#clear evidence of the trashbag theory

[motley-cunt]

I present to you: whatever the fuck this photoshoot is.

[cellydawn]

undertale meta deepdive: sans is not a good person (OR the sans theory masterpost pt. 1)

❤️ || Part 2 || Part 3

Sans is far from this valiant epitome of good that the fandom so often paints him as. He’s not a hero—hell, he might even be a bad, terrible person. At least in the past. My intention in this post isn’t to crush popular fandom interpretations of Sans in a bad faith argument, rather, it is to challenge preconceptions that have existed for years and to open up discussion on the dubious morality of this popular and loved character; I certainly love him a little more after doing this analysis. 

Section I - A Bad Person (The “What”)

Sans is certainly not opposed to leaving us little breadcrumbs for us in regards to his mysterious past. We get the idea that Sans is separated from his home, likely due to something he did. Something he had thought was important. Something that led him to take his home for granted.

So based off of the previous dialogue, this “type” that he intimately knows... he’s talking about himself. He was very “determined” to do whatever he did, which cost him his home, likely nearly everything he cared about given his angst.

So let’s say Sans used to be “determined”.

Sans is also aware of the SAVE function, meta knowledge that only the player and Flowey should know about because they have or have had this ability in the past.

“Take it from me”: accept that what I say is true, because I know or have experienced it. Sans should have quit when he had the chance. Never satisfied, too determined to bow out. But is he talking about the same thing we’ve been doing? 

When Sans threatens us with the infamous “bad time”, he is NOT referring to the fight... but what comes after, because only after he is struck down, he gives us one final piece of advice:

But HOW does he know that the world is going to be thrown into the “abyss”? Unless he has experienced this first-hand.

This is Papyrus confronting us in the genocide run antecedent to his fight…

…and this is him on Sans. An eerily mirrored piece of dialogue from Papyrus describing us and his brother. What do we know so far? Both Sans and the player need to be kept on “the straight and narrow”, both are “determined”, and both do irreparable damage to the world, possibly sending it to “the abyss”. 

Purgatory: a place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven. Not to mention the suspicious usage of the word “abyss” by Papyrus.

From the evidence gathered, it seems that the reason why Sans isn’t able to return to his world is because he destroyed it in the same manner we destroyed Undertale in the genocide run. Why else would he say “take it from me”; he empirically knows what happens when the world is pushed to its very limits.

But which world could he have destroyed? What world did Sans come from?

(Continues under the cut because this gets really long.)

Section II - The Deltarune Connection (The “Where”)

If you’ve read some Deltarune theory posts, you know that Gaster is prominently featured in Deltarune. He addresses us at the beginning of the game and there are blatant references to him (the phone call in the Dark World, the strange bunker, etc). I’m going to try to prove that Sans will also play a large role in its story. Let’s take a look at the lyrics of the end credits, Don’t Forget. 

When the light is running low And the shadows start to grow And the places that you know Seem like fantasy There's a light inside your soul That's still shining in the cold With the truth The promise in our hearts Don't forget I'm with you in the dark

The truth: Sans says this to us before giving us access to his room, the entrance to which is suspiciously identical to the fast-travel doors that Darkners use. We also get access to his basement.

Promise: Sans has a history of promises. He is regretful of a promise he made in the past.

Don’t forget: Appears on a poorly drawn picture of three smiling people, in Sans’s basement. This phrase is also used in a description for "Memory” in the sheet music booklet from the Collector’s Edition. What do you know, it’s written in Comic Sans too. Go figure.

Now, let me introduce a character that is featured prominently in Deltarune, someone that is somehow related to Sans, someone who isn’t Gaster.

Ice-E is everywhere in Deltarune’s Hometown, but the only inkling we get of his existence is from Sans. The Ice-E word search that Sans gives us is interesting because the title itself is written in comic sans. 

In one of the hospital rooms, there’s a “1-to-10 pain scale using Ice-E as a model”. It’s an uncanny description of Sans. 

Ice-E is also characterized for its missuses of apostrophes. One might call it an “apostrophe-dog”.

Moving on.

Section III - Gaster (The “Who”)

Oh boy, this section is going to be absolutely massive. I’ll try my best to make the logical flow easy to understand. So we know that Sans did (will do) some pretty shady things in the world of Deltarune. To understand why, we have to examine how exactly Sans and Gaster are related. Let’s start with Ice-E since we know that he’s somehow associated with Sans.

The “Nightmare” variant of the Ice-E word search appears in fun values between 56 and 57. There is only one other snowman that appears in Undertale.

We are asked to take “a piece” of it. Let’s investigate where else this specific phrase is used. Following this trail of breadcrumbs reveals other phrases that Sans and Gaster-related things share.

Exhibit A: Gaster follower #2, “time and space”

The prophecy has something to do with Sans and Gaster. I’ll let the evidence speak for itself.

Exhibit B: Memoryheads, “be seeing you”

Memoryheads are the first amalgamate we encounter in the True Lab. Before their spare conditions are met, they are known as "      " (six blank spaces). Gaster is frequently associated with the number six. 

If we attack the Memoryheads, these statements flash by quickly in red text:

FAILURE

But it didn't work.

nope

Absorbed

Don't worry about it.

I'm lovin' it.

Occurs when the player tries to name themselves Sans.

We see the phrase “be seeing you” in only these instances. Below is the Sound Test Room that has a chance to appear if the fun value is set to 65. This is the only place that “Gaster’s theme” can be accessed in-game.

Exhibit C: The dump

“The abyss” makes an appearance again. It’s something to pay close attention to--it’s always somehow related to Gaster. So what does a piece of trash falling into the abyss mean? Well, we know that Gaster “fell” into his creation...

We know that Flowey refers to Sans as “Smiley Trashbag”. Papyrus states that Sans frequents Grillby’s, a “purgatory” and “hamburger abyss”.

(note: Papyrus is referring to a literal trash can here, but the implication that Sans is “trash-like” is here)

If it’s not clear what I’m getting to, then let me spell it out: Sans is a piece of Gaster, they are one and the same. Sans/Gaster took his “experiment” with Deltarune too far, possibly destroying the world and displacing him in Undertale. 

I’ll continue this in another post because it seems that tumblr is breaking.

❤️  || Part 2 || Part 3

[transhawks]

Birds & Bottles - a theory on Hawks and his past

This is a fairly weird theory and group of headcanons and comes from too much ruminating and googling. I want to lend some cultural context and proof to the fandom interpretation of Hawks’s childhood featuring some sort of alcohol abuse and/or addiction via his parents.

I. Textual Evidence

This is the one solid picture of Hawks’s childhood home we have. The thing about manga and graphic novels as a medium is that space matters. Exposition via flashbacks or lengthy explanations are to be used sparingly and often can make manga or comics unreadable if over-used. 

The picture being worth a thousand words is extremely crucial to character development, especially to a secondary/tertiary character like Hawks who needs to be developed in a small amount of time, in this case a single panel to explain Hawks’s home life (besides other textual hints that confirm Hawks was poor until he was scouted). 

That means there’s absolutely no doubt that Horikoshi including trash in that picture means something. Horikoshi is more likely to forget to add things (like Kaminari’s black ‘spark’, Hawks’s stubble) than add things in willy-nilly.

Lying around Hawks is trash; including cans and bottles that are probably alcohol. Beer, Sake, and Shochu (a harder liquor than sake, made of rice and barley, and referred to as ‘Kyushu’s Spirit’) are sold in cans and bottles, sometimes through vending machines. This is clearly discarded alcohol.

The trash matters too, but I’ll get to it in my ‘cultural context’ section.

The other textual evidence we have is a clear statement about what Hawks ‘wants’: 

The cold one line is a very interesting line; the actual line in Japanese is 管を巻いて.* I’ll make a link add-on for sources on a reblog of this post, but it’s a slang term to unwind (drink) and relax. Literally involves winding/rolling like a tube - so basically being drunk enough to roll around. JB’s scanlation infamously mistranslated this to make it seem like Hawks smokes weed (it was the ‘rolling a tube’ line obviously, even if Japan does not exactly have a weed culture), but the effect is the same - relaxing through intoxication. 

This is important to note because it establishes that Hawks as an adult does indeed consume alcohol and imagines it to be relaxing for him; and given his sole dream is for Heroes to be able to relax, alcohol features prominently in his vision of a good future for himself. 

II. Cultural Context Evidence

On Cleanliness

Going off the floor in Hawks’s childhood, we can tell that whoever is raising him is not cleanly enough to pick up trash, much less glass bottles and aluminium cans around a child that can very much harm themselves with such items. Obviously, that sort of welfare for Hawks isn’t on his parental figure(s) mind. 

The other trash is meaningful too; cleanliness is prized in his culture, with the Japanese concept of wa. Both Shinto and Buddhist beliefs emphasize a personal and communal doctrine of cleanliness. 

Horikoshi has shown us dirty rooms before, Jin’s apartment, also filled with beer bottles and trash, and Shigaraki’s trashbag-filled room. These aren’t at all like the rooms we see of the teens when we see them. The VIZ translator even has a few notes about these are meant to be seen as rooms outside of acceptable society.* Also, notice Twice’s flat has quite of alcohol lying around.

This means Horikoshi has used unclean, messy rooms to signify something about characters before - whether it is a bad mental state or moral character (I lean towards the former here), these two happen to be in a space ‘unaccepted’ by society as well - whether for villainy or mental illness.

That could very much be an explanation to why Horikoshi drew Hawks’s childhood home like this. He isn’t meant to be from good circumstances and this aligns him somewhat with the villains he’s meant to be infiltrating; much like them, he knows of being ‘outside’ of society, since he was born there. 

But there’s also one more piece of cultural context that explains why I’m absolutely certain Hawks comes from a family with an alcoholic parent, and what that means for him.

Enter the 九州男児 - or ‘Kyushu Danji’, the Boy from Kyushu.

Hawks has always as a character shown extremely strong location identifiers - from his arc taking place in Fukuoka, which he introduces us to, to being named in a shout out to his hometown’s baseball team (the Softbank Hawks), to briefly using his native dialect (Hakata-ben), to even his backstory as Fukuoka prefecture has a very long history with poverty/working-class backgrounds. As a character he is very much supposed to embody Fukuoka (and Kyushu since we have very few characters from the island) as much as himself.

The Kyushu Danji is somewhere between a stereotype, stock character, and a regional preference for how ‘men from Kyushu’ behave themselves. In very broad terms, historically these men were far more prized than the rest of Japan due to their ‘masculinity’. The Kyushu Danji is not retiring, or polite. He’s aggressive, bold, domineering (in his relationship to women/housework) but is absolutely the provider and patriarch of the house. He’s the heavy drinker; in fact, his drinking seems to be a trademark. He’s a man’s man, with unabashed masculinity, and conservative in regards to gender roles, a conservative mindset that seems to be very commonplace in Northern Kyushu in general.* He’s ‘energetic’ and frank, and brave. Also seemingly ‘simple-minded’

Barring a few things (the frankness, the bravery, and dynamic personality), and his admitted like of drinking and wanting to do it more, this doesn’t sound too much like Hawks, but as with most stereotypes, it tells you more about the culture than it does about an individual person.

If this is the ideal male in his culture, then certainly Hawks would be aware of such an image. He’s not extremely traditionally masculine, but certainly has an admiration of someone who very much is - and suddenly the comment about not having a back broad enough that Hawks gave seems far more poignant and targeted about Hawks not exactly meeting the cultural ideals of masculinity he would have grown up with. 

III. Putting It All Together

So, we do know that Hawks has an impoverished parent or parents that drink, neglect the cleanliness and safety of their house and child(ren), in a way that’s also Horikoshi’s shorthand for showing that a character is either mentally ‘unstable’, or outside society, or both (and it’s very likely one of the parents or both are also heteromorphs, who do face marginalization). Alcohol clearly plays a role in showing us this. 

We also know Hawks is from a region with rather conservative gender roles where the paternal figure is expected to provide (doesn’t seem to be happening) for his family while the maternal figure is supposed to take care of the home (not happening), and there’s an acceptance of heavy drinking with the paternal figure. 

Either way, have some headcanons:

Hawks grew up with an alcoholic, neglectful parent. Assuming it’s a heterosexual family, if it’s the father, the mother might be out of the picture (hence the lack of care for the home in a region where that’s delegated to the woman of the house). Or vice-versa, or both parents are alcoholics. 

Hawks also probably grew up with a paternal figure that didn’t measure up to what men are supposed to be in a cultural context for him; there was no financial stability as ‘Kyushu men’ are supposed to bring. 

His ideal of what heroes should be - reliable, shouldering things on their own, bringing stability and reassurance stems from the lack of this in his own family and it’s why the ‘image’ of what he thinks Endeavor is so appealing to him. Conversely, Hawks doesn’t feel like he measures up to this image - despite reaching for it.

And, finally, it’s very likely that if we were to see a ‘downward’ spiral for our winged-hero Hawks, it would involve depictions of drinking.

[lefthanded-sans]

so, what if sans is actually a retired timecop that just couldnt save the timeline from flowey? he has a badge and all, and is aware of timeline rewriting, and also had probably the best approach to deal with a time traveller that would just re-do a defeat

Eyyyyy! That’s a fun idea, and I think you give some pretty good reasons as for why such an interpretation of Sans would work. In some ways, it’s similar justification to my suggestion Sans could be an undercover worker whose main income is to monitor the human time traveler. But let’s talk about your idea and why it’s got some fun speculative merit to it.

Sans has clear knowledge of time travel, as you say. And there is something to be said he could have been investigating it:

Sans: our reports showed a massive anomaly in the timespace continuum. timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting… until suddenly, everything ends.

The phrase “our reports” suggests formal organization. There are multiple people, hence the “our.” There are official documents of this anomaly, hence “reports.” Whomever Sans has been working with, working for, or working around, it’s people who are doing official observation of timeline anomalies.

Furthermore, Sans does appear to know how to test for and handle cases of time travelers. He is able to notice subtle signs in Frisk’s behavior suggesting that the human has time traveling abilities. He tests Frisk’s time travel abilities in the Pacifist Route and says that he suspected the human had this ability. Sans’ tests also demonstrate a heavy amount of foresight; you can’t have a system of secret codewords set up to prove time travel exists without preparation time in the past.

Even regarding Sans’ hands-off approach to Frisk, there does seem to be intent in how he goes about it, with the hopes of straightening timelines favorably. Consider what he says if Frisk is judged for being over Level 9:

Sans: besides chances are… i’ve already tried to steer you in the right direction.

Next, we do know Sans encountered Flowey, and that Sans encountered Flowey more than once. What Sans succeeded in doing was have Flowey reset many times. Someone who isn’t vigilant about timelines would be less likely to find Flowey out, realize Flowey’s danger, and attempt to stop him. Furthermore, this isn’t just stopping him, but getting him to reset - aka, reset the timeline. A timecop would be someone who would be vigilant enough - and trained to - do more than one reset, picking out an anomaly with any information, and going forth to stop it. This all seems like an activity a timecop would do, someone trying to control the timeline and “save it from Flowey”:

Flowey: You know. Smiley Trashbag. Say. If I have ONE piece of advice for you… DON’T. Let his brother. Find out ANYTHING about you. He’ll… well… Let’s just say. He’s caused me more than my fair share of resets.

You could propose that, since Flowey is still chilling around, Sans has failed to stop him. You could also propose that, since Sans and Papyrus moved to Snowdin recently, and Papyrus had to convince Sans to take the sentry position, that Sans was unemployed before then… suggesting an end to the current occupational position he had.

Even being a sentry, though? Not a bad job to take up if you were a timecop before. Lots of transferable skill sets.

So this could all fit together into an idea like you have: Sans is a retired time cop.

There are a few areas you would have to solidify in your own theory to make all canon jive with it. You’d have to talk about Sans’ secret lab in his house, for instance. Sans and Papyrus appear to have moved to Snowdin rather recently, perhaps to facilitate the transition to the new work as a sentry. In that case, you would have to justify why their house has a secret lab in it. There might not be a huge amount of use in this lab - the machine is broken, there’s photographs of people from the past - but it was still constructed with intention in their Snowdin abode. Why? Unless Sans had a reason to use it.

Even moreso: Sans’ codewords to handle time travelers helps lead pacifist ones like Frisk to his home-based laboratory.

So I think you’d have some big explanatory work to do regarding other information in Sans’ life. We know that Sans and Alphys are acquainted, and acquainted well, suggesting they’ve spent a lot of time together. 

Alphys: What do you think we’ve been fighting for all along?Sans: yeah, what do you… whoops.Alphys: Jinx! I knew you were gonna make that joke!Papyrus: WAIT, ALPHYS, I DIDN’T KNOW YOU KNEW SANS.

And while you could propose Alphys did research on time travel and Sans was the security side of it, there’s also something to be said that Sans is science-oriented himself. He knows astronomy. He talks rather technically in the Genocide Route about the timeline anomaly - it’s an unusual divergence from his usual speech characteristics. He appears to have a book on quantum mechanics sitting in his house for reading. This suggests he’s far more likely to be on a team of scientists rather than be a timecop.

Undertale also has lots of information about scientists dealing with spacetime - Gaster and Alphys - but no information regarding a timecop organization. In some ways, Alphys’ speech on her timeline research suggests her approach is more theoretical. It means that, on account of what we know about the universe already, it’s far more plausible to place Sans along the scientists, rather than postulate an organization we have no concrete evidence for existing. If all evidence you have for Sans being a timecop can also be funneled into the scientific research route instead, then story-wise it’s far more elegant and likely of a solution that Sans is in said scientific research route. I even think the science route does a better job of holistically handling the hints we receive in Undertale about time travel, Gaster, Alphys, Sans, etc. There’s more explaining power to have Sans be in some past (or present) science position.

But the fun about Undertale is that we can speculate many ways using evidence from the game. There are many possibilities we can justify strongly, and nothing that can be beyond-shadow-of-a-doubt proven. Thanks so much for popping into my inbox with this idea! I hadn’t thought about this perspective before. This is lots of fun.