What exactly did he do? Considering "I am making you do nothing you would otherwise dislike doing", it doesn't seem like he would have done much to make others dislike him as much as they seem to. Did he do something bad that hasn't been mentioned? Alphys's panic seems a bit extreme, unless she had some experience that hasn't been mentioned with him that'd make her panic upon seeing him. Oh, and how, when, under what circumstances did anybody figure out that Aes was influencing them? (pt 4 of 7)
Incidentally, how much explanation did that world's Sans and Papyrus give her on what the other S, P and G told them? "“It isn’t my magic,” he said, “it is a magic; a concept this world has long forgotten" - so there was a time when it wasn't forgotten, hmm? And a certain pair of Gasters have a time machine... not sure why they'd go there, but could be an interesting time for them to wind up in. Also I'm curious about "food full of love" being said "like a foreign phrase". (part 5 of 7)
so the thing is, I don’t necessarily dislike doing construction. I do it willingly and sometimes very aggressively! but that doesn’t mean I want someone to be able to tell me go do construction and all the time.
It’s not necessarily that he did something to make people dislike him. It’s more that he had power over them that they had no control over. I’m not really explaining this very well, mmm
when I was in college, I was real ass depressed. I was often in the type of bad mood that wasn’t really even a mood as much as a physical crankiness that I tried to tone down and pretend didn’t exist when encountering other people.
My college also unfortunately had a habit of chalking the sidewalks. Everywhere. They were ads, announcements for events, doodles-- and encouraging messages.
I remember one point where one organization covered the entire campus with comforting phrases like “You can do it!” “Smile you’re beautiful” “you can do anything you set out to accomplish” “This will all pass eventually” ; You know, empty platitudes.
One of the “smile youre baeitufl” or “youre so brave!!” ones was Right. Outside. My. Dorm. Every time I exited the door i most commonly exited, I would pass that message, and the only thing that very nice bland message elicited in me was Fury. Not even a fury I could enjoy, because, again, Depressed and so I would feel the screaming but without the emotional release.
like, you need to have negative emotions sometimes, and wildly all these positive phrases were unintentionally shaming me into being That Angry Person on A Happy Happy Campus.
but you want to be happy! If you had the choice, anyone would choose to be happy!
but it doesn’t work like that. You cannot be happy and content literally all of the time, it’s just physically impossible, and pretending to be that way all the time comes with a mental strain that eventually leads towards big ass breakdowns over ‘absolutely nothing.’ This is usually what Linda is actually mad about when venting her anger on retail workers.
And then there is Aes, whose magic makes it so you can be content all the time. Happy, even. Everyone who works for him is chill. no one wants to leave really. people actively seek Aes out in Hotland sometimes because it’s so much easier to be chill and kinda high maybe than to deal with the reality of an inescapable slow death beneath a mountain.
Alphys was one of the workers. She came and partook, and she stayed until the last day when Aes walked into the CORE. And then the spell was broken, and she had spent years of her life and scientific research building this machine that... she didn’t even understand. It was working, sure, the Underground had electricity, but no one had been given a blueprint. No one knew the full shape of it-- everyone had been working on their own pieces automatically, without any need for instruction!
That’s scary. Maybe nothing ‘bad’ actually happened, but that doesn’t mean that years didn’t pass and she barely remembers a variation in her days, or emotions, or life, for all those years on autopilot.
And then, of course, you have Sans and Papyrus, who were young and in need when Aes took them in. Papyrus isn’t even young enough to walk on his own or talk-- he’s still swaddled up.
What happens when you grow up without adversity, or negative emotions, or even being able to watch someone model those behaviors for you?
What happens when you’re in that state for years, and have been content for so long, and then suddenly, the person who’d been protecting you from literally everything has left of their own will, and you are injured, and for the first time in your life, you realize there will never be any stars above you?
