My Take on Underfell Yellow! PT 1
Dalv puts himself on a pedestal above others, isolating himself in order to feel superior. He has the idea that if he is not perfect, then he is replaceable and worthless. He’s desperate for external validation, so despite talking big game, he’s easily susceptible to peer pressure.
If you’ve seen my headcanons for Dalv’s mother, this Dalv takes a lot after his mother.
He still has poor social skills but in an entirely different way than OG Dalv. He’s easily intimidated when others are better than him at something and always has his guard up to protect his image. He takes all his feelings of loneliness and goes “fine I don’t NEED any of you guys because I’m better!”
The Snowdin Incident was interesting. He was hostile towards Integrity because he knew that getting a human soul would get him the respect and admiration he always wanted. So when Axis got the soul instead, he felt so inferior to Chujin that he ran away to isolate himself so he could become perfect. He spent pretty much all of his time in the Dark Ruins perfecting his organ, writing, and drawing skills. His social skills are arguably worse than Dalv because of this, but he is better at art and the organ. He doesn’t write kids books because they’re “beneath his talents.”
After Clover comes through, he realizes just how horrible at socializing he is (despite his “natural charm”), and comes out of hiding. Because being in isolation turns out to have been holding him back (who would’ve thunk???). He’s still got issues with perfectionism but he is recognizing that being extremely hard on himself isn’t healthy.
He likes to surround himself with people who look mannered or prolific. He spends a lot of time with Ceroba because he sees her as high class. That’s why he visits the Dunes often and consequently sees Starlo often too. (He absolutely hates Starlo but I can get into that on another post.) His upbringing and parents are quite similar to OG Dalv with some minor differences.
Overall he has no confidence in himself so he searches for praise from the same monsters he shuns.
And lastly, due to his lack of confidence, he sometimes assumes genuine compliments are just mocking him. Specifically compliments that he doesn’t plan for/doesn’t expect.
My take on Underfell is that I wanted it to be “what if this character made worse choices.” For UnderFell Dalv, he uses perfectionism to cope with feeling like he doesn’t belong anywhere.
