I think all Undertale fans need to put the concept of amnesia up on the top shelf until they learn what it means and/or can give some actual evidence of it being the case that isn’t easily explainable by something much more plausible.
Because tbh I’ve seen the “Papyrus has amnesia” theory most often used to either discredit everything he says, ignore potential evidence, bend the text to fit the theory instead of seeing if the theory fits the text, or to prop up Sans as some sort of special magic man who didn’t get the timeline jumper amnesia we’ve suddenly decided is a thing with meager evidence because he gets to be more special than his brother for some reason!
“But Papyrus forgets people’s names and can’t tell Toriel and Asgore apart—“
Name/Face blindness is not the same as general or situational amnesia. Someone can have difficulty recognizing someone or confuse someone for someone else without having had a traumatic event, injury, or time travel magic put on them. Someone can be missing several years of their life without forgetting people’s names. These are not the same thing.
The “Spooky Bloo Bloo” line in particular was more likely Papyrus just not remembering Napstablook’s name because he doesn’t go to Waterfall much outside of Undyne’s house. He has no reason to put much effort into remembering the name of a random neighbor of hers that he doesn’t talk to.
“But he doesn’t remember what the sun is—“
Bluntly wrong! He mentions wanting the “sun on his skin” to Frisk before that ending scene, he knows what the sun is.
We already know that Papyrus has a tendency to say he doesn’t know what things are and then totally contradict that later or in a different context. Without Sans’s presence, he’ll go on about how his brother loves sciencey stuff and totally have the preconceived belief that the “lab” is associated with “science”, proving that he knows what those are. When Sans is with him on the call, however, he will start acting like he doesn’t know what a lab is. There’s a good couple potential reasons for this (ragebating his brother, playing a role for the bit, perhaps avoiding a difficult/uncomfortable conversation, maybe hiding something from Sans specifically), but we know he’s lying because we already have proof that he knows what a lab is, which is a conversation with Frisk that can happen before or without ever having Sans present for that phone call. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that, considering he mentions the sun long before the ending of the game, this is another one of those cases. Especially because he’s surrounded by people who are experiencing the sun for the first time ever and has a reason to try to blend in here if he does in fact know what the sun is!!!
“But he trails off when trying to tell us about where he lived before—“
I have no idea why people are taking an example of Papyrus explicitly remembering something as a sign of amnesia. Like, when you say it out like that, doesn’t it seem kinda silly??? This is the big time we get to hear the man recount something and he does and because he ‘didn’t tell us enough’ before leaving, he has??? amnesia??? Hello???
This newsletter interview conversation was so clearly Papyrus avoiding an uncomfortable conversation he doesn’t want to be having while trying to be nice about it. We know that Papyrus is avoidant as hell of anything he doesn’t want people knowing about, we see him do this all the time. Papyrus is given a new pair of gloves and instead of taking his old ones off even for a second, he just puts the new ones on over his old ones. Papyrus sees (or hears about) the Core in the distance, hits us with the face sprite titled “depressed” in the files, and proceeds to pretend his phone does not work beyond a certain point despite Toriel’s still working far beyond the Ruins (if I remember correctly, her phone says no one picked up, implying that it did ring even way off into the Core). Papyrus, our engineering science textbook collecting nerd getting sent puzzle prototypes directly from Alphys who literally tells us to go to the Lab to find her when he suspects she’s returning to it for bad reasons, who straight up has a lab on the back of his house and is out building things all the time, who gets super opinionated about the conveyer belt laser air vent puzzles of Hotland and then real quiet about the Core aka the famous creation of W.D. Gaster, pretends he doesn’t know what lab is in front of his fellow science nerd brother. Of course he would try to avoid saying as much as possible about where he lived before Snowdin if it’s literally connected to other timeline shenanigans of Gaster-ish flavor because it’s obviously something he wants to avoid and ignore and keep other people from finding out about!!! Like yeah he’s gonna first try to get away with saying as little information as he can without turning down the question because he doesn’t want to be rude and then use his brother getting out of the shower as an excuse to leave an awkward situation in a way that absolves him of the fault for not actually answering the question, that’s the type of thing he does!!!!!!! Pretty often!!!
It’s also ironic that he lies and doesn’t tell the whole truth on things like this because he’s often kinda bad at lying! Example: he threw out “there was green grass” as a generic descriptor to attempt to explain where he lived without actually saying where he lived, answer the question without actually giving an answer ya know, and in doing that he literally told us “I’m from the surface” because there is no green grass in the underground!!! He!!! Also!!! Does!!! Stuff!!! Like!!! This!!! The whole “she’s going home! Very home!” conversation about Alphys going back to the Lab comes off so suspiciously that people are convinced it’s somehow not even him, despite the fact that Flowey has never demonstrated the ability to copy the face or voice of anyone who isn’t in his family let alone for the length of an entire decently sized phone call! He tries to lie about what Flowey’s name is and comes up with “Flowery” as a stand in! He doesn’t want to have uncomfortable conversations and pretends he doesn’t know what the sun is or that he’s never seen the back of his own hands! He yells “uh I have to go to the bathroom!” and jumps out a window as his excuse to get Frisk and Undyne to hang out alone for a while! He’s not even a very great liar! Why are we falling for it!!!
So, please, when you see a situation involving what Papyrus knows and does not know, consider first: is it way more plausible than timeline amnesia that the guy who lies and avoids things is lying and avoiding things again?
