making ones own au sans is like a rite of passage through the straits of embracing cringe. its quite liberating
tagging with #b_e!sans if you are weak to my cringe inspired loosely by kirkbride's concept art for ash zombies from morrowind. the whole 'head burst from enlightment/unknowable knowledge' thing with a crater for a face stuck with me With a bonus Harlequin!Sans whomst belongs to @hollowedoutroot in pic 2 :3 lore below
"What if".
Crater exists because Sans could not let that question go.
He was originally a Sans from a standard UT True Pacifist timeline, where Frisk became the human-monster ambassador. That Frisk never kills anyone, and they insist on never resetting again after breaking the barrier and letting everyone have their happy ending. Frisk insisted on this well into adulthood.
Even so, Sans becomes fixated on certain uncertainties, certain "what ifs"-- what if Frisk resents him for not 'keeping an eye socket' out for them, or even suspecting them, threatening them, back when they were still trying to break the cycle for everyone's sake?
"In spite of everything, I chose to be kind," Frisk told him, sensing Sans was in disquiet one day. "I chose to forgive you, a long time ago.
"You made your choices then, and what you do now is up to you.
"I'm hoping you choose to believe me when I say I'm not going to reset this world again."
Sans wanted to-- he very much wanted to. But he couldn't let it go.
"What if---------?"
Sans became fixated on the idea of trying to make their current timeline immutable and permanent, regardless of the influence of DT and Resets, regardless of what Frisk had promised.
He did something he couldn't take back.
Sans peered into a view he was never meant to have.
His mind connected to the multiverse. Not only the multiverse, but also the state of quantum superposition of every single iteration of every single AU, of all potential discrete states or possible states of every given AU at once.
His skull shattered from the influx of data, of knowledge-- and the experience altered him irreparably from what/who he was before.
The core 'code' of his AU couldn't handle his presence anymore, and forcibly ejected him into the greater multiverse -- like muscles spasming around a dislocated joint.
Ironically, in his own home AU he was replaced with a reset version of himself that was identical in every way - except that it was a version that decided to take Frisk at their word and accept happiness.
He took the other path.
--
His experience plays with headcanon around 'quantum superpositions', in the UTMV's context:
While time does progress in a linear fashion when an AU is being ‘observed’ or ‘experienced’ in real-time,
ie. when you jump into an Underswap that is following the normal track of a Genocide/Neutral/Pacifist route,
the rewinding of time, LOADing/SAVing and Resets gives the whole of the AU instance a state of ephemerality where its ‘outcome’ in a linear timeline does not actually ‘matter’ once you are no longer ‘in’ it or observing it at a fixed point.
No choice or timeline is truly immutable or ‘matters more’ than any other.
In other words, no matter the expressed or internal intentions of any Frisk/Chara/etc, the probability of them engaging a Reset or loading/saving or undoing previously done actions is NEVER at 0% from a spacetime standpoint. As long as the powers of Determination exist, no AU is truly immutable.
Every possibility exists at once simultaneously. The connectivity and existence of the multiverse makes this even worse.
--
*you know Schrodinger’s cat, right? *the cat that's equally alive and dead unless you're looking right at it? *it ain't a real cat, but anyway. *picture this. *billions of sealed boxes of cats out there that could be alive or dead - that's the multiverse. *...i see into all of them at once. *i see them alive and dead all at once. *and you know what? *maybe i just want to break all these fucking boxes open. *let all these cats stay alive or dead already.
--
He’s got no choice in being able to see into those boxes and become aware of the ‘aliveness’ or ‘deadness’ of said cats.
No choice but to be inherently, constantly aware of the infinite potential vector of suffering or happiness of any AU, any person in any given AU, and how little it’s observed/fixed current state matters.
Anytime someone does something slightly different, makes different choices, or a given AU is born that has subtle differences from its ‘parent’ (ie. a Fellswap with slightly different characterizations or narrative elements, or just a human that by chance MAKES DIFFERENT CHOICES)– that just births a new box with a new Schrodinger's kitten in it, destined to suffer in impermanence forever.
Just more and more potential boxes splitting off ad infinitum and giving him even more sub-superpositions to be painfully aware of.
--
To that end, wants to try and ‘break’ the quantum state of the multiverse– to find a way to make it that time and choices can no longer be rewound, that only one linear iteration and outcome is sustained forever, and that whatever it’s endpoint is will remain as such.
To make it so AUs are in a state of pure temporal linearity and immutable with time only moving forward.
The very force of Determination itself, outside actors like visitors from other AUs, or whatever unseen force keeps MAKING the damn things (so… creators/us?)-- these are all the things he wants to break.
And he doesn’t care what he has to do to achieve it.
He might frame this as an act of altruism, like he's trying to stop suffering in 'bad' AUs, or 'end the cycle'-- but this isn't true. At best, he's deluded himself into thinking that's his motivation; at worst, that's just the reason he gives to manipulate people into thinking he's on their side.
Realistically, it’s completely selfish.
Being aware of the multiverse in this specific way is incredibly overwhelming and maddening and he just wants it to be quiet, and he doesn’t care how far he has to go to achieve that.