[OOC] Application for Route 29
Dec. 2nd, 2015 02:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sansmercyPlayer
Name: Raile
Personal Journal: None
E-mail: railerat [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
railehatesfun, Railerat on AIM
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: None
Character
Name: Sans
Series: Undertale
Timeline: Post No-Mercy
Canon Resource Links: Sans on the Wiki | No Mercy Run
Personality: From the moment you meet him, Sans can be counted on for two things: his sense of humour and his easygoing approach to all of life's ups and downs. He may even be too easygoing, depending on who you ask--a bona fide 'lazybones,' Sans never seems to let anything bother him, and blatantly goes out of his way (but not TOO out of his way) to do as little as possible, as much as possible. By the way, it turns out that the least amount you can do is, in fact, 'none.'
And the best kind of joke? 'Bad.'
Sans is the kind of guy whosleeps works two jobs because they entitle him to twice as many legally mandated breaks. He's the kind of guy whose presence makes an entire bar more fun any time he's there, the kind of guy whose absence makes the barkeep nervous and the place feel emptier. He's the kind of guy who doesn't seem to have a care at all. The kind of guy who almost makes a point of not having any cares.
The kind of guy who seems to work awfully hard for not doing anything at all.
'Sans doesn't tell anyone anything,' his brother tells the player at one point, and that's the thing. Sans isn't telling anyone anything because there's nothing he wants to tell them.
But not because there's nothing to to tell them.
Sans is the most meta-aware character in his canon, but with a number of caveats. He's aware of the aberrant behaviour of his canon's timelines, but not what's causing them (at first.) He is aware of the timeline resets, but not the details of each timeline's events. He is aware of where the timelines end and what happens at the end, but not which timeline he's in.
He is aware of how futile effort is, but doesn't know how to (not?) care about it or the people involved in it.
In his final (and only) battle with the player, he mentions the toll his knowledge has taken. 'You can't understand how this feels. Knowing that one day, without any warning... it's all going to be reset." But even as he says it, he admits that even he doesn't know whether his inaction is due to futility or laziness. Sans is a brokenman skeleton, and he knows it.
Once you know this, a certain amount of Sans' previously 'quirky' or 'lazy' behaviour develops a dark cast. He covers it with humour and a wide, unerring grin, but you know Sans is waiting--waiting impotently, endlessly, for each reset. There are signs, too, if you know where to look. It's not just that Sans doesn't want to work--although laziness is, by all indications, a genuine trait to which he is disposed. He doesn't care about work--and he may not even need the jobs that Papyrus pushed him to get--but he lets Papyrus push him to it anyway. He obviously prioritises everyone else's happiness, but it's Papyrus' happiness that he prizes most. It's for Papyrus that he (pretends to?) try at all.
In fact, closer inspection reveals that the only things (basically everything except for the end game) Sans goes out of his way to do... he usually does for Papyrus. Sans is extremely up front about how much he cares for his brother and how highly he regards him. At one point after they get to know the brothers a little, Sans takes the player to his favourite bar and asks whether they think Papyrus is cool ("my brother is a real star")--but doesn't accept a negative answer. All he says in response is that sarcasm isn't funny.
Papyrus, for all intents and purposes, is the centre of Sans' world.
He unironically and unreservedly adores his brother. He reads Papyrus the same story at bed time every night because that's what Papyrus wants. He peruses car magazines at work because it's Papyrus' dream to drive a fast car down an open road on the surface. He buys his his brother 'sexy robot action figures' under the guise of 'Santa Claus' to make him happy.
And if (or in the case of this timeline, when) Papyrus is murdered by Frisk, Sans simply... vanishes. In every timeline where Papyrus is alive, Sans appears regularly along Frisk's journey--selling hotdogs at a kiosk in Waterfall, pranking them with a redeye telescope, hawking concert tickets made of toilet paper if Frisk hums along with Shyren long enough. He even takes Frisk to the restaurant in MTT resort for a frank discussion near the end. But the instant Papyrus is dead, Sans effectively disappears from the game. All of Snowdin will comment on it. The telescope stands unattended. The hot dog post is abandoned.
The only clue to Sans' activities occurs if the player hums along with Shyren enough that a concert starts. But Sans doesn't sell tickets. Instead, "a hooded figure watches the commotion from afar." It doesn't matter how many monsters you've killed or spared. Papyrus can be the only monster you've killed, even. The hooded figure (Sans) will be mentioned, watching.
The implication, that Sans is following you across the underground--watching you, grieving, hiding, judging you--is pretty grim.
And yet.
And yet... in all but one timeline, even when/if Frisk kills Papyrus... Sans won't try to fight them. He doesn't get aggressive with them or try to stop them or confront them in any way until they meet him in the final corridor, where he passes judgement.
And lets them walk on.
Sans' meta-awareness robs him of so much; even his brother's murder cannot move him to action. But it's also his brother's murder that robs him of his ability to act. After all, while Sans knows there are multiple timelines, he doesn't know what happens in them specifically. And he doesn't know which timeline he's in. As long as he waits, there's a chance that there will eventually be a reset--and his brother will be alive again. His soul colour, after all, is light blue. The colour of patience.
Patience is all Sans has left. And even that... eventually wears out.
Little signs of it can be seen in every timeline--for all his puns and knock knock humour, Sans occasionally drops his jokes, abruptly and eerily, for brief flashes of seriousness. Often the thing he says in those moments are things of ominous context--a piece of advice if the player is considering fighting his brother ("don't") or the revelation that if it weren't for a promise (he hates promises), he would have killed Frisk back in Snowdin. But then he rolls on, and he's just kidding, and hey, good luck out there.
As a final note, it's worth mentioning that the timeline (and placement on said timeline) do have an effect on Sans. His brother is dead. His friends are dead. In a few minutes, reality will be dead. "Our reports showed a massive anomaly in the timespace continuum. Timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting...
Until suddenly, everything ends."
This is why he "can't afford not to care any more." He's not exactly the most grimdark character under any circumstances, but his humour in that fight is a lot less cheery and a lot more biting. Even a little mean. But then, you did murder everyone. You're about to murder reality. He's not super fond of you here.
And after his defeat, Sans' final words are "... ... ... so... guess that's it, huh? ... just... don't say I didn't warn you. Welp. I'm going to Grillby's." And so he crawls off, presumably taking a 'shortcut' out of the corridor to where he spends final moments of reality--sitting at the bar at Grillby's, drinking, waiting for the end of everything.
He really isn't expecting to wake up in the magical land of Pokemon.
But hey. He has hair now.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
STRENGTHS
Patience - Sans' soul is his virtue. His intelligence and meta-knowledge have gifted him an incredible ability to endure--he can wait, and he can wait, and he can wait and wait some more. No matter how much he suffers, or how miserable things may be, his 'tolerance' appears almost unending... even if, perhaps, his tolerance is not all that high at all.
Intelligence - Sans is, despite all else, an extremely clever individual. The battle with him is unlike almost any other battle in the game. Of course, he shares many attacks with Papyrus, but his are all much more difficult, which is only to be expected. More importantly, however, he is the only enemy to take the first turn. He is the only enemy to do only one damage, but he does it consecutively, thereby ignoring the post-damage invulnerability period and racking up total damage very quickly. He is the only enemy to incur a status effect. And so on.
Science - Multiple clues are left in the game towards his scientific background. Inside the bone brothers' house, for example, the player can discover a joke book with a quantum physics book hidden inside it (and a joke book inside the quantum physics book, and another quantum physics book inside the second joke book, and so on... the player stops there, but there is more.) This is an apt metaphor for Sans himself, to be honest. In the pacifist route, the player can also discover and explore what turns out to be Sans' hidden laboratory. It is hinted at (but not confirmed) that Sans' affiliation with the sciences is related to both his meta-knowledge and his ability to teleport (what he refers to as 'taking a shortcut.')
Sense of humour - Sans is the funny guy. He has a job as a comedian at the MTT resort, sure, but the real strength of his humour is less in commercial success and more in its success as a 'lifestyle.' Sans uses humour for everything. The ability to crack jokes at almost anything is what keeps him going, in a way--it's equal parts character trait, social lubricant, and coping mechanism. He derives genuine enjoyment from what he does, but it also smooths over all the troubles and trials he endures, and hides them from everyone else. After all, if they're busy laughing at your joke (or yelling at you for it), they're not wondering about the rest of what you do. An anecdote: he 'meets' Toriel after finding the door to the ruins outside of Snowdin. A giant unopenable door hidden in the snowy woods is the perfect place to practise his knock knock jokes. He spent, quote, "hours" out there, knocking and answering and delivering his own punchlines. But one day, he knocked on the door and a voice answered "who's there?" Of course, he answered. "Dishes." "Dishes who?" "Dishes a really bad joke."
Sans.
WEAKNESSES
Depression - Apathy, learned helplessness, whatever you want to call it, this is the flip side of Sans' patience as a virtue. Sans is clearly not the happy guy he pretends to be. As mentioned, he plays it off with humour (the sock he won't pick up, the pet rock he doesn't feed, his habit of sleeping on the job), but the lethargy and misery hinted at by his halfheartedness is still real. Nothing makes this clearer than visiting Sans' actual bedroom, which is barren and messy. His bed is just a worn, bare mattress with an uncovered pillow, his sheets bundled into a weird, creasy ball. His time spent at Grillby's is another hint--he's known as the life of theparty bar, but he's at the bar an awful lot. It doesn't... well, it doesn't look good.
Laziness - Part of the depression, but moreso. Getting Sans to do anything is like pulling teeth. Getting Sans to try at the thing... well. Good luck. He'll catch you later. After his nap(s).
Weakness - Literally. Unfortunately for Sans, he has one HP and one DEF. Even if Frisk (/Chara) weren't so powerful that they could kill almost every monster during the fight against him, one-shotting Sans is effectively inevitable. The only obstacle is Sans himself--he dodges literally every attack. It's only when he fall asleep that the player can land a blow--and even then, the first attack misses.
Bad taste - Jokes. Food. Clothes. He openly admits that the best jokes are the worst ones, but his bad taste in food is a little more... look. Sans drinks ketchup. He drinks ketchup straight from the bottle. He's gross. He scratches his ass in public, never does his laundry, and eats greasy food. Maybe, if we're lucky, in Route he'll at least learn to shower. Good fucking luck.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Team Rocket
Starter: Duskull, Magikarp
Password: Pumpkin Seeds
Samples
First Person Sample: [LOCKED TO ROCKETS]
[Sans' face (with slight unexplained black eye) is visible for only a second as he checks to make sure the camera is on, then he swings it to focus on a fat, sleek Nidorina sniffing the carpet a few feet away. He leaves the camera on her while he talks.]
Heh. So. I stole this... whatever it is. Nidorina.
[The camera follows her as she snuffles her way around the room.]
Great, right?
[Wait for it.]
But, uh. She doesn't do anything. Not a thing. Won't even look at me if I say her name.
[She's sniffing the wall.]
.....
Guess I broke it.
[Heh.]
Third Person Sample: Are brackets allowed?
Name: Raile
Personal Journal: None
E-mail: railerat [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.:
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: None
Character
Name: Sans
Series: Undertale
Timeline: Post No-Mercy
Canon Resource Links: Sans on the Wiki | No Mercy Run
Personality: From the moment you meet him, Sans can be counted on for two things: his sense of humour and his easygoing approach to all of life's ups and downs. He may even be too easygoing, depending on who you ask--a bona fide 'lazybones,' Sans never seems to let anything bother him, and blatantly goes out of his way (but not TOO out of his way) to do as little as possible, as much as possible. By the way, it turns out that the least amount you can do is, in fact, 'none.'
And the best kind of joke? 'Bad.'
Sans is the kind of guy who
The kind of guy who seems to work awfully hard for not doing anything at all.
'Sans doesn't tell anyone anything,' his brother tells the player at one point, and that's the thing. Sans isn't telling anyone anything because there's nothing he wants to tell them.
But not because there's nothing to to tell them.
Sans is the most meta-aware character in his canon, but with a number of caveats. He's aware of the aberrant behaviour of his canon's timelines, but not what's causing them (at first.) He is aware of the timeline resets, but not the details of each timeline's events. He is aware of where the timelines end and what happens at the end, but not which timeline he's in.
He is aware of how futile effort is, but doesn't know how to (not?) care about it or the people involved in it.
In his final (and only) battle with the player, he mentions the toll his knowledge has taken. 'You can't understand how this feels. Knowing that one day, without any warning... it's all going to be reset." But even as he says it, he admits that even he doesn't know whether his inaction is due to futility or laziness. Sans is a broken
Once you know this, a certain amount of Sans' previously 'quirky' or 'lazy' behaviour develops a dark cast. He covers it with humour and a wide, unerring grin, but you know Sans is waiting--waiting impotently, endlessly, for each reset. There are signs, too, if you know where to look. It's not just that Sans doesn't want to work--although laziness is, by all indications, a genuine trait to which he is disposed. He doesn't care about work--and he may not even need the jobs that Papyrus pushed him to get--but he lets Papyrus push him to it anyway. He obviously prioritises everyone else's happiness, but it's Papyrus' happiness that he prizes most. It's for Papyrus that he (pretends to?) try at all.
In fact, closer inspection reveals that the only things (basically everything except for the end game) Sans goes out of his way to do... he usually does for Papyrus. Sans is extremely up front about how much he cares for his brother and how highly he regards him. At one point after they get to know the brothers a little, Sans takes the player to his favourite bar and asks whether they think Papyrus is cool ("my brother is a real star")--but doesn't accept a negative answer. All he says in response is that sarcasm isn't funny.
Papyrus, for all intents and purposes, is the centre of Sans' world.
He unironically and unreservedly adores his brother. He reads Papyrus the same story at bed time every night because that's what Papyrus wants. He peruses car magazines at work because it's Papyrus' dream to drive a fast car down an open road on the surface. He buys his his brother 'sexy robot action figures' under the guise of 'Santa Claus' to make him happy.
And if (or in the case of this timeline, when) Papyrus is murdered by Frisk, Sans simply... vanishes. In every timeline where Papyrus is alive, Sans appears regularly along Frisk's journey--selling hotdogs at a kiosk in Waterfall, pranking them with a redeye telescope, hawking concert tickets made of toilet paper if Frisk hums along with Shyren long enough. He even takes Frisk to the restaurant in MTT resort for a frank discussion near the end. But the instant Papyrus is dead, Sans effectively disappears from the game. All of Snowdin will comment on it. The telescope stands unattended. The hot dog post is abandoned.
The only clue to Sans' activities occurs if the player hums along with Shyren enough that a concert starts. But Sans doesn't sell tickets. Instead, "a hooded figure watches the commotion from afar." It doesn't matter how many monsters you've killed or spared. Papyrus can be the only monster you've killed, even. The hooded figure (Sans) will be mentioned, watching.
The implication, that Sans is following you across the underground--watching you, grieving, hiding, judging you--is pretty grim.
And yet.
And yet... in all but one timeline, even when/if Frisk kills Papyrus... Sans won't try to fight them. He doesn't get aggressive with them or try to stop them or confront them in any way until they meet him in the final corridor, where he passes judgement.
And lets them walk on.
Sans' meta-awareness robs him of so much; even his brother's murder cannot move him to action. But it's also his brother's murder that robs him of his ability to act. After all, while Sans knows there are multiple timelines, he doesn't know what happens in them specifically. And he doesn't know which timeline he's in. As long as he waits, there's a chance that there will eventually be a reset--and his brother will be alive again. His soul colour, after all, is light blue. The colour of patience.
Patience is all Sans has left. And even that... eventually wears out.
Little signs of it can be seen in every timeline--for all his puns and knock knock humour, Sans occasionally drops his jokes, abruptly and eerily, for brief flashes of seriousness. Often the thing he says in those moments are things of ominous context--a piece of advice if the player is considering fighting his brother ("don't") or the revelation that if it weren't for a promise (he hates promises), he would have killed Frisk back in Snowdin. But then he rolls on, and he's just kidding, and hey, good luck out there.
As a final note, it's worth mentioning that the timeline (and placement on said timeline) do have an effect on Sans. His brother is dead. His friends are dead. In a few minutes, reality will be dead. "Our reports showed a massive anomaly in the timespace continuum. Timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting...
Until suddenly, everything ends."
This is why he "can't afford not to care any more." He's not exactly the most grimdark character under any circumstances, but his humour in that fight is a lot less cheery and a lot more biting. Even a little mean. But then, you did murder everyone. You're about to murder reality. He's not super fond of you here.
And after his defeat, Sans' final words are "... ... ... so... guess that's it, huh? ... just... don't say I didn't warn you. Welp. I'm going to Grillby's." And so he crawls off, presumably taking a 'shortcut' out of the corridor to where he spends final moments of reality--sitting at the bar at Grillby's, drinking, waiting for the end of everything.
He really isn't expecting to wake up in the magical land of Pokemon.
But hey. He has hair now.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
STRENGTHS
Patience - Sans' soul is his virtue. His intelligence and meta-knowledge have gifted him an incredible ability to endure--he can wait, and he can wait, and he can wait and wait some more. No matter how much he suffers, or how miserable things may be, his 'tolerance' appears almost unending... even if, perhaps, his tolerance is not all that high at all.
Intelligence - Sans is, despite all else, an extremely clever individual. The battle with him is unlike almost any other battle in the game. Of course, he shares many attacks with Papyrus, but his are all much more difficult, which is only to be expected. More importantly, however, he is the only enemy to take the first turn. He is the only enemy to do only one damage, but he does it consecutively, thereby ignoring the post-damage invulnerability period and racking up total damage very quickly. He is the only enemy to incur a status effect. And so on.
Science - Multiple clues are left in the game towards his scientific background. Inside the bone brothers' house, for example, the player can discover a joke book with a quantum physics book hidden inside it (and a joke book inside the quantum physics book, and another quantum physics book inside the second joke book, and so on... the player stops there, but there is more.) This is an apt metaphor for Sans himself, to be honest. In the pacifist route, the player can also discover and explore what turns out to be Sans' hidden laboratory. It is hinted at (but not confirmed) that Sans' affiliation with the sciences is related to both his meta-knowledge and his ability to teleport (what he refers to as 'taking a shortcut.')
Sense of humour - Sans is the funny guy. He has a job as a comedian at the MTT resort, sure, but the real strength of his humour is less in commercial success and more in its success as a 'lifestyle.' Sans uses humour for everything. The ability to crack jokes at almost anything is what keeps him going, in a way--it's equal parts character trait, social lubricant, and coping mechanism. He derives genuine enjoyment from what he does, but it also smooths over all the troubles and trials he endures, and hides them from everyone else. After all, if they're busy laughing at your joke (or yelling at you for it), they're not wondering about the rest of what you do. An anecdote: he 'meets' Toriel after finding the door to the ruins outside of Snowdin. A giant unopenable door hidden in the snowy woods is the perfect place to practise his knock knock jokes. He spent, quote, "hours" out there, knocking and answering and delivering his own punchlines. But one day, he knocked on the door and a voice answered "who's there?" Of course, he answered. "Dishes." "Dishes who?" "Dishes a really bad joke."
Sans.
WEAKNESSES
Depression - Apathy, learned helplessness, whatever you want to call it, this is the flip side of Sans' patience as a virtue. Sans is clearly not the happy guy he pretends to be. As mentioned, he plays it off with humour (the sock he won't pick up, the pet rock he doesn't feed, his habit of sleeping on the job), but the lethargy and misery hinted at by his halfheartedness is still real. Nothing makes this clearer than visiting Sans' actual bedroom, which is barren and messy. His bed is just a worn, bare mattress with an uncovered pillow, his sheets bundled into a weird, creasy ball. His time spent at Grillby's is another hint--he's known as the life of the
Laziness - Part of the depression, but moreso. Getting Sans to do anything is like pulling teeth. Getting Sans to try at the thing... well. Good luck. He'll catch you later. After his nap(s).
Weakness - Literally. Unfortunately for Sans, he has one HP and one DEF. Even if Frisk (/Chara) weren't so powerful that they could kill almost every monster during the fight against him, one-shotting Sans is effectively inevitable. The only obstacle is Sans himself--he dodges literally every attack. It's only when he fall asleep that the player can land a blow--and even then, the first attack misses.
Bad taste - Jokes. Food. Clothes. He openly admits that the best jokes are the worst ones, but his bad taste in food is a little more... look. Sans drinks ketchup. He drinks ketchup straight from the bottle. He's gross. He scratches his ass in public, never does his laundry, and eats greasy food. Maybe, if we're lucky, in Route he'll at least learn to shower. Good fucking luck.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Team Rocket
Starter: Duskull, Magikarp
Password: Pumpkin Seeds
Samples
First Person Sample: [LOCKED TO ROCKETS]
[Sans' face (with slight unexplained black eye) is visible for only a second as he checks to make sure the camera is on, then he swings it to focus on a fat, sleek Nidorina sniffing the carpet a few feet away. He leaves the camera on her while he talks.]
Heh. So. I stole this... whatever it is. Nidorina.
[The camera follows her as she snuffles her way around the room.]
Great, right?
[Wait for it.]
But, uh. She doesn't do anything. Not a thing. Won't even look at me if I say her name.
[She's sniffing the wall.]
.....
Guess I broke it.
[Heh.]
Third Person Sample: Are brackets allowed?
