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witchywillows
Sep. 19th, 2017 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trombonesPlayer Name: Amy
Contact: amymichellepage@gmail.com, plurk: cooltapes
Character: Sans
Series: Undertale
Canon Point: Post-pacifist
History:
- Undertale's History and Plot
- Sans' History and Plot
Personality: Sans is introduced in Undertale as a strange shadow that follows the player. A creepy ambience gets louder and louder until he finally reveals himself. Still in shadows, he holds his hand out. When “Don’t you know how to greet a new pal?” he asks you. The player takes his hand.
Cue a long, loud fart.
Goofy, shenanigans-style music fades in after a brief silence and the reveal: a short, stocky skeleton with a whoopee cushion in his bony hand, speaking in literal comic sans font and a “huhuhuh” sound bit.
From that moment on, Sans never stops being anything but a comedian. Sans is ridiculous, more than a gross, and infamously lazy. He drops frequent jokes and puns (especially about skeletons), drinks condiments straight from the bottle (as a joke probably, but?????), and barely puts efforts into most things. For example, Sans is a sentry, but according to monsters at a bar & grill he frequents, he doesn’t do anything but sit in his station and read magazines. If you talk to Undyne (his boss and head of the Royal Guard) at a particular point in the game, she mentions always catching him slacking off and sleeping… yet his results are just barely good enough not to fire him.
Sans’ casual attitude also makes him popular with others. He’s described by other monsters as fun to be around. He’s also something of a weird uncle depending on your actions. He often plays good-natured pranks on the player and others. At one point, he uses his vaguely-described teleportation powers to jump back and forth from one end of a room to another when the player isn’t looking. If talked to, he’ll ask if you’re following him.
Despite his slacker status, however, Sans is always interested in cheap and easy ways to make a buck. He has at least four jobs. He’s a sentry for multiple areas of the game despite putting the bare minimum of effort into them, and even runs an “illegal” hot dog stand. Somehow, the hot dogs are made of cattail plants plucked and put on a bun.
Beyond the surface, Sans is a lot more than a slacker. However, it defines his personality in more ways than one. It is inferred from multiple runs and moments in the game that Flowey, one of the main antagonists, used a special “reset” power to go back in time over and over. Flowey would then “play” with time. Similar to how video games will show you different endings depending on your actions, Flowey played with different outcomes in time – then reset so he could do it all over again. Eventually, Flowey started killing people. Sans became aware of these resets, and at one point was implied to have tried to stop them.
Unfortunately, the resets kept happening. No matter what Sans did, Flowey would continue to reset the timeline. Even the player, who has the power to reset, has the option of doing the same. So Sans gave up. What was the point of trying if everything would just reset? His apathetic perspective reflects as much. During the final boss of the pacifist run/ending, the player can find his lost soul (stolen from the boss), which asks them: “Just give up. I did. Why even try?”
Because of these resets, he has also become incredibly perceptive. He can pick up easily on expression and body language. This is also how he’s able to tell if a reset has happened before. To him, a player who has reset looks like they know what’s going to happen, like they’ve seen it all before.
San’s apathy is further shown in his “judgements”. At the climax of the game, Sans will appear before you meet the king of monsters and judge you for your actions. His responses depend on whether you’ve killed or spared enemies and bosses – a mechanic that affects most of the game’s story. In judgements where you’ve killed monsters, he keeps his casual, joking attitude. For the most part, he doesn’t think that anything he can do or say will change their mind or stop them from resetting. There are hints of seriousness to what he tries to tell the player, though, even asking them what he can do to change the mind “of a being like you”.
But not every part of this attitude is hopeless or nihilistic. Despite how beat-down how he’s become, Sans has enough hope to try and guide the player in the right direction, even when they’ve killed people. He’s the type to wait and see before he judges someone, and tries to give people a chance or at least consider their side of things. He explains in the darkest ending that he thought “the anomaly” (the one resetting the timeline) did what they did because they were unhappy, and that all they needed was “good food, bad laughs, and friends”. He knows people can change, but he also knows that not everyone is “good”. People are complex, and he knows that. Though it’s harder for him to believe that anyone can change (like his brother does), he still tries to weakly suggest they try not to hurt anyone, even if he isn’t sure if they’ll learn their lesson. Maybe there’s a chance they’ll change, but his kindness and patience isn’t unconditional.
Sans isn’t violent on his own. He admonishes the player for killing people, though it still comes across casual and/or sarcastic. He only fights you when your actions threaten the entire world, when he “can’t afford not to care anymore”. Then, he is ruthless and dangerous, becoming the hardest boss in the game. And even THEN, he still makes jokes.
If you refuse to kill anyone, however, Sans is a lot more hopeful. A lot of the fate and attitudes of Undertale depends on the players actions, and I play from a best ending. When the player is judged in the pacifist run, Sans encourages you. “You gained love. Does that make sense? Maybe not,” he says. In the best “neutral” ending (a requirement for getting the pacifist ending), he tells you that they WILL get out of the Underground. They WILL be free. After the player defeats the final boss of the pacifist run and helps him realize what he’s done, the boss releases the souls he stole, but not before telling you how he can feel how much those souls love you – Sans’ soul included. Despite popular opinion within the fandom, Sans cares. Despite its potentially dark endings, Undertale overall is a message of hope, love, and changing for the better. He’s a complex character worn down by his past, but monster souls are explained to be made of love, hope, and compassion – and Sans is no different.
Skills/Abilities: Sans is a monster, a race of beings made of magic instead of physical matter. This gives each monster unique abilities and powers. Most monsters use their magic to express themselves, for mundane purposes, etc., but can also be used to fight. Monster bodies are also closely linked to their souls, described in-game as being made of love, hope, and compassion. Feelings and emotions affect their body. For example, their will to fight will affect their defenses (in meta, their in-game character stats). Unfortunately, due to of their lack of physical matter, monsters are much weaker than humans – especially humans with killing intent.
Despite weak character stats (literally, his in-game character description is “the easiest enemy”), Sans is considered one of the hardest potential bosses in Undertale. One hit will kill him, but you have to catch him first. He can only deal one damage at a time, but his complicated attack set-ups accumulate fast.
Sans magic abilities include:
- Summoning bones
- Blue magic (in the form of his bones): An attack type in Undertale that only deals damage if the target moves. If the target stays still, the attack passes them harmlessly.
- Blue mode: An ability that can grab onto another person’s soul and turn it blue, increasing their gravity and making movement difficult. Sans can control the target’s gravity in blue mode, letting him throw them.
- Gaster Blaster: A summonable animal skull-shaped weapon that can blast a powerful beam attack.
- Teleporting: This ability is left ambiguous with no real explanation other than “it just happens”. Sans sometimes uses this ability as a shortcut. He can also teleport other people. In-battle, he uses it to force the human in particular places, and at one point uses it to keep them from moving. If they moved, he would teleport them back to their original point.
Network Sample: I hope this is okay as a sample!
Third Person Sample: The last thing he remembered was a highway. He remembered the sun on his face, wind rushing through his skull, the whirring of that cheap moped he bought, Papyrus threatening road rage…
Then here happened.
Sans opened his sockets.
It had been a while since he got here – yet his last memory of home still rang so clear in his head. The skeleton couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad thing.
On one side, it just reminded him he was stuck here. This was different from resets, multiple timelines, whatever. He was in the a completely different world now, and he had a feeling Frisk and that flower had nothing to do with it. There was no guarantee he was ever going home.
On the other hand… it was nice. Back before the kid, being constantly ripped in and out of timelines by a flower he could barely remember, he wasn’t even allowed the luxury of memories. Being able to remember all that stuff for once in his life felt good.
So maybe it wasn’t so bad.
The monster pulls himself off the bench. His bony knees knocked against the cardboard box he had set up in front of him. On top were rocks of different sizes, colors, and crudely-written names. Each five cents. Nobody had taken him up on his new pet store yet.
Welp. Sans shoved his hand in his pockets. Might as well check on everybody else. Wallowing around here reminded him – he wasn’t the only one quietly missing home. They were all in the same basket.
At the same time... even if there was no guarantee, at least there was SOME kind of chance. Right?
Besides. Frisk gave him a home to go back to. He might as well hang onto the chance himself.
Contact: amymichellepage@gmail.com, plurk: cooltapes
Character: Sans
Series: Undertale
Canon Point: Post-pacifist
History:
- Undertale's History and Plot
- Sans' History and Plot
Personality: Sans is introduced in Undertale as a strange shadow that follows the player. A creepy ambience gets louder and louder until he finally reveals himself. Still in shadows, he holds his hand out. When “Don’t you know how to greet a new pal?” he asks you. The player takes his hand.
Cue a long, loud fart.
Goofy, shenanigans-style music fades in after a brief silence and the reveal: a short, stocky skeleton with a whoopee cushion in his bony hand, speaking in literal comic sans font and a “huhuhuh” sound bit.
From that moment on, Sans never stops being anything but a comedian. Sans is ridiculous, more than a gross, and infamously lazy. He drops frequent jokes and puns (especially about skeletons), drinks condiments straight from the bottle (as a joke probably, but?????), and barely puts efforts into most things. For example, Sans is a sentry, but according to monsters at a bar & grill he frequents, he doesn’t do anything but sit in his station and read magazines. If you talk to Undyne (his boss and head of the Royal Guard) at a particular point in the game, she mentions always catching him slacking off and sleeping… yet his results are just barely good enough not to fire him.
Sans’ casual attitude also makes him popular with others. He’s described by other monsters as fun to be around. He’s also something of a weird uncle depending on your actions. He often plays good-natured pranks on the player and others. At one point, he uses his vaguely-described teleportation powers to jump back and forth from one end of a room to another when the player isn’t looking. If talked to, he’ll ask if you’re following him.
Despite his slacker status, however, Sans is always interested in cheap and easy ways to make a buck. He has at least four jobs. He’s a sentry for multiple areas of the game despite putting the bare minimum of effort into them, and even runs an “illegal” hot dog stand. Somehow, the hot dogs are made of cattail plants plucked and put on a bun.
Beyond the surface, Sans is a lot more than a slacker. However, it defines his personality in more ways than one. It is inferred from multiple runs and moments in the game that Flowey, one of the main antagonists, used a special “reset” power to go back in time over and over. Flowey would then “play” with time. Similar to how video games will show you different endings depending on your actions, Flowey played with different outcomes in time – then reset so he could do it all over again. Eventually, Flowey started killing people. Sans became aware of these resets, and at one point was implied to have tried to stop them.
Unfortunately, the resets kept happening. No matter what Sans did, Flowey would continue to reset the timeline. Even the player, who has the power to reset, has the option of doing the same. So Sans gave up. What was the point of trying if everything would just reset? His apathetic perspective reflects as much. During the final boss of the pacifist run/ending, the player can find his lost soul (stolen from the boss), which asks them: “Just give up. I did. Why even try?”
Because of these resets, he has also become incredibly perceptive. He can pick up easily on expression and body language. This is also how he’s able to tell if a reset has happened before. To him, a player who has reset looks like they know what’s going to happen, like they’ve seen it all before.
San’s apathy is further shown in his “judgements”. At the climax of the game, Sans will appear before you meet the king of monsters and judge you for your actions. His responses depend on whether you’ve killed or spared enemies and bosses – a mechanic that affects most of the game’s story. In judgements where you’ve killed monsters, he keeps his casual, joking attitude. For the most part, he doesn’t think that anything he can do or say will change their mind or stop them from resetting. There are hints of seriousness to what he tries to tell the player, though, even asking them what he can do to change the mind “of a being like you”.
But not every part of this attitude is hopeless or nihilistic. Despite how beat-down how he’s become, Sans has enough hope to try and guide the player in the right direction, even when they’ve killed people. He’s the type to wait and see before he judges someone, and tries to give people a chance or at least consider their side of things. He explains in the darkest ending that he thought “the anomaly” (the one resetting the timeline) did what they did because they were unhappy, and that all they needed was “good food, bad laughs, and friends”. He knows people can change, but he also knows that not everyone is “good”. People are complex, and he knows that. Though it’s harder for him to believe that anyone can change (like his brother does), he still tries to weakly suggest they try not to hurt anyone, even if he isn’t sure if they’ll learn their lesson. Maybe there’s a chance they’ll change, but his kindness and patience isn’t unconditional.
Sans isn’t violent on his own. He admonishes the player for killing people, though it still comes across casual and/or sarcastic. He only fights you when your actions threaten the entire world, when he “can’t afford not to care anymore”. Then, he is ruthless and dangerous, becoming the hardest boss in the game. And even THEN, he still makes jokes.
If you refuse to kill anyone, however, Sans is a lot more hopeful. A lot of the fate and attitudes of Undertale depends on the players actions, and I play from a best ending. When the player is judged in the pacifist run, Sans encourages you. “You gained love. Does that make sense? Maybe not,” he says. In the best “neutral” ending (a requirement for getting the pacifist ending), he tells you that they WILL get out of the Underground. They WILL be free. After the player defeats the final boss of the pacifist run and helps him realize what he’s done, the boss releases the souls he stole, but not before telling you how he can feel how much those souls love you – Sans’ soul included. Despite popular opinion within the fandom, Sans cares. Despite its potentially dark endings, Undertale overall is a message of hope, love, and changing for the better. He’s a complex character worn down by his past, but monster souls are explained to be made of love, hope, and compassion – and Sans is no different.
Skills/Abilities: Sans is a monster, a race of beings made of magic instead of physical matter. This gives each monster unique abilities and powers. Most monsters use their magic to express themselves, for mundane purposes, etc., but can also be used to fight. Monster bodies are also closely linked to their souls, described in-game as being made of love, hope, and compassion. Feelings and emotions affect their body. For example, their will to fight will affect their defenses (in meta, their in-game character stats). Unfortunately, due to of their lack of physical matter, monsters are much weaker than humans – especially humans with killing intent.
Despite weak character stats (literally, his in-game character description is “the easiest enemy”), Sans is considered one of the hardest potential bosses in Undertale. One hit will kill him, but you have to catch him first. He can only deal one damage at a time, but his complicated attack set-ups accumulate fast.
Sans magic abilities include:
- Summoning bones
- Blue magic (in the form of his bones): An attack type in Undertale that only deals damage if the target moves. If the target stays still, the attack passes them harmlessly.
- Blue mode: An ability that can grab onto another person’s soul and turn it blue, increasing their gravity and making movement difficult. Sans can control the target’s gravity in blue mode, letting him throw them.
- Gaster Blaster: A summonable animal skull-shaped weapon that can blast a powerful beam attack.
- Teleporting: This ability is left ambiguous with no real explanation other than “it just happens”. Sans sometimes uses this ability as a shortcut. He can also teleport other people. In-battle, he uses it to force the human in particular places, and at one point uses it to keep them from moving. If they moved, he would teleport them back to their original point.
Network Sample: I hope this is okay as a sample!
Third Person Sample: The last thing he remembered was a highway. He remembered the sun on his face, wind rushing through his skull, the whirring of that cheap moped he bought, Papyrus threatening road rage…
Then here happened.
Sans opened his sockets.
It had been a while since he got here – yet his last memory of home still rang so clear in his head. The skeleton couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad thing.
On one side, it just reminded him he was stuck here. This was different from resets, multiple timelines, whatever. He was in the a completely different world now, and he had a feeling Frisk and that flower had nothing to do with it. There was no guarantee he was ever going home.
On the other hand… it was nice. Back before the kid, being constantly ripped in and out of timelines by a flower he could barely remember, he wasn’t even allowed the luxury of memories. Being able to remember all that stuff for once in his life felt good.
So maybe it wasn’t so bad.
The monster pulls himself off the bench. His bony knees knocked against the cardboard box he had set up in front of him. On top were rocks of different sizes, colors, and crudely-written names. Each five cents. Nobody had taken him up on his new pet store yet.
Welp. Sans shoved his hand in his pockets. Might as well check on everybody else. Wallowing around here reminded him – he wasn’t the only one quietly missing home. They were all in the same basket.
At the same time... even if there was no guarantee, at least there was SOME kind of chance. Right?
Besides. Frisk gave him a home to go back to. He might as well hang onto the chance himself.
