A mouse's sideblog

This blog might contain Undertale.

[the-subterranean-mouse]

I like the different reactions of the characters in the true pacifist ending when Toriel recognizes Sans's voice:

Asgore and Undyne are shocked...

...while Aphys just akwardly looks aside (she might be looking at Sans..?).

And Papyrus who's just

[the-subterranean-mouse]

Just some wordplay in the second and third fight with Mettaton:

If you check Mettaton for the first time, the "act" is "yell" and then goes to "yellOW" after Alphys tells you what to do.

And in the last fight, it goes from "Burn" to "Turn".

[the-subterranean-mouse]

The sign between Dogamy's and Dogaressa's sentry station shows their "smell danger rating" in different colours.

One rating has the wrong text colour:

First, I wondered why, but then I remembered that dogs are colour blind. They can't tell apart red and green.

[the-subterranean-mouse]

Hey, I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while.

The problem is that I'm currently really busy and don't have time at all… Believe me, I'd like to post more, but there's just barely any free time at the moment where I could work on this little blog. The stupid part is that I already had started working on several posts, but while writing, I realised there not as interesting as I thought, so I didn't finish them… And then I didn't have time for more. sigh

Well, it should get a bit better in January, so I hope I'll be able to write more content then.

I don't want to abandon this place entirely, so maybe I'll do a short list with some ideas I might write about to give a little sneak peak at upcoming stuff. If I find some time to do so…

Oh yeah, if you have any questions - about the blog or the posts - just ask! I'll gladly answer them.

[the-subterranean-mouse]

Everybody knows that Papyrus's cooking skills…

...really aren't great.

This seems understandable, considering Undyne is "teaching" him:

The problem is just…

… Undyne's "lessons" improved Papyrus's cooking.

And if this is her way of making spaghetti:

What did the skeleton do that was worse than this?

[the-subterranean-mouse]

Papyrus appears to be incredibly optimistic, like someone who thinks that everything always goes right.

This seems to be true when you look at some of his dialogue in the king Papyrus ending:

Despite that people are loosing hope (and that all his friends are dead), he still refuses to give up and says that eventually, things will turn out to be good. He admits this might take some time, though.

However, there are also moments where he isn't so optimistic.

He doesn't seem to think that reaching the surface is realistic:

Neither does he believe to actually join the royal guard:

And in his lost soul dialogue, he doesn't even finish his thought:

It looks like he doesn't think he'll ever be popular, get many friends or whatever he wanted to say.

This doesn't make him a pessimist, but there are obviously moments where he shows doubt. He doesn't think that every wish will come true.

If you don't befriend Undyne in a pacfifist run, he says some lines about her crossing the barrier (and beating you up) which make this more obvious:

He likes the thought of Undyne being able to cross the barrier, but he doesn't actually believe it will happen.

Papyrus is childish and might act naive at times, but he isn't completely oblivious to the things happening around him. His behaviour in the no mercy route shows this for example:

He mentions the dust on Frisk's hands and if you choose to spare him…

… he's visibly relieved and even says he was afraid.

When sparing you, Papyrus is aware that he could get killed. It seems he doesn't fight you, because he is convinced that people can change (it's not known why) and he wants to give you that opportunity:

So he shows you mercy, because of his morals and beliefs. He might be called idealistic for doing this, but this isn't the same as being clueless. He knows how dangerous the situation is and is trying to change it for the better.

How he thinks exactly, is shown rather well in his brother's alarm clock winter dialogue:

According to Sans, "starting something's half the deal" and so Papyrus very often says "nothing will happen if you don't reach for the stars". After all, things will stay the same if you don't at least try to change them. This sort of appears to be his motto: Try to do something, try to change things! Even if that might fail.

So, yes, Papyrus is optimistic, at least most of the time, but he isn't like that because he doesn't realize what's going on. He knows that not every effort will pay off. According to him, trying something which might fail, is better than not trying it at all.

[the-subterranean-mouse]

I was thinking about Toriel and Asgore…

Asgore visibly tried to bake Toriel's butterscotch pie, but failed to do so:

Without Toriel, Asgore seemingly can't make good pies, because she's the one who's good at baking.

Then I thought about that tree in front of Toriel's house:

It's old and withering.

Asgore's garden, however, is full of life:

He likes gardening and is visibly good at it.

So maybe the tree used to be pretty, but without Asgore, Toriel doesn't know how to take care of it?

[the-subterranean-mouse]

Sans's past is surely one of the big mysteries of the game and probably the most popular one in fandom. The vague hints to Gaster and the strange machine make it very ominous, but I want to focus on something else for this post.

I obviously can't tell what Sans's past is all about, either, but there's at least one thing we know about it:

He was happy. And there were a lot of people he liked.

It's not known who those people were, but Papyrus says something interesting in the alarm clock winter dialogue:

Celebrating the holidays with many friends, is something Sans hadn't been able to do in a long time, which means at a certain point in the past, he DID do this. The way his brother phrases it, it also sounds like he missed celebrating like that. So maybe these friends he celebrated with were the people mentioned in his secret room?

That Sans misses someone or some people, is also hinted at in his lost soul dialogue:

He's talking about giving up, that it isn't even worth trying, because he won't ever see "them" again.

Giving up trying, is something he also talks about in his fight:

He gave up trying to go back. But back where? To his friends?

Looking at this...

… I'd say he means "back home". Wherever that is.

So it seems he tried to go "home", because he missed all the people he knew, but failed to do so. This might have something to do with this:

I'm aware this isn't really new, I just want to point out that there were seemingly more monsters involved in Sans's past than only Gaster and that Sans used to be happy at some point. A part of what is known about his past, sounds rather melancholic and bittersweet. He was happy. And then he lost that happiness. He wants to go back to this happiness, back to his home and friends. But he can't.

[the-aberrant-mouse]

Something I personally think isn't acknowledged enough, is that Papyrus occasionally uses irony and even sarcasm. And no, that's not just a guess I've made, he actually admits being sarcastic himself:

It's not the best example, but it still shows that he knows how irony works.

And he is definitely sarcastic in this one:

His "HAHAHA, WOW" is almost leaking sarcasm.

Well, it's not something he does very often, but he still uses it to tease Frisk and the other characters now and then. Like in this dialogue in Waterfall:

To make this clear: You already had to build a seed bridge in the room before to even reach this puzzle. Papyrus totally knows that the information he gives you here is completely useless. He seemingly just enjoys being unhelpful sometimes (like his brother).

Acting unhelpful to mock you, is something he does more than once. So, here's another example of that:

Papyrus also seems to get sarcastic in other situations. If you look at it closely, his dialogue in the empress Undyne ending actually sounds sort of cynical:

It's unlikely that he's not sarcastic here, because this would mean that he thanks you for killing people for a job he visibly dislikes.

Anyway, my personal favourite of Papyrus's snarky comments is this one:

It's glorious.

[the-aberrant-mouse]

Papyrus and Alphys are two Characters who barely interact with each other, which is probably the reason why their relationship might appear uninteresting. Whenever I see fanwork of them, people only seem to think about the scene where they go on a jog together after the date with Alphys. And while there's really not so much to say about them, I think there's still a bit more than that.

Let's look at what Papyrus says about her:

He calls her great, follows her online and for some reason wanted a puzzle of her so badly that he asked Undyne if she could ask Alphys for him. It seems he likes her quite a lot. Well, he likes her at least so much, he wants to befriend her by showing her his "huge biceps":

… and guess what, that's exactly what he does (or tries):

Alphys, however, is (understandably) not very impressed.

That he's trying to get her attention, is something that can be seen mutliple times. Whenever he hears she's hanging out with someone or going somewhere, he immediately asks if he can join, too.

That one is a joke, but still...:

This is more obvious in the alarm clock winter dialogue:

Papyrus could've picked his brother for hockey, but instead he chose her (Sans wasn't even part of his team). And the way he talks about her, is almost … cute?

But what about Alphys? Well, she has never talked about Papyrus, so it's not so easy to tell what she thinks of him. Though, if you look at her reaction to his awkward tries, you get the impression that she doesn't like him very much. She seems to be weirded out and confused or even visibly annoyed, like in the date scene in the garbage dump:

Well, that's not gonna stop the great Papyrus from trying! So, what can be said about this in the end, is that Papyrus likes Alphys. He's trying to befriend her and he's really bad at it. Alphys is not impressed.

[the-subterranean-mouse]

Terribly important info:

This is a sideblog that focuses on UNDERTALE. Yes. Another one of these.

I was really into the game some years ago and just suddenly had the amazing idea to open an account and talk about it. Incoherent, over-interpreted rambling of a random stranger about a game which was released years ago… Who would not want to look at that?

Anyway, I'm planning to do analysis/interpretations and maybe some theories. (I'm aware that there are already plenty of those.) Those can be interpretations of a line, analysis of a character's behaviour or some ideas I thought were interesting. To keep the blog a bit more active, there will probably be shorter posts aswell, where I, for example, just point out something or show some piece of dialogue I like.

Finding a fitting subject to discuss, sorting out my thoughts, writing the text and especially gathering the screenshots I need, takes some time, so I'm not going to update very often. I can't tell how often that will be, but it's not going to be every week. It depends on how much time I have and it's unfortunately going to be a rather busy year for me. I really don't know why I opened this blog. However, I promise I'll keep posting stuff as long as I can think of something interesting (and as long as at least a few people show interest). At the moment, I still have a couple of things in mind, so don't worry.

So, if you want a blog that updates frequently, you're at the wrong place, but if you like the idea of seeing some longer posts now and then, you're quite right here.