#she and gaster make some really stupid decisions in this universe

[beryllineart]

Should Have Been Me

Guys, this comic made me cry while I was making it. You don't get how crazy that is, I was listening to a comedy podcast and I was still tearing up. Anyways, this is my 66th post, so I wanted to do something Gaster related and decided to do something from my Uncle Gaster au.

Undertale belongs to Toby Fox

I'm gonna analyze my own characters now ('cause I want to) but if you are curious about this au, feel free to send me an ask!

Okay, so this comic was originally going to be about Dana and Gaster having a fight after the death of their brother, but I couldn't figure it out, and I realized that that didn't really fit the idea I have for either of them. In fact, Gaster has had a shell around him for most of his life, and he only lets people through (like Dana) after it breaks or weakens. This is one of those times.

Since the idea of this au is that Gaster separated himself from his family, cut off all contact with them, etc, how does him opening up and being vulnerable with his sister end up in separation? Well, this is actually one of the healthiest moments in their relationship, when they were feeling the same way and were just grieving together.

The main problem is personality differences. Dana and Gaster are polar opposites. Dana is cheerful, extroverted, optimistic and confident. Gaster is quiet, very introspective and doesn't open up easily. Roman was a good bridge between the two, and he would often encourage Dana to be a little more thoughtful and would teach Gaster how to just have fun (Roman's personality is a lot closer to Dana's, but since he's closer in age to Gaster he spends a lot more time around his brother and has learned the ins and outs of what makes him comfortable).

Anyways, Dana (and their parents) seem to move on too fast after Roman's death. They adjust to this new life and they start being happy again, but Gaster's not ready for that yet. He's still got a bad case of survivor's guilt, plus he and Roman were really, really close. He needs more time to adjust and accept, but more importantly, he needs time to grieve and he needs someone he can talk to. Unfortunately, he doesn't feel like he can talk to anyone in his family because they are all happy now, and they wouldn't understand how he feels. (They would totally be down to talk, by the way.) He starts to feel like he's forced to cheer up and act like everything's okay.

Eventually the sting of Roman's death fades a bit, but Gaster can't fully find closure because he never fully mourned. He can't handle being around his family anymore, so he just leaves and cuts off all communication. (There have been a few fights between him and his sister and parents that helped this decision as well.)

I don't think Gaster ever hated his family though. That's not in his nature. He gets angry at and hates himself. Dana tends to get angry at other people, and ooh boy, when Gaster didn't attend their parents' funerals, she was mad... She and the rest of her family did nothing wrong, so she doesn't understand why Gaster would punish them like this. What she doesn't realize is that Gaster thinks there's something wrong with him, and he doesn't feel that he deserves to be a part of his family anymore. He's punishing himself.

Anyways, here's the other post I made about Uncle Gaster, and sorry if this was a bit too wordy, I just love overanalyzing these sorts of things. You should see me feverishly figuring out every aspect of my Steamtale Undyne, why she hates her prosthetic arm but wears it anyway, how her childhood impacts her captaining style (and how she treats Monster Kid because of it) and... alsdjf;alkdfj, I'm rambling again.

[everysongineverykey]

I'm fond of the "there's a timeloop of some kind and we, the Player/SOUL, are here to break it" theory; and if Kris actually knows we' were coming and deleted Asriel's number, w/ that theory in mind I wouldn't be surprised if Asriel is fated to be relevant in some way that us bumbling around might mess up? We already see that if we meet The Cool Undertale Characters we'll be really weird around them (being able to ship Alphys and Undyne, saying hi to Sans), so Kris cutting us off from Asriel in Queen's castle and from the phone might be to keep us from being stupid about the goat

a time loop, huh. the classic time loop. the only way i could see that going is if kris is reliving the same week- these seven chapters- over and over, and every time in the past, the roaring has happened and the world has ended, and we need to make sure things end differently this time... except we couldn't be here specifically because our presence would break the loop, because if kris is aware of the loop and knows we're coming, we must've come every other time too. i could see us potentially messing with asriel in a past loop and causing problems, and kris making the undoubtedly extremely difficult decision to sever all contact with him from us because of it. i like this theory, because it doesn't make the player into the ultimate villain just for playing the game, and it posits that kris might not hate us- we need more takes where the player isn't automatically vilified for being a player of a game.

although, now that i think about it, some little things don't make sense- if kris had seen the dark worlds before, why would they back away from the open supply closet in chapter 1? they'd have no reason to fear what's inside (unless they were pretending so as not to seem to eager, but i dunno if susie'd care, she was inclined to believe at that point that she was imagining the scary stuff). also, their shock and horror at spamton's fate tells me they didn't see it coming.

MAYBE previous loops featured a DIFFERENT protagonist than kris, possibly susie or even noelle (or the hypothetical vessel we were supposed to make), and kris saw it all happening from an outsider's perspective, so they knew enough to cut us off from asriel, but didn't know the specifics of what they were getting into when the loop restarted with them as the "vessel". possibly they purposefully used some weird occult spells to make us posess them so we wouldn't ruin the lives of any of their friends again... maybe, in all the repeated restarts (resets?), something got jumbled up somewhere along the line, and dess got gonered/lost in the timelines/shattered across the universe like gaster in the process. maybe even papyrus caught on, with his possible connections to gaster, and is now tangled up in this mess too. oh, i LIKE this theory! thanks for bringing it to my attention! i used to be confused by theories that said that the roaring had happened before, but i love this iteration!