#zenith martlet i forgive you

[s0ckh3adstudios]

Also I know I've talked about my grievances with Zenith Martlet before but

I've had my character arc... I've turned over a new leaf... I've come to accept her as she is....

[guns-blazing]

Martlet as Justice propaganda

I already rambled about this in the commebts But!!! im gonna do it again because i <3 martlet!!

martlet is the #1 candidate for justice soul in UTY and i will die on this hill

sooo martlet as the judge i think is the part most people know

similar to sans, she appears in a required location on all three routes and judges your actions. and justice is pretty tied to judgment considering

so case closed she's justice

EXCEPT. she doesn't try to stop clover unless they're at the end of a vengeance route. what's up with that? oh man, and on a neutral route? she recognizes they killed monsters, maybe dozens of monsters, and she doesn't kill them. don't they deserve it?

DO they deserve it?

in almost every case, martlet doesn't think they do! she brings up how they're a scared child. on lesser lvs she views what they did as self defense. on higher lvs, she judges them a good person "deep down." which comes across as naive and undeserved when she's looking at a human one kill away from obliterating axis except she's right. when she judges that clover isn't going to shoot her, she's right. she spares clover on a gut feeling and her hope and it WORKS! before clover was just gonna kill asgore and take the souls but now they're stopping! all they needed was martlet to offer her love!

martlet delivers justice by, rather than deciding "murder is punishable by death," she looks at who clover is, what they did, why they must have done it, and then acts. she acts by offering clover a place where they won't need to fight anymore.

but, do they deserve it?

clover killed people. best case, they just blew up a jandroid and we can all pretend that ceroba and flowey were right about the robots not even being real. but martlet still forgives clover after they wrapped up a horrific murderous rampage. why do they deserve to live? why do they deserve to die? is taking their life or taking them in the best choice? how does she know they won't change their mind? how does she know they did change their mind? how can she bear to let them live when they decided all those others didn't deserve to? why does she get to make this choice?

is she just going to take care of them because they feel bad?

yeah, she will.

her justice isn't eye-for-an-eye. killing clover won't fix anything, and taking them in is risky, but she thinks it's just. she kind of reminds me of clover in pacifist. they're still upset about the five humans who died and it isn't fair or just, but in this route they come to understand why it happened. martlet is upset about the monsters clover killed, she doesn't know if this will work out, hell she's afraid of clover. and she weighs all of this against the facts and she understands why clover did what they did and her verdict is that this child does not deserve to die.

and then, of course, what about when they do? well, then she fights back. After fleeing from them. Twice. So Why did that TAKE HER SO LONG. she could have stopped them! her DT syringe would have stopped them at any point before the end! like, clover and WHAT piss blast? get zenithed idiot.

no but don't worry! clover can still turn it around! they have the chance to abort vengeance after her dunes cutscene, in the steamworks! it only takes them murdering starlo and ceroba and let's be real probably a bunch of robots too. but heyyy they changed their mind theyre not evil anymore it's okay guys :) not to mention they can abort it back in snowdin by saying sooorrry! and it works! she literally just leaves and yeah the game's technically not on vengeance anymore but like, you can still kill dozens of monsters! good job clover won't kill the king and take the human souls! people are still actively dying though!

when she flees in snowdin and again in the dunes, or when clover apologizes in snowdin, martlet's still judgemental, but she's not delivering justice, she just kind of. Says murder is bad and then ditches. i think this doesn't take away from her justness though... i think this is symptoms of two of her flaws: optimism and indecisiveness.

i think another post pointed this out, and i'll never find it now but: in neutral, martlet knows that asgore will kill clover when they talk on the rooftop. in pacifist, she doesn't. she thinks she can get through to him. it is clover killing monsters, or ceroba talking to her, or being face to face with asgore deciding to kill them, that makes her stop being naive and realize clover can't escape. that optimism helps her deliver justice!

(this is still in 1. i just had to insert an image) but in the case of a completed vengeance run... she doesn't stand up to clover soon enough. she just keeps hoping and hoping they'll change their mind. it's a double edged sword.

2. she's indecisive. really indecisive! and seemingly a little insecure on top of that!

(again still in 2.) she takes so long to decide to fight clover because she isn't confident in her decisions. you think YOU think she's a birdfailure? SHE thinks she's a birdfailure!!!!

she doesn't want to sit around and do nothing and hope clover turns their life around, she's torn up about it the whole time. she's just scared to take action. she wants to deliver justice and do the right thing but she's scared she'll pick the wrong choice. but she can't sit around forever. she goes out in a blaze of glory trying to stop clover from reaching asgore.

was that the right decision? did it actually do anything, or did it just make clover stronger? would it still be the right decision, if she didn't know what it would cause?

i don't know! it doesn't seem like she knows either! justice is confusing!

speed round time look at these cases of martlet embodying justice where she doesn't just look at what clover's doing but why they're doing it!

she wakes up and clover's killed ceroba and she defends them! she wants there to be a better option, she questions if killing ceroba was really the best outcome, but from what she can see, clover's decision was one of panicked self-defense.

when you i CANNOT bring this up enough this is my FAVORITE UNDERTALE YELLOW FACT when you SWITCH BETWEEN FIGHT/SPARE in her regular snowdin fight she ENDS THE BATTLE because she DOESNT KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, there is truth in justice and she CANNOT figure out the truth of what you are DOING.

martlet's sense of justice isn't as black and white as, for example, every single other uty character. she's really the only character who acknowledges the human's kills, is upset about it, and still offers them forgiveness. hell, even in undertale, the only characters to do that are papyrus ONLY in geno and undyne ONLY in pacifist neutral! martlet sees the world like this all the time! nobody is doing justice like her!

she can be too optimistic and is indeed really indecisive, which deals a blow to how effective the justice she deals out is. but out of anyone, she embodies the trait of justice the best.

...what? clover? don't be silly, they're kindness.

WHAT UNDERTALE HUMAN SOUL WOULD THEY HAVE?