a while ago, i had a fairly vivid dream about papyrus being in deltarune. part of it was from his perspective. he was trapped somewhere, and had a hand circled around a bar. it was dark enough that you could only see what was directly in front of him, which was just the bright colors of his glove against the total black of the void
the thought process that went behind this skelebros comic of mine...
though it was merely a joke two pages and four panels long, i considered a bunch of tiny details while i was making it, and i thought sharing that would be fun for those interested in knowing.
this doubles as a character analysis for sans, papyrus, and their dynamic as well!
and so, here it is, in approx. [1,200 words]:
Colors
this is the most obvious one, but i used colors to reflect the mood and the subsequent shift in it. bright and lively colors for the first three panels, which then turn into something darker and less saturated in the last one.
i picked purple for the tablecloth because it's a neutral color that looked good in all the backgrounds, but also because red + blue = purple. heh.
my color choice was not only based on that, however. some have already pointed it out to me, but i like to choose bright colors for my pieces in general, sometimes bordering on an eye-bleeding degree (i've really had people tell me those words in the past, especially for some of my older artwork). the reasoning behind it isn't as intentional, but: it's because i find it hard to work otherwise. my eyes have difficulty adjusting to dark, low-contrast colors, which affected my art while i was developing my style throughout the years, haha. it's interesting how something like that works.
Dialogue
Speech Bubbles
the dialogue boxes, too, change according to the mood. i used round and/or curved shapes for the first page, then switched to simple rectangles in the second.
originally, i had them all be rectangles to be most accurate to the undertale style, but found it too stiff.
Text
when speaking in the game, papyrus usually uses 1-5 words for each line of his dialogue box, depending on the length of the sentence. i like to try and make it so that reading each speech bubble is like reading actual dialogue from the game. so, it has those same choppy sentences.
^ it's a little difficult to balance this, because undertale characters don't actually say much; i've noticed that their characterizations are neatly compressed in as little words as possible, so each line always has to count, or else it would feel a little drawn out.
the first panel has papyrus' text all skewed to capture his energy! contrasted with sans' lack of it.
Speech Quirk
part of the humor was, of course, meant to be tied to the fact that papyrus completely drops his speech quirk mid-sentence in a, "yes, the spaghetti was THAT bad," way. along with that, i was thinking about the theory that characters who fully capitalize their speech are "acting," or otherwise putting on a persona in front of other people. (if anyone wants my thoughts on that, i could perhaps make a separate post finding proof and either agreeing or debunking it. either way, it's a fun idea.) if this were true, that would mean that normally capitalized sentences would be the "default," or at least a more genuine way of speaking. this would fit papyrus' character nicely, with the way he never shows his true self, going so far as to repeatedly lie to even sans and undyne. so for him to drop it for something as silly as this, even if its in front of sans only, to me, really sells the idea of, "YES. the spaghetti was THAT BAD," which i find really funny.
Characterization
Papyrus
there seems to be a misconception that papyrus is oblivious to his "flaws," when he actually shows the opposite. when writing dialogue for undertale characters, i try to find instances where they're already using similar phrasing. for this, i nicked the word "awful" straight from papyrus' dialogue about his own puzzles.
I HAVE FRIENDS!!!
AND WHO KNEW THAT ALL I NEEDED TO MAKE THEM...
WAS TO GIVE PEOPLE AWFUL PUZZLES AND THEN FIGHT THEM??
note that, from what i've found, the only other thing he refers to as "awful" in the game is hotland. three separate times, all during his phone calls. papyrus HATES hotland. so, it's safe to say that he's not using "awful" in a lighthearted way, or any other context, he genuinely thinks his puzzles are awful.
next, as mentioned in the qna, he doesn't even eat his own food. he supposedly cooks spaghetti because "EVERYBODY ELSE LOVES IT!!!" so his level of "delusion" regarding his own self-image is still to be argued, assuming he's not just... messing with people for his amusement, as he tends to do (not maliciously, obviously! he's not some secret mastermind, it's just that i rarely see people mention/consider the other aspects of his personality, like his sarcasm and (at times) rather dry humor). considering he admitted his puzzles were awful, papyrus likely wouldn't keep pretending his food is good after having eaten it, plainly expressing it afterwards.
of course, there's a chance he might be purposefully avoiding eating it, or is just playing it up so that others don't look too deeply, but that's kind of tinfoil hat territory. again, i don't consider canon papyrus as some kind of secret mastermind, even if he does hide a lot of things and is weirdly overlooked in general... almost as if he's meant to be.
as for the swearing, well, it's papyrus swearing. that always subverts expectations. no doubt, it stemmed from the early fandom developing idea that papyrus is innocent, which is silly. i think that, while he might consider swearing to be "above him," he'd do it on occasion. instances like these deserve a bit of swearing.
Sans
time and time again, sans has shown that he is willing to deceive, threaten (others), and blatantly lie to papyrus to protect his feelings. now, i don't mention this to hate on him or his character, but to emphasize that sans wouldn't ever want papyrus to feel negative emotions. even if sans is placed into a situation where he's forced to eat inedible food, that mouth is staying zipped and grinning. he isn't going to tell papyrus "it's bad" to his face if he thinks it'll crush him. in fact, he'd probably try to convince him that it's good, or (more likely) find some way to avoid the conversation or situation entirely. so, keeping this in mind, he'd only (reluctantly) agree after papyrus already voiced his own thoughts about it. it's not like he can lie about it now, so "...yeah" is as good a response as he's gonna give.
adding onto it, it's also worth noting that sans isn't actually eating the spaghetti. so, was he just pretending to react? stalling? it's sans, who really knows. he'd be able to get away with something like that. (papyrus would notice, but sans wouldn't notice he noticed.)
Skelebros
i've mentioned lying and deception a lot in this, which isn't wrong, because the characters of the game do lie to each other a surprising amount, but i don't want to make it seem like i think the skelebros' relationship is fake. bit strained, maybe? they clearly have some unspoken things between them that they both love to ignore, and that can't be healthy, so i wouldn't be surprised. their lack of communication may or may not contribute to things like undyne and papyrus' unresolved plot point (because no way sans doesn't know undyne is leading him on about joining the royal guard, right?). but, regardless, they love each other a ton. when sans calls papyrus "cool," he means it. when papyrus makes him spaghetti, it's with love and 100% of his effort. in the end, they're just goofy people.
Inspiration
this whole thing came to be because of this comic by PacketOfStaples. it never left my mind, so i came back to it and did something about it. my only regret is that it's not june.
Conclusion
good company makes for slightly less awful spaghetti
as much as i adore the star and bad sanses, there is literally no multiverse where they with their canon personalities would ever happen. ever.
ink and dream's goals are fundamentally different. they wouldn't work together the way they're depicted as the stars. if they do come to an understanding (which is unlikely unless one or the other changes their ways entirely) they would not be close buddies. allies? maybe? when it benefits them?
then there is the dubious morality of letting blue, the mortal, either die on the battlefield, or (going with the "blue is immortal too" route) watch his family die first. not to mention that dream's aura would cause immense problems in the long run. no sane sans or papyrus from any pacifist timeline would put themselves into that type of situation.
and nightmare may use killer as a lackey, but dust and horror? i'm sorry, what are they even doing there? nightmare has no use for them. not that they would ever join him in the first place. they wouldn't. not even under threat. they'd rather die.
ok so... we all agree that there is in-multiverse discourse about sans variants having such prominence (for lack of a better term) in every single major event, right?
as a papyrus enjoyer, i need more arrogant swap sans interpretations. like, the type of arrogance that ranges from endearing to honest-to-god annoying. being a good person and being insufferable does not have to be mutually exclusive
sure, he eventually learns when to tone it down and redirect that energy, but it would be funny if he just... never drops it completely
