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It’s time for another edition of Way Overthinking The Source Material. This time we’re gonna be discussing an interesting relationship between the character Flowey from Undertale and a famous theological argument made by Rene Descartes.
BIG UNDERTALE SPOILERS HERE
Flowey the Flower has the distinction of being the first NPC the player meets, and has a personality that contrasts strongly with the quirky and sometimes saintly monsters throughout the rest of the game. By the end of the “neutral” paths of the game, Flowey has taken over the game and appears by all means to be the most powerful and most evil being in the Undertale ‘verse.
In fact, most players finish this path thinking of Flowey as irredeemable garbage.
Then the player (typically) sees the “true” ending of the game, in which it’s revealed that Flowey is actually the essence of Asriel sans soul. Asriel once again takes over the game, but the player is able to defeat him this time through showing him compassion, which erodes his will to fight. In this case, it’s Asriel who’s really sparing the player character.
But what induced Asriel into doing such terrible things? As we find out later on, it was Asriel’s human friend and adoptive sibling, Chara. Chara’s plan is to wipe out the human and monster worlds alike. In every sense, Chara is the ultimate evil in Undertale.
So what’s the relevance to Descartes?
I’m oversimplifying here, but Descartes had a certain rationale for his belief in the existence of God: in a world where many people’s baseline is to behave badly but there is still a pervasive presence of good things, there must be a frame of reference in the universe for “goodness” and there must be an Ultimate Good that allows other things to be good.
Stated another way, the presence of anything that is good, but not perfect, implies the existence of something that IS perfect.
In Undertale, we see an opposite relationship take place. Flowey/Asriel appears to be the only bad character in the game for a very long time. From a narrative perspective, we think of Flowey as the Ultimate Evil, then see that he is Asriel and not totally evil, THEN see how he was induced into evil by Chara.
Strictly within the schema of Undertale, it makes a lot of sense. None of the monsters in Undertale, except arguably Asgore, are strictly amoral. (And even then, a person could make the case that Asgore’s morally questionable actions are a result of Chara’s influence). It’s only because of the objective, Ultimate Bad that evil permeates the underground at all.
It creates an interesting inverse. From the human world, someone such as Descartes would say we need an outside influence to be good, and the monsters of Undertale needed an outside influence to be evil.
Is that part of why we love these monsters so much? Probably.
But the ultimate evil, teh evil to take away the happiness of everyone, the evil who destroys everything is ultimately the player. We all like to imagine that everyone is happy with the true ending but truth is, when we aren’t playing, nothing is happening. THey are all essentially frozen in time. If we do play, nothing new can happen. Nothing until we reset. To add on, nothing good AND nothing bad can happen in the game without the influence of an outside source. The player. The player is the ultimate good AND the ultimate evil no matter what path they choose.
(via bloodsbane)
People who apologize to get people to shut up rather than out of genuine remorse are assholes. They may try and make themselves seem like victims with “oh but so-so didn’t forgive me so he/she/they the jerks” but remember that nobody is obligated to accept an apology.
Especially since tumblr took away tracked tags, its even harder for artists here to get noticed.
So if you want to support them, do your best to reblog.
Thanks!
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THE FEELS OMG
(Source: 90s90s90s, via thatsthat24)
How to turn Hamlet into a comedy:
- mmm whatcha say
(via thatsthat24)
kids these days are spoiled with their sexy robots. their mettatons and genos’ and clears. back in my day all we had was wheatley drawn as a skinny white guy in a suit
(Source: avekatanas, via robustquestioner)