Ok Y’all Time For My Undertale Crack Theory
I think the monsters use base-12. (I’m going to go ahead and explain base-12 since it’s not common knowledge, if you already know then you can skip the next paragraph!) Basically, base-12 (or duodecimal) is a numerical system in which twelve is the first double-digit number. Counting in duodecimal would look like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, X, Ε, 10 With X being equal to ten, Ε equal to to eleven, and 10 equal to twelve. The values are still the same, but the characters used to represent them change. This is admittedly a pretty sucky explanation but if anyone is genuinely curious I can try to do better lol ANYWAY my friend initially brought this up; she immediately paused after getting this dialogue:
[Image Description: Two text boxes indicate Papyrus’s dialogue. The first reads “I’m just a dozen away...” and the second says “from a double digit follower count!”] If monsters are using duodecimal, this would make a lot more sense! Instead of having -2 followers like he would have in decimal (or 111 if you want to get SUPER nit-picky), he would just have... 0. I think this is probably the most convinving piece of evidence in our favor. Of course it could just be some fun dialogue Toby through in as a joke, but overanalysis is fun so. I’m not stopping there. Next I noticed the in-game year:
[Image Description: A screencap from the opening sequence. Pictured is a mountain, labelled Mt. Ebbot 201X] So, initially, I believed 201X was meant to indicate some year between 2010 and 2019, with X replacing the last number. BUT if you consider that X is a character marking the value of ten in duodecimal, the year becomes 3478 in decimal (aka base-10, the number system we use). Now if the year had only been mentioned in the opening sequence, it would be a lot easier to play off as an unknown, but it’s written on a calendar in Asgore’s house!
[Image Description: A screencap from inside Asgore’s house. Frisk is inspecting a bookshelf. The text reads “There’s an old calendar here from the end of 201X. A date is circled on it.”]
You can’t really make a calendar for a nondescript year (unless he’s got just... a nine year calendar?) so it would actually make more sense, in my opinion, for 201X to indicate an exact year in duodecimal than a range of years in decimal. Those are my really hard-hitters, but I also think it’s cool to think about WHY monsters would use duodecimal. The reason humans use base-10 is because we typically have 10 fingers. It would be easier for a person with 10 fingers, 10 ‘digits,’ to use a mathematical system based around the number 10. But as far as I can tell, monsters don’t have 10 fingers. Granted, this could be more related to art-style, but the coincidences are stacking up at this point, right? Look at these sprites:
[Image Description: Toriel’s death sprite. She’s holding one hand against her chest while the other rests on the floor.}
[Image Description: Mettaton’s first battle sprite. He holds a microphone in one hand. His other hand is outsretched.] I dug through a lot of sprites trying to count fingers, but these two stood out the most: They both appear to have 4 digits on each hand. If we are to assume that the monsters have been sealed underground for a while, it would make sense for them to eventually convert to a numerical system that fit them better, right? So they would probably want to choose a base divisible by the number of fingers they have on a hand. It just so happens that 12 is divisible by 4. Sure, they could also use another base like 16, but Papyrus’s initial comment and the fact that X is used instead of A have me leaning towards 12.
TL;DR the monster’s numerical system revolves around the number 12 instead of 10.
Anyway that’s all I can think of at the moment!! If you have any more examples of this or even something that disproves it entirely, please let me know! I’m very fascinated with the possibilites of this rn. Thanks for reading + feel free to reblog with your thoughts if you made it through my lazy ass explanation
