#(I keep adding more tags while trying to fall asleep) ALSO. gaster could be treating us the same way papyrus does on a no mercy run

[dimeadozencows]

There are a lot of great tags on this post, and a lot of different and unique takes on gaster which i always love to read :DD but i dont think i managed to evoke what i wanted to with this drawing

We know that gasters aware hes in a video game, but so many characters in undertale are aware of that already. One of the things that make gasters situation different is his ability to look at our world directly. He's aware that we've been looking for him and trying to understand what and who he is, he knows these last few years were dogshit for everyone on earth and mentions it in his pre chapter 2 tweets, he knows our life outside of our tempering with these worlds

And unlike other self aware characters in undertale, he doesn't experience time and the resets. He "lives" outside of what we can control. He truly remembers all that we've done while being unaffected by any of it. So while other self aware characters (im mainly thinking of sans and flowey) know that theres a person behind frisk whos controlling time, they're affected by our choices and (for the most part) can't judge it from an outside perspective

Sans is mostly unaffected by our inputs, and he does manage to judge us in a very impactful way, but he can't be a completely uninvolved judge. He will (understandably) react to us killing his brother and on certain neutral endings, as much as hes trying to hold his unfazed facade together, he's struggling with the thought of how much of his happiness you took away, even if he knows a reset will likely happen and everything will go back to the way it was. Understandably! This game is his world. Even if he knows its just a game that gets reset its still his home and the people he loves are its residents. He can't be unfazed by everything. he is nice to us when we're nice to him, and he hates our guts when we give him reason to. And he will always forget us after a reset and react to our actions only on the current run, not being able to know who we were to him before.

And flowey acts as the embodiment of this games message, he is our mirror and, in his words, he is who we will become if we exhaust this game of all it has. He exists to judge us, but he can do so only from his own point of view. He's judging our actions, our choices in this world as if we we're stuck inside it the way he is, which we aren't. That's not to say his judgement isn't impactful, that would just be. incorrect to say lol. But he can't interpret what he sees us do in a fully unbiased way because he's in a very similar, but not identical, situation to us. While we can enter his world and play the kind way, we do get bored and try new things, like picking the other, more rude dialogue option, or killing a character to see what a person who loves them says. even if we don't fully want to. Just like he said! But while we both went through the same process, there's a difference between us. We can leave. We don't have to grow apathetic and detached from these characters. We don't have to start seeing them less as people and more as repetitive lines of dialogue. If we're bored, we can leave. Play a new game. Come back when we miss them and see those familiar lines of dialogue and feel nostalgia, not dread. And he knows that we're a person that has a life outside of this game. At the end of pacifist he desperately tries to make us stay. But he doesn't see what our life is like, he cant see what we do with our days outside of his world, so he can only see us leave and return and leave and return, and judge us through his (flawed) world view and based on our actions within a world we enter for fun.

Thats not to say they're not written well? They're the fucking coolest flowey and sans rule.(i think the info dump proves my stance on them) I'm just saying that even if they know about us they cant fully judge the situation from a neutral point of view because they have a limited world view and they're affected by our choices, which gaster (as of now) isn't

And we don't know a lot about him. But we do know that he knows hes in a video game, that he knows we control his world and its linear time, that he lives outside of that linear time and is unaffected by our inputs, that he used to experience time linearly before shattering, that he had people he cared about in undertale, that he saw everything all of us did when playing undertale, that he is kind to us in the current deltarune chapters, that he knows of our lives and what we go through, and most importantly in my opinion, he knows that we (fans of utdr) use fiction as escapism

We've had characters judge us and berate us for our misdeeds, who are fully justified in doing so since we did hurt them directly. But they also cannot see the situation from an outside perspective. No character in undertale sees us separated from their world, as a person who lives a life outside of tempering with undertale, to them we are just a god who takes control of their reality, all they see is a cruel person who entered a world just to destroy it, or give everyone freedom and then just take it away in a second, they don't see how small their world is in comparison to ours, they'll never be able to understand that our actions in their world are (for the most part) inconsequential to us. they cant see us beyond the red soul.

so imagine with me for a second, a character within the game who is not only aware of the fact that he's in a game and that there's a player who controls time, but who also has the ability to SEE the players' lives through the internet. A character who has the ability to see the horrors of everyday real life and how much people struggle with it, and see that some deal with those struggles using fiction. And not just any fiction, the fiction that the character itself lives in. A character who knows that these great beings, much bigger than him, use the thought of him and his world to get through the trials and tribulations of their lives, hardships that are horrific in completely different ways than his world ever had. A character who knows that they find comfort indulging in his world and finding everything it has to offer, because whatever his world has is much more pleasant than theirs.

He knows that to us his world is just a video game, one that remembers and we're not above consequences in, but still a video game. One of the most common complaints i hear about UT is that it is preachy in its message, and players shouldn't be berated by it for playing certain routes or making certain choices (but one of the points of the game was that there is an alternative way to complete it so why choose violence BUT that is a whole conversation in it of itself and this is long enough already)

So what if the game understood? What if the character who created this game, this world, knew that it is just a game and didn't judge the player? What if the character accepted that he is only fiction and saw the beauty and purpose within it, and how he can use his position in this situation to connect with us and allow us to escape our hurt for just a little while? What if he saw the hardships we've endured and empathised with us? What if he understood that we don't view his world as real like he does and we just use it for our fun, to escape, the way a child happily plays with a toy? What if he felt for us, and encouraged it?

Deltarune (initially) not having a way to really hurt and kill people makes me think that while gaster wanted us in this world for whatever his larger goal is, and wanted us to indulge in it, he didn't want us to hurt anyone. But he saw what we did with the previous world and knows that warnings, consequences and the visible and audible hurt of the characters won't stop us (in fact, it will encourage us), which is something he accepts and understands. it's said that his own curiosity brought him far in his endeavours so perhaps he even understands our curiosity and why we just have to see what would happen, as morbid as it is in universe

But i love that we (without the help of noelle, a game breaking pro) cannot kill anyone. He didn't even give us that option. He isn't completely detached from these worlds since he used to live within them. He still views the fictional characters in the game as real while also knowing us, our lives, and the way we interact with the characters. And he loves and cares for both.

Letting us escape into a nicer world while keeping the residents of it safe from us.

And that is of course assuming he isn't tricking us into a false sense of security to teach us a lesson, and isn't lying to our faces every time he talks to us kindly and thanks us. but i think that after an entire game and a whole cast of characters who taught us lessons and took control away from us and showed us what an asshole we are for playing the game in an unkind way.. i think it'll be a really nice thing and a breath of fresh air to have a character who knows what they and their world are to us on a realistic scale, see why we sometimes act so detached from its ways, and understand that yeah, it is just a game. And we do the things we do as a means to escape. And that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to interact with games in this way (to me that sounds like the most self aware character ever written). But also see the characters within it as real (since he used to be amongst them) and protect them from our worst.

Truly and wholeheartedly loving and caring for both his family and the person who barely hesitates to strip them of all their joy before murdering them too.

Kissing the hands of the man who killed his son

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before

I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son