.

Once again, yes. But this doesn't really get us anywhere.

So I'm going to propose a different approach. Let's go through and catalog every instance, or at least as many as we can, of places in the game where the game makes these differentiations. Knowing where everything stands gives us the foundation for connecting the dots.

Although to keep things simple, since we already know that Chara and Frisk are distinct, we do not need to separate them. So we should divide our pieces of evidence to those which show that we are not Frisk, and those which show that we are not Chara. We should also make sure to note the clarity of these examples. So I'll start us off with some of the examples that you and I have already brought up:

Separate from Chara:

1) The protagonist (presumably overtaken by Chara's spirit) acts without input from the player on the Genocide route.

2*) The ending of the Genocide route clearly differentiates Chara from the player. (However, the implication of the dialogue is that the player is Frisk in some capacity.)

Separate from Frisk:

1) Frisk gives their own name at the end of the True Pacifist run. We might potentially include the movements of the protagonist which take place without input from the player on the Neutral and True Pacifist route.

2) Frisk's mind is completely reset once a True Reset is selected, but the player's (obviously) is not.

3*) Flowey's dialogue at the end of the True Pacifist route appears to be directed at us, and he asks us to leave Frisk alone. (However, the implication of the dialogue is that the player is Chara in some capacity.)