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SPOILERS LITERALLY EVERYWHERE
PLEASE DON'T SKIM THIS BY ACCIDENT IF YOU PLAN TO PLAY UNDERTALE YOURSELF AND HAVEN'T BEEN RUINED FOR THE ENTIRE GAME YET
I MEAN IT
⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: skarme
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
blitzente
Age: 22
Current Characters: Alphonse Elric |![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unerasable, Yosuke Hanamura | windbreak
⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Sans
Age: Never spelled out and difficult to pinpoint - the game barely touches on normal monster lifespans, let alone this character's deal in particular. He's treated as an adult, at least.
Canon: Undertale
Canon Point: The last fight of the No Mercy route, when he abandons hope of ending things properly and pulls out his final trick. He won't know how it ends.
Background: Wiki link summarising his appearances in-game. The rest of his history is extremely vague - I (and most of the fandom) assume he was a fully-fledged physicist before moving to Snowdin and met Alphys through work, but nothing is confirmed, nor likely to be confirmed any time soon.
Personality:
Every self-respecting RPG needs at least one big-brotherly figure to point its main character in the right direction once they step out into its strange new world. A game as tightly focused on its roots as Undertale makes no exception. Sans the skeleton asserts himself into the archetype the minute the protagonist walks away from the starting dungeon: a big-boned supposed sentry monster who greets you with a whoopee cushion to the hand, who'd rather sit around chugging bottles of condiments than capture the human right in front of him, who'll nonchalantly cover for you within seconds of meeting you but encourages you to play along so that his excitable brother Papyrus can have just as much of a good time. From then on, barring certain player choices, he pops up around every other corner - sometimes just to shoot the breeze, sometimes with a handy hint or two, always with a goofy grin and as many stupid wisecracks as you can stand to hear. It's not only protagonists he does his best to get along with, either. Everyone is friends with Sans, most people know how close he and Papyrus are, and everyone who meets them sees the skeleton brothers' antics as a pocket of brightness in their often dreary underground existence.
It does make sense to view Sans and Papyrus as a pair, because in many ways they're two halves of a whole. Where Papyrus is loud, dramatic and disarmingly earnest, Sans can rarely be bothered to raise his voice any louder than a low-key guffaw; where Papyrus can be naive to the extent of self-absorbed at times, Sans' offhand comments make it clear he's more worldly than most monsters trapped in the underground; while Papyrus gives his job and his friends 110% at all times, Sans takes slacking off to an art form. Even their physical builds and the fonts used for their in-game text form a contrast: tall, thin and angular versus short, thick and rounded. But both fonts are alike in the legendary violence they do to graphic designers' sensibilities, and both skeletons are alike in the selfless kindness at their core. Paradoxically, up to a point, their shared strength of character and strong bond become more evident the crueller the player chooses to be: not many other characters are willing to try to treat the protagonist well regardless of how many people said human has killed already, let alone to keep extending the hand of potential friendship as long as both brothers remain alive.
The player's choices, too, are what eventually reveal Sans to be more than just another wacky recurring character. Just as much as it likes to play up its genre on the surface, Undertale is a game that encourages you to check everything twice - and right from the beginning, paying the slightest bit of attention means Sans' comic relief image no longer adds up. Despite his dedication to "doing absolutely nothing" and his habit of wandering off in entirely the wrong direction, he keeps showing up one step ahead of you. For all his consummate pranking, some of his attempts to spook the protagonist veer just a bit too deadpan. Fail to reciprocate his initial friendliness, and his cheerful advice starts to take on the sound of a veiled threat. Papyrus himself admits that his brother "never tells anyone anything" and causes "mystery", although he doesn't seem to be bothered. These oddities come to a head right as the storyline does: more than the game interface, Sans was judging you all along, and when Sans has his eye on you even the smallest choice between violence and non-violence is a test.
Only much later, and only if the player betrays his trust completely, is it explained both why Sans felt obligated to keep score of the player's sins in particular and why he did most of it from the shadows. In a past that he can no longer return to, he and at least one other researcher discovered that the timeline of the Undertale is not a healthy one: fragmented, distorted by a major space-time anomaly, and fated in the not too distant future to vanish altogether. It turns out that the human main character is that very anomaly, warping the fabric of reality with their ability to SAVE their game and reset it repeatedly to see how their actions change things. Sans' innate good nature leads him at the start of the game to give the anomaly the benefit of the doubt and try to make them happy without giving the game away, but at heart, he's stopped believing he can truly change anything - even more so, on this story route, after losing his brother to a last-ditch offer of redemption. This is arguably the biggest reason Sans prefers to scrape through life with the minimum of effort these days, and why he can't bring himself to lift a phalange against the main character until it's almost too late: knowing that he has no honest chance of standing up to a human with the power of SAVE and LOAD has a way of dampening any motivation he might have started out with.
To be clear, it's not like every person Sans encounters gets tested in the same way. Though he's definitely more observant than he looks and pays close attention to anything or anyone that seems new, he doesn't do it to be overtly manipulative, even with the protagonist - that would be too much effort. There's no pretense involved in his love of the smaller things in life, like bad food and worse comedy, and least of all in how much he admires and cares for Papyrus. He doesn't even pretend to be especially stupid, despite how juvenile some of his hobbies might seem - he seems as comfortable regaling people with tales from the surface as he is with throwing costume parties or snoozing on the job. What he hides is chiefly his existential distance from the pleasure most of those things bring him, a result of his backstory and the responsibilities that subsequently weigh him down.
But ultimately, none of Sans' hidden depths ever need to come up. The laid-back Sans that most of his acquaintances know and love might have been broken in the past, but he's found happiness of a kind in his family, friends and terrible jokes, and genuinely sees no reason to strive for anything more. Even if another anomaly comes along, he has no problem just being their pal so long as they seem to mean it. Whether something in this setting can break through his warm, contented apathy a second time depends entirely on who else he interacts with - because he'll be watching them, and quietly judging.
Abilities:
Some fan theories notwithstanding, Sans is a monster. In the Undertale world, this doesn't make him terribly different from a human - less different than most other monsters, even, because at least he's human-shaped. Being a skeleton certainly doesn't stop him from talking, winking, eating, sweating, playing the trombone, falling asleep or any other important components of lazing around. The main difference between monsters and other life on Earth is that while other animals are made primarily of water, monsters are made primarily of magic - more than it allowing them to cast spells, which humans can do anyway with practice, a monster needs magic to hold its body together and exudes magic as a form of communication. As a result, the physical resilience of a monster is strongly attuned to its state of mind and the willpower of the attacker: even a random human kid with a stick is capable of reducing the strongest of monsters to dust as long as they really want to.
Sans, slacker that he is, is not the strongest of monsters by a long shot, although righteous anger can add more bite to his attacks under the right (wrong) circumstances. In keeping with the skeleton theme, he can summon an apparently limitless number of projectile bones, and he also shares with Papyrus the ability to alter the strength or direction of gravity in a small localised area. But he gets tired of fighting pretty quickly, and all in all prefers to let other people do it if he can get away with it.
On the rare occasions he's finally pushed to the point of serious fighting, he has zero interest in fighting fair, which brings in a couple of more... unique abilities, both implied to be a result of someone's space-time research prior to the start of the game. Firstly, he can teleport himself, other people and objects over long distances at will. This is not a normal monster ability, so he doesn't normally use it while other people are watching except to prank them - but if he does exploit it in a fight, it's incredibly difficult to land a hit on him without playing just as dirty.
Secondly, he can back up his waves of projectile bones with waves of skull-like laser cannons called Gaster Blasters - these have a wide range of fire, can home in on an opponent's position, and don't appear to have a summoning limit either.
Outside of battle, where he likes to be, he's still less useless than he seems. He's observant in general when it comes to people's behaviour and intentions, but in particular he knows exactly what tells to look out for if there's a chance he might be dealing with a time traveller. (I'd put up a permissions post for this.) He also has a knack for surprising stealth if he really wants to sneak up on someone. His backstory suggests plenty more esoteric scientific knowledge and engineering skill on top of that, but like hell he's going to use any of it if he doesn't have to.
Alignment: Peromei - he's had most of his hope beaten out of him by the time the game takes place, and the main effect of player choice on him is on how much more of it he loses, but regardless of route he holds onto the last of it for as long as he possibly can.
Other: I'm fine if it needs to be restricted to the city or a certain radius for vague metaphysical reasons (and tbh I don't mind if it needs to be nerfed entirely), but I'd like him to keep his teleporting if possible!
⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: Short test drive thread - let me know if you need more c:
Questions: Nothing comes to mind for now!
PLEASE DON'T SKIM THIS BY ACCIDENT IF YOU PLAN TO PLAY UNDERTALE YOURSELF AND HAVEN'T BEEN RUINED FOR THE ENTIRE GAME YET
I MEAN IT
Player: skarme
Contact:
Age: 22
Current Characters: Alphonse Elric |
unerasable, Yosuke Hanamura | windbreakCharacter: Sans
Age: Never spelled out and difficult to pinpoint - the game barely touches on normal monster lifespans, let alone this character's deal in particular. He's treated as an adult, at least.
Canon: Undertale
Canon Point: The last fight of the No Mercy route, when he abandons hope of ending things properly and pulls out his final trick. He won't know how it ends.
Background: Wiki link summarising his appearances in-game. The rest of his history is extremely vague - I (and most of the fandom) assume he was a fully-fledged physicist before moving to Snowdin and met Alphys through work, but nothing is confirmed, nor likely to be confirmed any time soon.
Personality:
Every self-respecting RPG needs at least one big-brotherly figure to point its main character in the right direction once they step out into its strange new world. A game as tightly focused on its roots as Undertale makes no exception. Sans the skeleton asserts himself into the archetype the minute the protagonist walks away from the starting dungeon: a big-boned supposed sentry monster who greets you with a whoopee cushion to the hand, who'd rather sit around chugging bottles of condiments than capture the human right in front of him, who'll nonchalantly cover for you within seconds of meeting you but encourages you to play along so that his excitable brother Papyrus can have just as much of a good time. From then on, barring certain player choices, he pops up around every other corner - sometimes just to shoot the breeze, sometimes with a handy hint or two, always with a goofy grin and as many stupid wisecracks as you can stand to hear. It's not only protagonists he does his best to get along with, either. Everyone is friends with Sans, most people know how close he and Papyrus are, and everyone who meets them sees the skeleton brothers' antics as a pocket of brightness in their often dreary underground existence.
It does make sense to view Sans and Papyrus as a pair, because in many ways they're two halves of a whole. Where Papyrus is loud, dramatic and disarmingly earnest, Sans can rarely be bothered to raise his voice any louder than a low-key guffaw; where Papyrus can be naive to the extent of self-absorbed at times, Sans' offhand comments make it clear he's more worldly than most monsters trapped in the underground; while Papyrus gives his job and his friends 110% at all times, Sans takes slacking off to an art form. Even their physical builds and the fonts used for their in-game text form a contrast: tall, thin and angular versus short, thick and rounded. But both fonts are alike in the legendary violence they do to graphic designers' sensibilities, and both skeletons are alike in the selfless kindness at their core. Paradoxically, up to a point, their shared strength of character and strong bond become more evident the crueller the player chooses to be: not many other characters are willing to try to treat the protagonist well regardless of how many people said human has killed already, let alone to keep extending the hand of potential friendship as long as both brothers remain alive.
The player's choices, too, are what eventually reveal Sans to be more than just another wacky recurring character. Just as much as it likes to play up its genre on the surface, Undertale is a game that encourages you to check everything twice - and right from the beginning, paying the slightest bit of attention means Sans' comic relief image no longer adds up. Despite his dedication to "doing absolutely nothing" and his habit of wandering off in entirely the wrong direction, he keeps showing up one step ahead of you. For all his consummate pranking, some of his attempts to spook the protagonist veer just a bit too deadpan. Fail to reciprocate his initial friendliness, and his cheerful advice starts to take on the sound of a veiled threat. Papyrus himself admits that his brother "never tells anyone anything" and causes "mystery", although he doesn't seem to be bothered. These oddities come to a head right as the storyline does: more than the game interface, Sans was judging you all along, and when Sans has his eye on you even the smallest choice between violence and non-violence is a test.
Only much later, and only if the player betrays his trust completely, is it explained both why Sans felt obligated to keep score of the player's sins in particular and why he did most of it from the shadows. In a past that he can no longer return to, he and at least one other researcher discovered that the timeline of the Undertale is not a healthy one: fragmented, distorted by a major space-time anomaly, and fated in the not too distant future to vanish altogether. It turns out that the human main character is that very anomaly, warping the fabric of reality with their ability to SAVE their game and reset it repeatedly to see how their actions change things. Sans' innate good nature leads him at the start of the game to give the anomaly the benefit of the doubt and try to make them happy without giving the game away, but at heart, he's stopped believing he can truly change anything - even more so, on this story route, after losing his brother to a last-ditch offer of redemption. This is arguably the biggest reason Sans prefers to scrape through life with the minimum of effort these days, and why he can't bring himself to lift a phalange against the main character until it's almost too late: knowing that he has no honest chance of standing up to a human with the power of SAVE and LOAD has a way of dampening any motivation he might have started out with.
To be clear, it's not like every person Sans encounters gets tested in the same way. Though he's definitely more observant than he looks and pays close attention to anything or anyone that seems new, he doesn't do it to be overtly manipulative, even with the protagonist - that would be too much effort. There's no pretense involved in his love of the smaller things in life, like bad food and worse comedy, and least of all in how much he admires and cares for Papyrus. He doesn't even pretend to be especially stupid, despite how juvenile some of his hobbies might seem - he seems as comfortable regaling people with tales from the surface as he is with throwing costume parties or snoozing on the job. What he hides is chiefly his existential distance from the pleasure most of those things bring him, a result of his backstory and the responsibilities that subsequently weigh him down.
But ultimately, none of Sans' hidden depths ever need to come up. The laid-back Sans that most of his acquaintances know and love might have been broken in the past, but he's found happiness of a kind in his family, friends and terrible jokes, and genuinely sees no reason to strive for anything more. Even if another anomaly comes along, he has no problem just being their pal so long as they seem to mean it. Whether something in this setting can break through his warm, contented apathy a second time depends entirely on who else he interacts with - because he'll be watching them, and quietly judging.
Abilities:
Some fan theories notwithstanding, Sans is a monster. In the Undertale world, this doesn't make him terribly different from a human - less different than most other monsters, even, because at least he's human-shaped. Being a skeleton certainly doesn't stop him from talking, winking, eating, sweating, playing the trombone, falling asleep or any other important components of lazing around. The main difference between monsters and other life on Earth is that while other animals are made primarily of water, monsters are made primarily of magic - more than it allowing them to cast spells, which humans can do anyway with practice, a monster needs magic to hold its body together and exudes magic as a form of communication. As a result, the physical resilience of a monster is strongly attuned to its state of mind and the willpower of the attacker: even a random human kid with a stick is capable of reducing the strongest of monsters to dust as long as they really want to.
Sans, slacker that he is, is not the strongest of monsters by a long shot, although righteous anger can add more bite to his attacks under the right (wrong) circumstances. In keeping with the skeleton theme, he can summon an apparently limitless number of projectile bones, and he also shares with Papyrus the ability to alter the strength or direction of gravity in a small localised area. But he gets tired of fighting pretty quickly, and all in all prefers to let other people do it if he can get away with it.
On the rare occasions he's finally pushed to the point of serious fighting, he has zero interest in fighting fair, which brings in a couple of more... unique abilities, both implied to be a result of someone's space-time research prior to the start of the game. Firstly, he can teleport himself, other people and objects over long distances at will. This is not a normal monster ability, so he doesn't normally use it while other people are watching except to prank them - but if he does exploit it in a fight, it's incredibly difficult to land a hit on him without playing just as dirty.
Secondly, he can back up his waves of projectile bones with waves of skull-like laser cannons called Gaster Blasters - these have a wide range of fire, can home in on an opponent's position, and don't appear to have a summoning limit either.
Outside of battle, where he likes to be, he's still less useless than he seems. He's observant in general when it comes to people's behaviour and intentions, but in particular he knows exactly what tells to look out for if there's a chance he might be dealing with a time traveller. (I'd put up a permissions post for this.) He also has a knack for surprising stealth if he really wants to sneak up on someone. His backstory suggests plenty more esoteric scientific knowledge and engineering skill on top of that, but like hell he's going to use any of it if he doesn't have to.
Alignment: Peromei - he's had most of his hope beaten out of him by the time the game takes place, and the main effect of player choice on him is on how much more of it he loses, but regardless of route he holds onto the last of it for as long as he possibly can.
Other: I'm fine if it needs to be restricted to the city or a certain radius for vague metaphysical reasons (and tbh I don't mind if it needs to be nerfed entirely), but I'd like him to keep his teleporting if possible!
Sample: Short test drive thread - let me know if you need more c:
Questions: Nothing comes to mind for now!