#...never mind then

[undertalebabbleblog]

Why do Monsters in Undertale and Deltarune use Words like 'Hell' and 'God' in their Everyday Language?

Additionally, a Theory on the Time Period During Which Monsters were Trapped Underground

OKAY SO hi Pup here with more UTDR insanity on a topic that I do not have the historical knowledge to be properly qualified to talk about, but am going to talk about anyway because it's been lingering in my head for a long time.

The monsters in Undertale and Deltarune use terms like 'hell', 'god', 'damn', etc., implying that they have enough of a concept of hell, god, damnation, etc. ingrained into their society for it to be used in casual speech. But that stuff comes from human religions. It fits easily into our understanding of language, given that those are the terms we commonly use, but monsters don't follow human religions as far as we see, and the widespread use of those terms comes from the influence that Abrahamic religions have had on our society. We don't see any established monster religions at all in Undertale, and in Deltarune there's obviously the Angel.

The Doylist reason for monsters using those terms despite the lack of human Abrahamic religions in their society is obviously just that Toby Fox is a human living in our world who is used to using those terms and likely didn't think twice about including them in his game. However, that reason is not nearly as fun as going insane over minor details in video games. Thus, this lengthy post.

In Deltarune, the religion we see in Hometown is the one that worships the Angel. We don't know how prevalent this religion is in the wider world, nor how many people in Hometown actually worship it, but it's a commonplace enough belief that the town has a church in it that seems to have been around for a decent amount of time.

While it's highly possible that the worlds of Undertale and Deltarune are entirely different from ours, I am going to be operating on the assumption that they both take place in worlds that are pretty much the same as ours, with only minor differences aside from the existence of monsters, which I'd say counts as a pretty major difference.

Now, as the Angel religion doesn't have a concept of sin, we can assume that there's no concept of punishment for sin either, and therefore no hell. However, through Alvin's wording of "our religion", combined with Asriel confessing to his 'sins' despite the lack of sin or confession in said religion, we can infer that there are indeed other religions in the world of Deltarune, and at least one relatively prevalent other religion contains the concepts of sin and confession. (Susie and Lancer both actually directly mention Christmas at one point, which means that Christianity exists in Deltarune, alongside the religions and practices that are the origins of many Christmas traditions.)

Assuming that monsters were never trapped underground in Deltarune, they were likely living alongside humans that whole time, and it's therefore quite likely that they would have picked up popular phrases that reference human religions. In fact, it's likely that monsters themselves followed the beliefs of Christianity, Catholicism, or the like at some point, given those religions' prevalence. (It's also possible that this influence is part of why monsters in Deltarune don't seem to use magic like their counterparts in Undertale do, given Christianity's whole thing about magic and stuff.) Monsters, like humans, probably don't all follow the same religion (Monster Teen, for example, wears a necklace with a cross pendant. While this choice could simply be aesthetic, it's equally likely that they're Christian, Catholic, etc.). And, given the whole Angel thing, it's possible that Hometown's predominant religion is an offshoot of a pre-existing Abrahamic religion.

In Deltarune, it is not at all out of the question and in fact makes complete sense for monsters to be referencing things like god or hell.

In Undertale, monsters have been stuck underground for an unknown but very long period of time, to the point where most of the adult population has never even seen the surface. (I am NOT going to be theorising about how monsters age, because I have already been down that rabbit hole multiple times and have nothing to show for it except confusion.)

My current theory is that they were trapped sometime during the 11th, 12th, or 13th centuries, most likely the 12th. If we look at the architecture of the Ruins, the first place that was settled by monsters:

It's quite similar to Romanesque architecture, which lasted from the 10th century to the 13th and was predominant in the 11th and 12th centuries.

This style is mostly reflected in New Home

Except for in the Last Corridor

Where the pointed arches are reminiscent of Gothic architecture, which was active from the late 12th to 16th centuries.

While we know that monsters receive human garbage via the dump in Waterfall, I'm going to assume that nobody would be throwing out schematics for their Gothic windows. Therefore, considering the timeframes of both these architectural movements, monsters were likely trapped underground in either the late 12th or the 13th century, with my money being on the late 12th given the prevalence of Romanesque architecture as opposed to the much rarer cases of Gothic architecture that we see (acknowledging, of course, that we do not see all of the Underground, and that I am only working off the knowledge I have here).

More potential proof for this time periods comes from the intro, where we see the silhouettes of several humans.

There are no guns or other firearms shown, meaning that the War of Humans and Monsters occurred in a time when spears and swords were used in wars instead of guns. While I couldn't find a spearhead that matched the one depicted, there is a human shown holding a sword, which we get to see at two angles.

I originally assumed from the first image that it was a leaf-shaped blade, but looking at both the first and second images, I theorise that this is depicting a knightly sword, also known as an arming sword, used as a one-handed sword, usually alongside a shield, in the high middle ages (1000 - 1300 CE).

While still used in the late middle ages (1300 - 1500 CE), longswords were more common as a primary weapon, and arming swords were often employed as a sidearm in addition to a primary weapon. While the sword depicted in the image is too short to be a longsword, it seems to match the length of an arming sword fairly well, and we can see that its wielder is using it as a one-handed weapon, rather than the longsword's intended two-handed grip.

Now, I'd say it's likely that most or all monsters only lived around one area, since it would have been a bit difficult for the humans to trap every single living monster underground if they'd been spread all over the world. If monsters only existed around one area in the high middle ages, they could have been fought against in the war and trapped underground much more plausibly, and they could have been easily dismissed as myth in later millennia.

The prevalent religion during the Middle Ages was Christianity, and we know that there were some pretty strong opinions about things like magic and other belief systems. It's stated in the game that the war started because humans were scared of the monsters' power to absorb human SOULs, and while that was probably part of it, it's not hard to see how the humans of that time could have turned on the monsters out of fear of their magic, or even just not being human, in addition to the stated provocation of monsters being able to absorb human SOULs. We also have to remember that we only get information about what happened from the monsters' perspectives, written on stone plaques, thousands of years after the fact. We don't have the full story here, and I suspect that the conflict was already brewing, and that the monsters' recorded reason for the war was simply the thing that tipped it over the edge.

Anyway, if monsters were living amongst or near humans during the Middle Ages, they were probably following or at least had a lot of exposure to the prevalent religion and its effects on commonly-used language. (It's also possible that the symbol of the Delta Rune and the prophecy about the Angel who has seen the surface is a remnant of the Angel belief system we see in Deltarune.) Their use of language could have evolved in a similar way to ours over the centuries, words like 'hell' and 'god' becoming more detached from their religious connotations when used in everyday expressions, and, with the added influence of human media that began falling into the garbage dump in Waterfall, their use of those words, as well as language in general, became remarkably similar to our own, despite them having been trapped underground for all that time.

And... yeah. That's it. That's the theory. If someone who actually knows about this sort of stuff happens to come across this post, please feel free to add your expertise. I'm going off internet research here, I'm not qualified to be talking about this.

[isagaiia]

jayce is so greedy smh

[tuttle-did-it]

David Tennant for Prime Minister, please.

edit- Since this is getting so much attention, edited to include descriptions of screenshots.

This woman has lost her fucking mind.

Jo, are you okay?

[aroacedavestrider]

people will hear you talk about struggling with mental illness and say “you can do anything if you just put your mind to it”. brother what part of the body does the mental illness happen in. what do you think is the problem

[beebfreeb]

[a-a-lost-munchkin]

I Can’t Help But Wonder

Odysseus, who just violently and mercilessly murdered 108 or so men, who claims in the next song that he’s no longer a kind or gentle man, actively listens to Telemachus and kindly and gently responds to everything his son’s expressed.

Telemachus asks, “Am I like you? Am I strong like you? Will you embrace me? Will you love and accept me as yours?” He says, “I’ve felt so alone.”

And Odysseus claims him in a heartbeat, answering, “My son. My boy. My sweetest joy I’ve ever known. I embraced you twenty years ago. I’d do the impossible for you. I’d die for you.” He says, “Seeing the men here today, I can only wonder what you’ve been through for twenty years. My son, you’re already strong. You’re my own. You’re not alone. I’m home.”

And then they fucking embrace.

[trekkerac]

Winning is just doing better than your competition

[theartofmadeline]

i promise i wouldn't blame you

[canonkiller]

god I fuckign love ocs. my characters. my friend's characters. the characters of mutuals ive never spoken to. the characters of artists ive followed and maybe spoken to a little more. the characters of complete strangers I see in passing and think "aw that's cool". if you have ten fans I am one if you have one fan it is me etc etc. I love you

[gayvampyr]

i hate talking to people who aren’t aware of or just don’t care how disastrous climate change is. i say “summer is lasting too long” and they go “but i like the warm weather! :)” 😐

[factual-flittermouse]

Bruce: Dick, what’s this I’m hearing about you trying to send Tim to Arkham?

Dick: For the last time, I NEVER said that!

Tim: As good as!

Bruce: *disappointed dad voice* Really chum, I can’t believe you would tell your brother such a thing.

Dick: I didn’t! I just suggested therapy!

Tim: *scoffs* Yeah, in METROPOLIS.

Bruce: *Gasps*

Jason: *Gasps*

Damian: *Betrayed*

Alfred: *Too proper to gasp so loudly, but almost fumbles his antique feather duster*

Dick: Oh come on, it’s not that bad! It’s close, it’s relatively safe, and their PHDs are less likely to go rogue.

Jason: *Cover’s Damian’s ears as he backs them both out of the room, still loudly gasping in offense like the theater kid he is at heart*

Bruce: I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

[fairsweetlonging]

you think shen yuan ever pats down his robes and has a whole heart attack cus he can't find his phone in his pockets and he starts looking around in a panic and making everyone around him also panic because he lost something!!! before then suddenly realizing—oh, right.

[yours-etc]

Misha will actively go on record saying, “Jensen and I would have fucked nasty in the back of the impala, for the sake of canon Destiel of course, in a heartbeat. But the CW is homophonic :/”

And we just let him keep saying these things with no consequences.

Then Jensen like a week later is like, “No we did fuck nasty in the back of the impala, for the sake of canon Destiel of course, they just cut it :/”

[prlssprfctn]

I actually need some fanfic, where Bruce and Jason are in the middle of some argument, and a casual (and a well-practiced with Dick before) sentence leaves his mouth, something along the lines "How old do you think you are?!", meaning that he is acting childishly. And because Jason is irritated, and his tongue runs loose in his anger, he screams back that he is nineteen, and Bruce just freezes, because... Oh. Jason is nineteen. He is a fucking kid - his kid - that lost years of his teenhood, and was forced back without anyone giving him a space to catch up, with everyone else already treating him like an adult... When he isn't.

[s2pdoktopus]

You know those fanfics where Zidian evolves into a magic snake? That's the idea but it's the fuzzy worm thing.

[chloesimaginationthings]

The FNAF crying child if he wasn’t fucking around