\n\n"}\n\n\nHold on tight, folks. We\u2019re going full post-structuralist.
\nSo. I\u2019ve been thinking about the discussions that @nostalgebraist and @cyborgbutterflies\u200b have been having about Undertale fairly recently.
\nAnd I think I\u2019ve hit upon a Doylist explanation for why Undertale is so morally bizarre:
\nAll the characters in Undertale have no canonical existence, they have all been preemptively rewritten as the characters that fandom would have turned them into.
\nUndertale as it exists now, is like the fanon version of a game that never existed.
\nLet\u2019s call this hypothetical game-that-never-was \u201cUndertale Prime\u201d.
\nIn Undertale Prime, Papyrus is pretty much an exact duplicate of Skeletor: an evil mastermind whose plans never come to fruition. Constantly frustrated, taking out his anger on his minions in the most hilariously melodramatic ways.
\nIn Undertale Prime, Undyne is a deadly serious super-soldier. Even a bit of a sadist. She is acquainted with Alphys, but there\u2019s no romance between them.
\nIn Undertale Prime, Mettaton has no Mettaton EX form. He remains a rectangular robot for the entire game, but his personality shows small signs of the sass and flamboyance of Mettaton EX.
\nIn Undertale Prime, Alphys is a tetchy mad scientist, more like Cumberbatch\u2019s Sherlock than anything else. Prickly on the surface, lonely underneath. There\u2019s no mention of anime or internet arguments or anything like that.
\nIn Undertale Prime, Asgore is stern and serious, and completely in charge, but tormented by the necessary evils he has committed to protect his kingdom. Like a more sympathetic version of a king from a Shakespearean tragedy.
\nAnd finally, in Undertale Prime, all bosses are killed without remorse or punishment.
\nWe\u2019ve seen these character archetypes before, and we can guess how a typical fandom would reinterpret these archetypes:
\nthe Thwarted Mastermind becomes a Bumbling Narcissist.
\nthe Deadly Soldier becomes a Hot-Blooded Blockhead.
\nthe Mad Scientist becomes an Adorable Nerd.
\nThe Geometric Robot becomes a Svelte Bishonen.(look at Bill Cipher fanart)
\nThe Tormented King becomes Sad Dad.
\n(and the most sympathetic/admirable women become lesbians)
\nBut most importantly, all these villains would become sympathetic.
\nThey\u2019d become comedy relief, or even woobies.
\nUndertale takes the most probable fanon reinterpretations of Undertale Prime, and makes them canon. Why are the villains actions treated so cavalierly? Because typical fandom wouldn\u2019t care. Typical fandom forgives villains, typical fandom makes villains cute.
\nBut the discrepancy is this: in Undertale, the characters\u2019 actions all remain the same as they would be in the dark and serious story of Undertale Prime. They play the same role in the plot, they are still Villains. The only things that change are their personalities, and the manner in which they are presented to the audience.
\nThe result is that Undertale Prime makes moral sense, but Undertale does not.
\nIt\u2019s as if the Avengers canonically considered Bucky Barnes a family friend and acted as if the events of The Winter Soldier had never happened, as fandom wishes it were\u2013 But Bucky was still a terrorist.
\nIt\u2019s as if the characters in Borderlands 2 saw Handsome Jack as charming comic relief, the way the audience does\u2013 but Handsome Jack was still a murderous psychopath.
\nIt\u2019s as if, in Kingdom Hearts 2, Organization XIII were portrayed as the bickering sitcom family that the KH fandom made them into\u2013 but they were still trying to kill Sora and friends.
\nEvery playthrough of the Kingdom Hearts franchise involves killing every member of Organization XIII.
\nBut I guarantee you every Kingdom Hearts fan has their favorite Organization member.
\nNone of the characters in Undertale are \u201cheld responsible\u201d for attacking Frisk, because a game audience typically does not hold boss characters responsible for attacking the player. Instead, the audience sees them, through a Doylist/Mechanics-oriented lens, as a welcome addition to the game: a challenging battle and an entertaining character.
\nUndertale takes the player\u2019s expected affectionate attitude towards bosses, and makes it the\u00a0\u201cobjectively morally right\u201d choice, according to the game\u2019s in-world metaphysics.
\nUndertale is not just a game that preaches pathological altruism, it is, in itself, a pathologically altruistic text\u2013 a text that privileges the interpretation it expects to be subjected to over its own internal structure and logic, and preemptively changes itself to make those expected interpretations into objective truth, even when those changes create plotholes and morally repugnant implications.
\nA game, suffering to make itself everything the world expects it to be, about a child who suffers to make itself everything the world expects it to be.
\noh my god
\nI am never going to be able to un-see this.
\n