Please don't use this video as an excuse to harass the other theory maker! I may disagree with the their wholeheartedly, but I prefer constructive discussion over hate, and the big sigh at the start was meant to be a bit. If you like what I do, consider supporting me on Patreon: patreon.com/dorked I have an Undertale webcomic here: invertedfate.com/chapters You can watch my Gerson analysis here: ruclips.net/video/XPqxqRxFrfU/видео.html My original Alphys video is here: ruclips.net/video/2q3u1VffIOk/видео.html If you like Persona, check out my fic, The Crow Cries at Midnight: archiveofourown.org/works/48777436/chapters/123046261 If you wanna catch my streams, you can follow me at: twitch.tv/derpisms True Lab Entries Pastebin: pastebin.com/Mr68qCp7 Undertale 2024 Newsletter Valentines: drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/10I1SDR5KxsqyxD8wqOVYf0STT0hJvB65
I like to think Gaster was working on deciphering Souls, but he was too caught up or more interested in the entry 17 experiment (and either lacking human souls or not having enough material to study) to actually do anything. And the idea that Alphys perfected the blueprints just makes her look more intelligent.
This isn't important but I took a screenshot of the video so I could show my friend what I was watching and I caught it at 666 likes, just thought I should share :]
The single BEST argument that not all the stuff in the True Lab was Alphys' work is her "using the blueprints" line, and even then, it's more of a "I'm using leftover equipment and i'm not confident" rather than "my predecessor solved everything i'm just gonna do what he did."
Had the same thoughts. But even then I think people massively underestimate how much work actually goes into the phases between having just blueprints and a finished product that produced the desired results. People treat it like blueprints are like an Ikea manual that anyone could just assemble and then Alphys messes the whole thing up by injecting to much Determination. Even If Gaster had previously laid the theoretical foundations for the research Alphys still contributed huge amounts to it by actually building the machine, getting the DT and performing the experiments. Yes it didnt work in the end, but that could have been treated as a huge breakthrough milestone If Alphys wasnt so anxious about what the others would think of her now.
with Deltarune, and the googer world at the start of the game having the same ""material"" as the dark fountains, and the dark fountains being made with Determination, it's not unreasonable to assume that the blueprints *were* made by Gaster and that he just used the Determination for an entirely different experiment from the avenue Alphys took.
@@gremlin2239 Considering the DT extractor hadnt left the blueprint stage and was only completed by Alphys, I think its safe to say that he didnt get very far with these experiments before he had his accident.
Another very minor point is the fact that Gaster's confirmed entry is called "Entry number seventeen", whereas all of the other entries are "Entry number 1", "Entry number 2", etc.
I'll bet the reason Gaster even got an entry seventeen was as a reference to Alphys's scrapped entry 17, since Gaster's whole deal in Undertale is "What if cut content was diagetic?"
Well, the writing on the wall theory that this video is debunking said that the entry seventeen we find is the files is a recording of gaster dictating the entry, not the entry itself.
Genuinly hope Gaster has his own lab in the Deltarune bunker where you can read all HIS journal entries (which are clearly from a different experiement than the True Lab notes) in a manner similar to the true lab, and where Alphys's unused Entry 17 has been swapped for his somehow, because I think that would be the best punchline.
Not only would this be very fun for those in the know, it would also be very interesting lore-wise on the connection between deltarune and undertale. Now I really want it to happen even though it most definitely won’t lol
Maybe his entries would be like "voice recordings" or video tapes just like the Asriel and Chara ones we found in the True Lab, rather than writings. I've seen theories suggesting that Gaster's entry 17 is actually not written but rather recorded and that's how it is "written" in his font. Meanwhile, when we see Gaster speaking to us in Deltarune, it's all written rather than him speaking directly.
i love how this entire debunk can be summarized as "this is wrong because there was already a sensible and simple explanation of it in the main text of the work" lol. kinda reminds me of jojo fandom and the araki forget stuff somehow.
Yeah, I think there's this desire in a lot of fandoms (not just Undertale) for big, complex plot twists and lore reveals, but sometimes that's just not good storytelling. And I say that as a Kingdom Hearts fan. :P I know big, weird plot twists all too well.
@@Dorked yeah. i'm all for theories, speculation, overanalysis and whatnot, but not where it's unnecessary and could be borderline misinformation. a lot of people nowadays seem to believe theory and fan-canon are synonyms so people make and read those kinds of stuff with that in mind. i'd rather just read and/or write fanfic if that was the case...
Alphys comes up with one of the most prominent themes in the game(determination,or at least the extracted stuff of it) and Flowey who's responsible for freeing all monsters and yet she's treated dirty smh.
People really seem to want every indie game to have some deep hidden twist a-la FNAF lore or something when Toby's writing is generally more straightforward. We have the Spamton Sweepstakes stuff, but that mostly just builds on stuff we already had to work with and is fun supplementary material and characterization.
It’s cause we find her boring, yes there are *SOME* of us who hate her but they are annoying gremlins who can’t comprehend morality. No I hate her because I find nothing enjoyable or interesting about her character and the interesting things that are there feel like they have been forced upon her character (no this is not to say they don’t “fit” or don’t make sense for her character, they do but they are concepts that are applied, attatched to and sometimes created by a character I find to be incredibly boring). This along with the fact she created my favorite characters just makes it worse, she’s *S O* important and undertale wants me to care about this “important” character she’s boring in the game and any fancontent she’s in is only interesting due to how she affects other characters. Edit: about chara cause I’ve seen some people bring em up WE DONT THINK THEY ARE EVIL (canonically) WE USE THEM AS A VILLAIN BECAUSE THEY ARE A VOID-MOUTHED-EVIL-SPEAKING-EVIL-LOOKING-DEMON-CHILD-FROM-THE-DEPTHS-OF-HELL. “Why not use flowey” he’s weaker, he’s a joke in the fandom (often getting tortured and overpowered by everyone’s favorite skeleton) and he gets humiliated and killed off in the genocide route (the route that has chara’s big villain moments) in a cutscene you don’t control (making a lot of people interpret the moment as chara taking control and turning their previous friend into powder thus making them more evil). So yeah show me a villain I can use that isn’t my favorite humanity-hating enby demon 👁👁
You used parenthesis wrong 🤓 lemme nerd out. So so, parenthesis are used for many reasons, but the ones we commonly use is for additional context. We use them to add on to our sentences, but the sentence can still work without them. Let's use this: The dog is jumping. If you wanted to add more context, you'd use parenthesis like this: The dog (whom I adopted 3 years ago) is jumping. Notice how the sentence itself wasn't changed? For you, the sentence should actually be "...in the game. Determination (or at least extracted stuff of it) and Flowey, who's responsible for..."
@@resumethyvideo7631 Honestly, you can dislike Alphys if you want... That is not what is really been discussed here.. Is just that disliking a character is not the same as erasing the contributions the character made to the plot just because I hate them/dislike them. Is immature and goes against what the person that created the game you like wanted with that character. I dunno but I respect what Toby intended with his characters because I like the game he did.
At best, you can MAYBE connect Gaster to the blueprints for the DT extractor. If you follow that theory it has the interesting implication that Gaster might have been looking into similar stuff before he fell, but of course never got the opportunity to do any experiments on the subject himself.
@@Dorked Wow I had never thought about it like that before. Yeah, in order to open a dark world you need Determination, which Monsters in Undertale famously lack. So If Gaster had researched them it would make sense hed also be looking Into ways to get Determination. Good point! Makes you wonder If the only reason Deltarune Gaster was succesful as opposed to Undertale Gaster is because monsters can naturally have more DT in the Deltarune universe.
@tobiasbayer4866 I think possibly it's due to the lack of Core in the Deltarune universe, he didn't fall in. My head canon is that the Undertale universe is what happens when the 1st fallen child is the older sibling to Asriel, and the Deltarune universe is what happens when the 1st fallen child is the younger sibling. Perhaps they managed to leave the underground far earlier, and Kris' ability to separate their souls from their body is related to how they escaped the underground with Asriel, but that's a reach since the underground isn't mentioned, and it's heavily implied that Kris grew up on the surface with everyone.
No doubt the blueprints were made by Gaster, when Flowey uses it as a second head he does a laser like a Gaster blaster and in the Asriel fight as an attack called hyper goner, goner being in the names of characters appearing with fun value. It doesn't look like any of Alphys or Mettaton attack and there would be no reason for the extractor to be able to attack if it was made entirely by Alphys since she only accidentally ever harm you troughout the game. As for Mettaton attacking you then, since some monsters like Undyne spars and she wanted Mettaton to look as much like a killer robot than possible she may have put his attacks, but even then it's because Mettaton goes off track.
My personal theory is that Gaster was looking into Time Travel and potentially interdimensional travel. Perhaps even theorizing that a vessel with enough of some bizarre quality could send information from the future to its past self. Part of me wonders if he's somehow connected to not just Deltarune vessel shenanigans, but Undertale's as well... Through some mishap or another, he gets sent by his machine to nowhere specific, thus sending him nearly _everywhere._ And by some other fluke of fate, the crude schematics for a soul harvesting machine ended up in the hands of Alphys, who then put these theories into practical use TLDR: Gaster was a mad scientist, Alphys was a mad engineer. Well, less mad, more sad
i love gaster as much as the next guy but it bothers me when people erase other characters out of the game to make room for him. great video, thanks for making this!
People fr see anything mildly lore related and go: GUYS GASTER SEE LOOK ITS HIM and overcomplicate the story just as an excuse to ignore any clever character design /:
@@spudthefith Their idealized version of Gaster does not overcomplicate the story, and in fact, it simplifies the story so much that it reads like a fanfic.
Ive seen people defend the “Gaster wrote the entries!!!” Theory by saying “If you cant accept alphys is a fraud, then you don’t understand her character arc” and it boggles my mind. Alphys’ character arc is Alphys learning to come clean about her mistakes. She fucked up, and she knows it. But she cant just hide it forever, and she grows to face her mistakes head on. If these mistakes belonged to GASTER and not Alphys, it completely butchers Alphys’s arc and is just sloppy writing
Yeah, people saying it strengthens her arc... it just feels like an excuse. Alphys was never a complete fraud. She made Mettaton out of junk from the dump, turned a brick phone into a device with texting, dimensional storage, and a jetpack, and was able to discover a compound of human souls that gave them their power. She messed up, but she was also put to task in an unprecedented field and under a lot of pressure.
I dont even think her arc is about coming clean as a fraud. Objectively speaking her research has been a huge breakthrough. It just had less than favorable side effects... Its more about her avoiding to take responsibility and caring about her image, and how her friends perceive her. Her arc isnt just about stopping to lie or smth, its to accept that she has to be true to herself even If she will risk that some people will like her less. And ultimately the real lesson is that people still like her regardless and it really was her lying that was hurting people and that she was worried for nothing.
@@redactedinfo8557 No. Yes she comes clean, but she isnt a fraud. She isnt even really a liar, as she has simply ignored everyone thats asks about the amalgamations. Thats a huge difference.
I remember when my brother believed in the "sans wrote some of the true lab entries" and one of the first all-lowercase messages is about working on mettaton's body and we laughed really hard
one of my biggest gripes is that the undertale fandom will attribute some of the entries to gaster and then not blame him for what he did to the amalgams, instead deciding that it’s all alphys fault for some reason. thanks for clearing everything up that it was only alphys for the people who do think it was anyone else.
Yeah, I suspect there will be a lot of people mad that I'm criticizing a theory they like, too, even though I tried to be respectful about it and avoid naming names.
Honestly, I feel like in most cases it's less "I hate alphys" and more like "I have this particular idea of gaster in my head and whenever I find anything even partially ambigous in ut I will do all I can to stuff this gaster in it no matter what, ignoring the general context of the scene "
@@Fannintendociccio1 Yeah, a lot of people really want Gaster to be a bigger dale in Undertale's story than he was likely meant to be (as it seems all the fun events overall are meant to foreshadow Deltarune, barring perhaps some of the sillier ones like the refrigerator call).
Undertale fandom be filled with ppl who hate moral ambiguity. Even if the characters they deem as morally superior can be just as “bad” as the ones they hate lol
Yeah this comment section is deemed to be filled with arguments and blatantly toxicity. I just wish people could just stick their opinions and call it a day
I think what also doesn't help is that so many people believe it's a canon fact that everyone forgot Gaster existed, even though that is never directly stated by any of his followers. Yes, there is Goner Kid with his whole "Have you ever thought about a world where you don't exist" but that primarily applies to him and the other Followers not specifically Gaster himself. He was erased from/shattered out of reality but it is never said that the memory of him was erased too. This can be used as an easy excuse to say "well he actually did all that but people forgot so Alphys thought she was responsible instead" when there is, again, no actual evidence of this in the main story. People need to remind themselves what was actually stated in the game and what is headcanon/fanon.
There is actually evidence to back up Gaster's memory fading but not due to the time and space shatter it just due to time. in the core Wiki Papyrus says nobody knows where the ice blocks go. Undyne recalls and remembers that they go to Hotland, but only due to Alphys telling her. and alphys would be the only one aside from asgore and maybe other dog enemies (like the one throwing the ice) and other old monsters would remember the cores begining which WE KNOW gaster made. Newer monsters may know of the core but don't even know the basics as of why its cooled and how. This is evidence of knowledge among monsters simply being lost unless said knowledge was stashed somewhere. he doesn't need to be shattered to be forgotten but having been certainly helped speed the process. also just because 1 person discovers a thing about the world, doesn't mean the person who discovered it second is any lesser and the base premise of that is stupid. You still have to understand the science you're performing in order to evolve and forward it and we have no proof that gasters experiments (if even there) was were fruitful
@@shortyfizlo. Papyrus has never gone to Hotland nor does he particularly enjoy the place. Which can explain why he doesn't know where the ice goes. And Alphys knows because she is directly responsible for maintaining it, as the Royal Scientist. People not knowing how the CORE works can also be chalked up to it not being a particularly interesting subject. Only that it gives electricity.
11:58 I just realized Undyne is the only character in this scene who is visibly struggling against Flowey with any success. Every little detail in this game is just so full of character.
Love how very consistent Gaster’s way of speaking is, it basically assures what is and isn’t his writing. I’ll say the mysterious Valentines message in the newsletter from somebody unnamed that people have obviously suspected to be gaster, likely isn’t him. It doesn’t match with the way he speaks in every single instance. There’s some other video on the whole thing that just kinda confirmed my ideas more valid so that’s a thing.
The thing about the "Gaster" valentine is that the Japanese version is not localized the same way that his other speech has been in the past, which tells me that it might be a red herring or something else is going on. It's very peculiar.
Nah out of all people JaruJaruJ had a great video and a set of comments describing why exactly it’s most definitely Gaster I know people have their gripes with him but he actually made some really solid points this time that the Japanese translation not being localized in the correct way doesn’t really mean much
@@Crackedcripple I think at the very least, there's a strong likelihood it's related to Gaster. I just find Toby's usually very deliberate w/ the localization teams, so it's a case of me not wanting to assume too much, so I decided not to include that specific valentine to err on the side of caution.
@@Dorked yeah that’s reasonable, but for me when you check out the legends of localization book that has a secret message in Wingdings on the CORE page from Gaster the style it’s written in is very similar to the valentine and it has led me to believe it’s probably him. “IF YOU HAVE PIRATED THIS BOOK I UNDERSTAND I CANNOT LEGALLY CONDONE IT BUT I UNDERSTAND JUST TRY TO MAKE THE WORLD AROUND YOU A SLIGHTLY NICER PLACE I GUESS BUT IF I MEET YOU SOMEDAY I MIGHT ASK YOU TO EMBARRASS YOURSELF OR BUY ME FREE PIZZA UNTIL WE'RE COOL" -Gaster’s secret message in the book, he’s a goofy guy after all
The thing that really annoys me about Gaster writing the entries is that Deltarune will likely give us way more Gaster, while Alphys will likely play a much smaller role, so giving the DT experiments to Gaster will just be a footnote compared to what he did in Deltarune while Alphys would lose her main achievement.
I think it really is a combination of people finding Alphys annoying, being drawn into the mystery of Gaster, and like... as I said in another comment, this desire for simple questions to have convoluted answers because of the precedent set by things like FNAF theories.
a complicated messy and realistic character with lots of screentime being overshadowed by a man that DOESN'T EVEN EXIST and only appears during very specific events is absolutely insane its even more absurd how the ut fandom hates alphys for her mistakes and reduces her character only to her flaws but has no problem with fanon interpretations of gaster being evil and cruel. the double standards
There's so much buildup and hype around gaster for the past decade so people desperately want him to be as important as he is to them. Once he finally shows up in deltarune and does whatever weird shit he's gonna do, I think people will be satisfied and chill out with stuff like this
Ppl wanting more convoluted BS stories over more simple stories is something I’ll never get. FNAF’s story makes little sense and lost the plot. Same as KH’s. KH’s story isn’t too hard to understand but when you write a story vaguely, with holes you fill in later, it becomes overly complicated. Ppl prefer potential and mystery to just regular stories. It kinda sucks
"The most lore significant character in Undertale" Stop tripping. That's obviously Asriel/Flowey. He's literally the cause of everything that happens in multiple ways. Not like Alphys isn't important, but she's not as important as Asriel is.
Personally the only thing I put Gaster to is the blueprints, I believe it was something he was working on in it's early stages before he fell, this would also give some credit to why Asgore gave Alphys the task very soon after becoming the royal scientist as it was already a planned work in progress that he wanted to come true and some work was already done to make it happen
I can buy Alphys iterating on older blueprints, and I did try to at least acknowledge the possibility even if I don't think it's conclusive. I don't think that necessarily makes her a fraud, though, since scientists often iterate on the works of their predecessors.
As someone who really is not fond of Alphys, undercutting her ENTIRE CHARACTER ARC by saying she wasn't the one doing the DT experiments has always been a baffling concept to me. The timeline seemingly presented in the way the entries are shown is suspect, but people are definitely exaggerating the weirdness of it.
people want to see gaster everywhere so bad. the way i see it the point is that he is in the background, that he is hard to find, like a legend of sorts
It's so crazy people keep saying Gaster wrote those entries, WHEN ALPHYS SAID SHE WAS THE ONE DOING THE EXPERIMENTS. It makes no sense to me. Gaster has ONE ENTRY, and it's a SECRET ONE, just like EVERYTHING RELATED TO HIM IS. What would be the consistency of everything gaster related being secret except these entries??? That Alphys ADMITTED TO MAKING, it's such an important part to her character, and people taking that from her just to push that into Gaster (or even sans??) for no reason makes me so upset :(. I know it's fun to theorize, but let's not cost another character's lore for it.
Also, Entry Number 15 ends in a smiley face. o_o Alphys uses them a lot in her text messages, so it makes more sense for it to be her. Plus one of the lowercase entries is a direct followup to a proper grammar entry.
You want to tell me people gaslighted themselves into believing Alpys isn't responsible for all the studies her whole arc is based around taking responsibility for?
Tbh, it's because people take the grammatical shifts to mean two writers when Alphys is shown to write differently depending on her mood in the actual game.
Also another thing of note. Even if it took longer for Alphys to start experimenting with determination we see that when you kill Shyren there's just a second half left behind. So maybe they used that. It is the part seen in the amalgam fight
Yep, the sprites say spr_shyren_agent Not only that, you can see the agent in a oficial mettaton drawing, that with the fact that she isn't there in deltarune means that they're really diferent characters
I heard an headcanon that as lemon bread(shyren sister) is more similar to shyren agent(leech,slug thingy) than shyren(fish) herself, it means one of 2 things. - Shyren sister also has an agent, the other agent take a part of lemonbread body, while shyren sister is that big teethy and slimmy head(a little of Moldbygg fault), it would be fun if shyren sister is just scarier than her - Or shyren agent and lemon bread adopted shyren and are all sisters or something, I find the headcanon cute. - But again, is not like the agent is with them after the pacifist ending, maybe something happened, it would be fun if we know more about shyren in Deltarune, the only time we see her she's sick in bed
As someone with complete and utter Gaster brainrot, I fully agree with the analysis you've provided here. I watched the other video this one is in response to, and while some of the ideas there are interesting (like Flowey manipulating the power in True Lab to show Frisk a certain narrative) I wholeheartedly agree that those types of theories are of great disservice to both Alphys and Gaster. There are so many interesting fanworks theorizing on what Gaster may have done outside of creating the CORE, and those are so fascinating BECAUSE they have nothing to do with DT experiments. It's fresh and it's new, and they allow the two characters to have their own unique accomplishments. Something I came across recently was a tumblr post talking about comparisons between Gaster and Lucifer (thanks Toby for all the 666 references) and it's really good! To think that Gaster is comparable to Lucifer not in the way that he was an evil scientist, but because his pursuit for knowledge led him to disaster is such an interesting literary take that a lot of people tend to overlook. Probably because people don't or won't look at the story of Lucifer much closer than "he's the devil," instead of acknowledging that he was the angel of light who challenged his creator and was cast out for his insubordination and giving knowledge to God's creation. Provides some really interesting food for thought on what all G may have done while he was the Royal Scientist.
Yeah, I have no ill will toward people who spend their time theorycrafting and constructing longform videos. Even if I disagree with the other video overall, it had so much clear time and effort put into it. I just wish it didn't spend so much time discrediting and bashing Alphys as a part of its core arguments. Gaster is a fascinating character to speculate about, so I do understand why he draws so much attention.
This may be a reach, but if kris' many parallels to apples (like the forbidden fruit) and gaster's parallels to lucifer end up getting paid off at any point of the game, I might have an aneurysm.
It's just ABSURD to me, how much attention that video got and the amount of people praising it- when it misses so, so many obvious things. It claims that Asgore hasn't gone in his home since Chara died, when the ink in his journal is still almost wet. It claims that Alphys ONLY writes in lowercase, when there's that note right outside the True Lab. It claims that Gaster wrote the entries, when Alphys plainly says that she's the one that named Determination. They were SO tunnel-visioned on making a Fun Gaster Theory, that they completely ignored everything that disproved it. There's footage of them from when they were playing through the game, making note of the wording on the note in Asgore's kitchen, swapping between a simultaneous playthrough of pacifist and genocide they were doing, to come to the conclusion that Asgore hasn't been in his own home, adding it to a big list of evidence and notes they were gathering. They were clearly putting in a lot of work... but missed something as obvious as the journal in Asgore's room. And that's just the surface level stuff. There's the other ways it completely falls apart if you think more about it. Like, people remember Gaster's work. The CORE is still there and still functioning, there are people working there. So if Gaster found a way to cure monsters who had fallen down... why would anyone EVER consent to let their Fallen Down family members be used for Alphys's experiments, where she wants to wait for them to die to get the SOULs?! Why would Asgore allow monsters to Fall Down at all, if there's a cure ready to go? Why would he needlessly let monsters like Rudy Holiday die? Why would you diminish Alphys to such a degree, by implying she's so stupid she can't even follow the simple directions of 'inject determination and wait?'
These are all fantastic observations! I think Rudy is a great example of why the immortality angle just doesn't really jive because, as you said, it opens way too many questions, and Gaster being forgotten was never confirmed and is even contradicted by the followers saying Asgore took a long time to replace him.
iirc, the dude made the argument that Alphys _wrote_ normally, but _typed_ in lowercase, and that the entries were electronic. But beyond that, I agree with these criticisms.
I remember relating to Alphys a lot especially the whole anxiety about mistakes and being too scared to tell the truth. So it really made me sad to see people dimissing her character arc in favor of adding more stuff to Gaster that he really doesn't need. Very glad to see this video and happy at how good it turned out!
It's saddening to see people's personal distaste in Alphys' personality influence their whole perception of the character. Alphys is unarguably one of the best written Undertale characters which says a lot given just how greatly written all characters are in UT. PS - I find her nerdy personality adorable :P
As someone who likes the character, I can kind of see how people might be put off by her because of the reveal that she was staging obstacles in the Hotland arc in order to make herself a "hero" in the protag's story. Even though it was for sympathetic reasons and she does come clean in the end, it probably reinforced the notion of her being a "fraud". It did feel like a betrayal to me when I found out, but at the same time, I still found her endearing and sympathetic.
I really just think she's overbearing, I actually like her in DR because she's a minor character who doesn't interrupt the game every 20 seconds with her undernet posts. Plus did she really need to have the 2 longest areas in the game dedicated to her plus a third smaller but still sizable area? Some of the other main characters (Asgore especially) only had half of an area to themselves at best.
Question! How do you feel about the “entry seventeen is a video recording” portion of the OG video? Since it and “the golden flowers” are, imo, are the most interesting bits of the video, tho the latter would need a bit of restructuring to make sense again.
The recording angle is very valid and possible. As for the flower stuff, my biggest gripe is that buttercups are an entirely different flower and are known to be poisonous, and so Asgore drinking golden flower tea further cements that they are different.
I didn’t know people attributed the entries to Gaster, when I first played through the true lab I thought it was pretty clear that it was Alphys’ writing. I will mention that it was back around 2016 when I first played Undertale, and theories were still somewhat primitive, since I didn’t know about the unused Alphys entry, I thought it was implied that Alphys wrote over some of the previous entries, and that entry 17 was one that she didn’t touch , haha! It just added more to Gaster’s mystery, and left me wondering why would Alphys do that... Glad that the video could clear things up even for me.
@@DorkedI also hate her character frankly, but at least it’s because of personal taste and not because I lack media literacy and try to force Gaster into anything remotely vague.
Thank you SOOO much for making this video!! It's very well put together and thought out!! I believe that theory to be very dismissive of Alphys's character arc, and I think the idea that Gaster is just "Alphys if she was good" to be extremely stupid and disrespectful. I also believe it to be really boring? He has so much potential as a character, especially with his relation to Deltarune. Do we really need to steal the spotlight from another character just to hype him up? It's especially a funny mindset to have because the only reason Gaster is even relevant is because he FELL into his own creation. I really don't understand why people take the word of the Gaster Followers when they describe him as this "flawless genius." Would it really be that big of a stretch to say that the self-proclaimed GASTER FOLLOWERS may be a little biased when speaking about the new royal scientist? I just think that if you need to take away all nuances away from a certain character for your theory, it may not be a very good one. I also remember reading a comment on the "Writing On the Wall" theory video that grinded my gears, and it stated that Gaster succeeding with the DT experiments before Alphys tried and failed "adds to the tragedy," which I HIGHLY disagree with. A huge aspect of the DT experiments that makes them so tragic is that they CANNOT be done correctly, at least not with what Alphys was given. Asgore asked her to find a way to make monster souls persist after death, for even the SLIGHTEST CHANCE at freedom. Alphys had not only the crushing weight of the King's expectations on her shoulders, but also the entire fate of monsterkind in her hands. She was so hyperfocused on doing these experiments correctly she didn't even stop to think about the fact that they may not even be possible. And when she realized they weren't going as planned she freaked out and made things so, SO much worse. THAT is why it is so tragic. She was reaching for a goal that was unreachable, she was trying to solve something that was unsolvable. She was trying to do the IMPOSSIBLE. She was trying to set everyone free. Gaster somehow weaseling his way into perfecting the DT experiments not only makes Alphys's mistake LESS tragic, but it also just.. doesn't make sense? You already stated this in your video, but it just overcomplicates everything and makes what Alphys did seem like it stemmed from incompetence, rather than it being something that is GENUINELY impossible (which it is.) And that's another thing. People who wholeheartedly believe in this theory always hold true to the idea that Alphys is not WORTHY of being the royal scientist. They believe that she doesn't know what she's doing, that she cheated her way into Gaster's position without doing the work that he did. When that just... ISN'T the case at all. Yeah Asgore hired her because he misunderstood how Mettaton worked, but Alphys wasn't intentionally trying to mislead him? Besides, she is still shown to be VERY capable and smart. She turned a cellphone into a JETPACK for christ's sake!! She knows what she's doing, she was just tasked with something that was not only impossible, but outside of her capabilities. Which shows a lack of thought on Asgore's part more so than Alphys's (which he later apologized for.) And Gaster being the one to make Flowey just gives another one of Alphys's works to Gaster, which is lazy. Especially since Alphys creating flowey makes the DT experiments that she carried out even more nuanced. Yes, she fucked up, really badly. And she also made things worse by not telling anyone about what she did. But good DID come from it. The amalgmates were reunited with their families, AND they were brought back to life. And not only that, but FLOWEY was the one who set everyone free. Well- Asriel was, but they are one in the same. Alphys is technically responsible for monsterkind's freedom, SHE is the one who created Flowey. She made a horrible mistake while trying to free her people, that later led to her people being freed. Giving all of that to Gaster just takes away from all of that nuance, and makes it boring. Anyways, sorry for rambling in your replies, I am very passionate about Alphys as a character and I really hate to see her shoved to the side like this. I hope more people will grow to like her over time!!
No need to apologize! I love when people share their own thoughts and responses like this. It helps generate discussion, which is always healthy. I agree with a lot of what you're saying.
I'm beginning to think that if Gaster were 'Alphys but good,' he maaaaaaaybe would've found a way to avoid falling into his own creation. Perhaps Gaster was more brilliant or influential than Alphys, but that alone, one of the few things we know about him, should show that he was not infallible. Depending on how one interprets how or why he fell, it might even illustrate one critical manner in which Alphys was more fortunate than he was--Alphys has people who prevent her from 'falling' or 'shattering' by dragging her out of the dark and into the light again. She has people that love her and ground her. And Gaster says 'what do you two think,' so maybe once he did have people, and he sure has admirers--but none of them successfully stopped him from shattering. Whether what happened with Gaster was deliberate or accidental, whether it was borne from despair or obsession, whether he viewed it as a fatal fall or an enlightened ascent, Alphys has suffered and slumped, but not shattered. No one mourns her as a brilliant, irreplaceable, tortured genius YET. She can heal, and she can improve, and she can learn from her mistakes--whatever happens in Deltarune, Gaster will unfortunately never get that chance in Undertale.
I just realized something interesting about Alphys: When she explains Mew Mew Kissy Cutie to you/Frisk she mentions how the moral of the story is that controlling people... before cutting herself off, my guess is that the moral would be that controlling people to solve your problems is wrong which kinda foreshadows Alphys' character arc of revealing her mistakes instead of continuing to lie to others.(and also telling Undyne that anime isn't real) Though I may just be reading too much into it.
If gaster did write any of the entrys i feel like at the end of the true lab she would have mentioned it at the end becuase she you know wants to tell the whole truth if they were hiding it that does really mesh. Plus i would like to mention entry 17 is completely different to the others becuase gaster wrote it if gaster wrote them they would be far more similar to entry 17. I get why people want to put gaster in the true lab but it Frankly doesnt add anything to him and it just hurts alpheys character. There is no reason for toby to have made them actually gaster
Yeah, like... we only see one example of an entry by Gaster and it's characterized so differently from all the others (including Alphys' own entry number 17). The characterization there matches Deltarune and the twitter takeovers, and frankly it seems like Gaster's experiments were tackling something else entirely.
heyo, i doubt you'll ever see this, but i truly appreciate all that you do! you're quite possibly one of the greatest figures and voices in this community, bringing about the wonderful inverted fate as well as all of these theory and analysis videos, among other things! keep up the good work, and great job with this video as well! you deserve much more recognition and praise, truly.
Hey, thanks for the kind words! Honestly, a big thing for me is that I adore Undertale and Deltarune and like to share that passion through analysis and reexamining aspects of the game that are often misinterpreted or forgotten.
3:12 This. Just, this. People can so often get so caught up in "le lore" that they forget they're playing a game with an actual story. A well written, coherent story. It doesn't matter how much "evidence" you find to support something, if it's overly convoluted, or lame from a writing perspective and doesn't contribute at all to the game's story, or outright diminishes it, then... Why? Why would it be true? This is something that absolutely plagues the internet nowadays, people try to treat anything like it's convoluted fnaf lore just so they can come up with these "cool awesome twist theories" about how "le thing is actually le other thing, and isn't that so cool and unexpected waow!!!". But this video being made gives me hope, it's nice to know there are still people who care
Was listening to a video just yesterday jumping through hoops to fit Gaster in to the true lab and it reminded me this was coming out soon. Now it's here! Bless! Haven't listened yet, but im sure its going to be a huge pallet clense to have someone appreciate Alphys and let her be a brillant scientist in her own right. Not only does making Gaster the inventer of DT rob Alphys of all her scientific acheivement, but it also robs her of her greatest flaws and the source of her darkest secret. People need to realize that ascibing *all* events as actually being secretly Gaster really robs other characters of their agency and role.
Yeah, I never got the whole "Alphys being a fraud makes her story better" thing because the entire point of her arc is that she was still a skilled enough scientist to build mettaton, modify the phone, discover DT, and she just got in over her head due to the lack of past work to draw upon. And her own fears and regrets kept her from coming clean for a while.
@@Dorked Yeah!! She's way better being too smart for her own good than just some fraud trying to impress people. A young prodigy biting off way more than she can chew and digging herself deeper and deeper in a panic is so much more compelling, complex, and quite frankly relatable than some swindler with a crush on the king. Alphys *does* lie sometimes, she does set up scenarios to impress people because of her insecurities, but those lies come when she's done something incredible already and she doesn't have the confidence to believe she can do it again.
I think FNAF has really scrambled people's brains. Everyone thinks there needs to be this big, complicated theory to explain everything, but with Undertale it's pretty straightforward. Toby's games don't have many plotholes that require these grandiose theories in order to make sense, his stuff is pretty tight.
Yeah, I think the FNAF theory scene has colored the way people look at indie game theorycrafting and analysis. FNAF leans into these complex webs of speculation, whereas while Toby occasionally dabbles into teasing the lore through means like the Spamton Sweepstakes, I believe that the core plots of his games are pretty easy to understand without outside materials. The outside materials are just fun speculation fodder, especially in DR's case where chapter releases are often years apart.
@@Dorked I think a definite part of this is that Undertale was released in THE flash point of FNAF theory-crafting in 2015. The Gaster junk was, quite honestly, a means by Toby to keep conversation going and reinforce a sense of mystery throughout Undertale. Alphys is, however, part of the narrative. She's part of the game's themes. She's right there.
Well you see it's because when our lord and saviour Gaster did it he did it all correctly and somehow managed to make people immortal because he's such an awesome and cool genius unlike that fraud Alphys /s
I think Gaster discovering dark worlds/fountains is so much cooler than the DT experiments. Also I think it’s interesting to see that Gaster and Gerson are somehow connected and their prominence is seemingly swapped in Deltarune, wonder how that’ll end up playing out.
Tbh, the thing that really irks me about the recent theory that blew up is how much of it is cherrypicked. I can acknowledge the work that went into the video, but it sucks that people aren't engaging with it more critically and are just taking it at face value. OP worked hard, and I wish them the best in future projects. I just disagree with what was said.
I feel like the fandom’s fervent desire to discredit Alphys and replace her with Gaster or even Sans (I remember seeing this a lot in fan content around 2016-2017- having Sans be involved in the true lab, only for him to completely overshadow Alphys) can also be attributed to misogyny. The fanbase doesn’t like that a female character is “annoying” and flawed in a way that isn’t quirky or cutesy and so they scramble to completely scrub her out of the picture. I’m expecting to get a lot of angry replies to this comment, because many people don’t like facing their own unconscious biases and how they affect their perceptions of the media they consume, but I really think that if Toby’s original intent of Alphys being male (as stated in the Undertale artbook) had gone through, she would be much more popular than she is now. Basically, I just think the way that some people dislike her so much that they would rather completely undercut her personal story and relevance to Undertale’s narrative to replace her with a male character that, at the time (and to a lesser extent now, still), had basically zero confirmed personality or character says a lot about how people treat female characters that don’t fit what they perceive to be acceptable for a female character. They’d rather have a blank slate, easy tumblr sexyman than a genuinely interesting and complex woman.
Yeah, the thing is, *if* misogyny is a factor, I think it's probably internalized or unconscious? I definitely am not in this to accuse Sock Muppet of it, for instance, because I'd rather assume good faith (even if I am frustrated with how he discussed Alphys). But I have seen other fans experience more vitriolic behavior toward Alphys from other UT fans in the past that does call these things into question. That being said, I think some of the harsher comments here are kinda just misinterpreting some of my statements and intentions, and to an extent I probably walked into that by beginning the video with a comically exaggerated sigh that was meant to be hyperbolic but has been misinterpreted. It's not something I can fix now, but eh. Comments are good for the youtube algorithm. :P Plus, RUclips comments aren't typically known for good faith discussions.
I think the far more likely explanation is that people are simply obsessed with the mysteries surrounding Gaster and the time he spent in the True Lab as the Royal Scientist. It's not like people are ascribing these negative character traits to her without any basis whatsoever. She's known to be a liar, and some of the True Lab's entries makes her scientific reasoning seem shaky at best - "nothing is happening. i don't know what to do. i'll just keep injecting everything with "determination."" Regardless, just because people are speculating that she may not be fully responsible for this one thing despite all of her other achievements doesn't mean they are misogynistic.
@@Wolfcat22 That’s fair assessment! I’m more just kind of lining the points of this video up with how I’ve seen people treat female characters in media as a whole, beyond just Undertale and Deltarune, and putting my thoughts into words surrounding Alphys. She’s been one of my favorite Undertale characters from the start, flaws and all- so it’s more just this as it falls into place with other ways I’ve seen people treat her in fanworks and discussions. My comment wasn’t meant to be accusatory in any way, so much as just an observation of a potential unconscious bias. I hope that makes sense.
@@mochasumi idk man , i personally think that alphys was annoying not in personality but annoying in that...she paused the game non stop with her messages which were totally vapid too , like anime reviews and all . if she didnt do that i really dont think people would be annoying . if it were misogyny would people love UNDYNE so much? the super strong macho type insane warrior ?? or suzie in deltarune ? or queen ? etc etc . also the appeal of the gaster mystery is what makes people cling to him so much . like if he had the same mysterh but instead of the former scientist he was like...idk asgore's former brother in arms people would say ''uh look at *gerson* taking all the credit ! i mean hes a turtle , how would he even move to be a wariior? a humanoid skeleton makes much more sense-'' and you get the picture . i dont want to be accusaroty either , but i feel like a lot of people kinda rush to ad hominems ''its misogyny , its racism , its homophobia'' etc without really thinking about...the actual characters and writing you know? like , ive seen people really annoyed with gay characters but ive never seen anyone annoyed with captain holt from brooklyn 99 if you know that show , and its not like his gayness is subtle , there are whole episodes about it
I think it's funny that the different authors theory supposes that Gaster... Succeeded in bringing the monsters who fell down in his time back to life and was like "oh well back to messing around with something else". Guy invented immortality supposedly and then rather then further those experiments.... Did something else instead?
Yeah, that's another thing that makes it all feel rather odd to me. I just think the immortality thing is a reach that adds nothing to the story, creates way too many questions. Especially since... y'know, endogeny exists and blows holes in that theory since the Dog Marriage's parents are a part of it. Honestly, I just think it's funny how many people got so aggressively angry and obviously didn't even watch my video and felt they had to whiteknight Sock Muppet, because I made it clear that I didn't want people to harass him. :p Because I genuinely don't want people to do so and simply feel that it's important in fan discussions to be open to critique when it comes to theories and open discussion. But people got offended at the mere existence of a video that provides counterevidence that they threw ad hominem attacks and accused me of starting a ~gang war~ and like... guys, chill out. Fan discussions and disagreements are healthy and you don't need to throw an explosive fit. I'm not upset or intimidated, just perplexed. Gang war just sends me. And the guy who got mad because I pointed out their ad hominem as if tumblr invented it when it's a logical fallacy that's been known for ages.
i mean the bits of dialog that's not him being a spooky mysterious guy i wouldn't put it past him, he's probably smart enough to know immortality was pointless especially for monsters seeing most live for quite a while (maybe forever for ghosts or skeletons) and or decided he can't really know if they are immortal till like a long time in the future and he didn't expect to stop existing in his world.
I admit, I didn't pay much attention when this video came out because I was busy, so now that I paid attention to the title and beginning, I wonder if people really have doubts about who left the lab messages or if they are just projecting this into their favorites characters because they want more of them.
Ive been waiting for this video to come out when you announced it!! So glad its here. The Writing on the Walls theory video felt really slanderous to Alphys and I hated it when they kept referring to Alphys as a fraud. Alphys has been so mistreated in the fandom and Im glad shes getting the recognition she deserves!
To me she is so much more than an fraud , now i remember that she activated an jetpack on the phone for frisk. dang we need more fanart of frisk flying an jet pack. also she can do alot of things like make icecream out of seeweed i think. man i need to play the game again.
I see what you mean, but personally I thought of the alphys is a fraud, as a part of the theory. For me it was interesting to see how they interpreted her character. I see a lot of comments saying how people ruined alphys because they want gaster, but honestly Toby made it really confusing too as well, I mean there is literally an entry 17, which is gaster's. And we know he was a scientist, most people will connect the dots (when you see two ways of speaking, you may think one is gaster). But all that to say I agree alphys is left out of too much discussions, but I don't play people for it.
@@AscafunI'm referring to the parts where he makes it sound like Alphys is a bumbling idiot who doesn't know what she's doing. Always referring to her as a fraud who can't do anything right and can only copy Gaster. When she's created a phone that can serve as a dimensional box, jetpack, and a blaster. And other devices such as the hot fridge. Entry 17 isnt even accessible in the True Lab in main game. You have to go to a special room that is unaccesible. Gaster has a way different way of speaking though as pointed out in the video. Speaking with all caps and spacing or wing dings. Alphys has been shown speaking with both proper grammar and no proper grammar via her text messages and her written message. Any average first time player will obviously think all the entries are Alphys. Suddenly throwing in Gaster, which they woukd not know about at all just muddies Alphys character arc in the story
@tropicalpunch49 Yeah I guess people tend to forget about her creations (if I had to guess, probably because mettaton reveals that she faked it all) But yeah, for me it was alphys, just saying that I do understand people thinking it's gaster.
@@kingofdemons948 The community just remember Alphys as the one who created Mettaton and Flowey, but they ignore that she is the one that experimented with determination and the souls
I think it's more the fact that every significant accomplishment she has ends up being a lie, several of which end up inflicting great pain and suffering on others. In the kindest possible light, she's the Toriel of the Amalgams but won't let them leave unless you force her arc. Really she's a psychopath who locked them in her basement for years and that's not even mentioning the utter hell she inflicted upon Asriel.
@@Nulonistic she made a great deal of accomplishments, look at Mettaton for example. And she isn’t a psychopath, you think she enjoys having to take care of the amalgamtes? Imagine the mental toll that took on her. And she didn’t “Inflict” hell onto Asriel. She unknowingly created Flowey and by the time she realized what happened it was too late.
This was definitely an important video to make. When I started watching this video, I was confused that people thought that the true lab entries were written by Gaster; I always believed it was Alphys and I still do. Gaster’s cool and all, but Alphys is a more important character to Undertale, at least, and shifting the focus away from Alphys to suggest that the two most used characters in the UT fandom (sans and Gaster) are so important is just stupid bias. I hope people give more respect to everyone’s favorite nerdy lizard after this video
Tbh, I'm kinda relieved that so many people are like, "Wait, people think that?" But sadly, as you can see by several of the comments here, that isn't universal. There are enough people who genuinely want to insert Gaster into a story arc that has no bearing on him, who think this somehow improves Alphys' character. I've seen that argument in a few places and it baffles me, tbh.
yea this makes more sense, i think what makes the other video so compelling is the framing/editing and the fact that it involves gaster. It's the little details that make you realize it doesn't have to be two authors. "He is a character you can go the entire game without knowing about, so why would Toby make him the true driving force behind a sequence of events that are central to Alphys' development arc?"
i was eating yogurt like a total nerd while watching this video and i have a feeling alphys would do the same anyways, great analysis! i hate it when people decide to give alphys's actions to gaster for whatever reason, so i'm glad you mad this analysis. it was very well-researched and inspires me to make analysis's like this someday.
My first thought about those entries on my first playthrough is that they've been written by Alphys, never thought that they were written by someone else because if they were (especially Gaster), we would have found them in a different room or they would talk about something that doesn't match with her personality.
Alphys is so important to the pacifist run's theme that I think the fandom ignoring/hating her has contributed to a lot of the oversimplification of the game's message into just "violence bad" rather than a more nuanced take on how to care about things responsibly. It is so clear within the text of the game that Alphys is supposed to represent the type of person who would love Undertale. She is the most relatable main character to the average rpg player. I think the reason why she is hated so much (besides misogyny) is because we don't want to admit that she's a commentary on us. There is a reason why the deciding factor separating a pacifistic neutral run from a true pacifist run is the alphys date/true lab segment. There's a reason why monsters literally cannot be free until she learns to love herself. There is a reason why she is the character who created flowey. There is a reason why she is important.
Ppl love the goat boy but don’t seem to understand the ending just left Flowey to a fate worse than death all alone in the underground (besides mushroom man and snowman). The game’s supposed message of violence being bad becomes null when we consider that morally gray actions, messed up experiments, and 2 children ending their lives for others is what saves the monsters.
Oh, that's a great point, though! Alphys is a fantastic example of the core themes of Undertale and how even people who make huge mistakes can change and improve. That's a core theme that shines through a lot of the cast. Like how Mettaton treated his friends and family like shit once he became a star, but in the end reaches out to them and includes them in his life again or how Undyne went from being so hostile toward Frisk that she told them they should give up their life to genuinely enjoying their company.
i think you overstate how much someone's dislike of alphys could play a part in their injection of gaster into the true lab entries but the actual analysis of their place in the narrative and capacity for storytelling and characterisation is great
I've seen a few comments that have their perception of Alphys color their approval of the theory that Gaster did the DT experiments first, saying that it adds to her arc because she's a lying scammer.
I'd be inclined to agree if I hadn't seen it happen again and again over the years. Sadly, this video was also partially made because the recent Writing on the Wall theory is but the latest example of this topic coming to light, and I wanted to have an easily digestible video that points out the problems with the angle of two writers of the entries and other things (e.g. how it doesn't mesh with how Toby characterizes Gaster).
really glad this video was made! despite the fact that i did really enjoy watching the other video that likely sparked this response (a lot of non-alphys points made were interesting, and i'm a sucker for any long-form undertale/deltarune content), how heavily a lot of the points relied on alphys being incompetent kinda soured my view on the theory as a whole. this video does a great job at clarifying a lot of details in the true lab
Yeah, like... I'm not saying the other video had no merit or that it was poorly made. The problem is a lot of it seemed to be made in bad faith where Alphys was concerned.
... Like. Doesn't Alphys give a speech immediately after you activate the elevator about how *she* was asked to investigate Souls? And she feels guilt about the amalgamations. And... are people really that determined to not give Alphys credit for literally anything?
Yes. It's founded mainly on the idea that the entries are not all written in the same grammatical style, when Sans alternates between normal grammar and text in serious moments and Alphys herself is shown to both write in proper grammar with her letter and Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 Review in Deltarune and lazier texts on the Undernet (and even then, sometimes she uses all caps or Talks Like This).
@Dorked I mean that's a fair mistake I suppose but one of if not the most famous line in Undertale features Sans breaking his lower-case habit (Should be burning in hell). As you've pointed out, different characters use different grammatical styles, that is extremely prevalent.
@@Beegsire She is a serial and compulsive liar. She lied to Asgore about Mettaton. She lied to the citizens of the underground about their relatives fate. She lied to the player about everything in Hotland. She lied to Undyne about her human interests. She lied to the player about the soul power necessary to leave the Underground. She lied to Mettaton about their new body. She lies during your date repeatedly. Her primary character flaws/traits are her dishonesty and her insecurity and they almost always go hand in hand. Her first instinct in every situation is to lie in order to make herself look better because she fears the truth will make her unloveable. And once she created Flowey and the Amalgamates, she was right. Locking living beings in your basement and inflicting an eternity of suffering on a dead child are utterly unforgiveable crimes.
I think you should make a mettaton analysis because there a literally 0 on youtube and i also think he is very interesting character-wise. Great video btw, I love all the content dedicated the underappreciated characters rather than just sans again and again. :D
I'm glad this video was made, there are some comments under the other theory video pointing out the flaws in logic, but its very helpful to have a well made video outlining it. Thank you! Regardless of theory crafting and having fun, the reason I dislike the other theory, aside from how it shafts Alphys and all her accomplishments, is the wording. Any time flimsy logic is brought up, the person in the video says things like "it HAS to be this way because of the timeline I made, otherwise its bad writing and Toby is a bad writer." I've seen a few people use this logic. They bring up a point, then say that anything opposing it would mean the creator is a bad writer. It's ludicrous, honestly. It's far worse if the True Lab entries are not written by Alphys, THAT would be bad writing. People need to remember Undertale is meant to be enjoyed by everyone, including new players who don't know the lore and FUN values stuff. Thanks again for the video! It's a good watch
The only fraud Alphys ever did was lying about Mettaton being an AI that she programmed. MTT isn't software, he's a ghost in a machine. Yes, I know that's pretty much Ryle, but my point stands. Aside from that and lying to Frisk, Alphys is NOT a fraud overall. She's a brilliant engineer who didn't stay in her lane and made promises she couldn't keep.
@@Dorked And you're right, that's giving her way too little credit. Especially considering that, if Alphys had the foresight to come up with a way to measure the DT intake levels for each of the monsters, she could've avoided the Amalgamates fiasco and instead created a cure for Falling Down. Hell, that could still happen, and it'd be a really good drug for humans to take who have Anxiety or Depression.
@@ethicalapemen3686and also thinking that i could also be that in the post-true pacifist stuff, she with much more confidence and likely help from human scientists and what not, looks to salvage the DT experiment, with the thing you said of proper DT inputing to monsters so they don't melt, or even figure out a way to undo the amalgamates melting down and fusing, even if its not fully perfect. And even imagining that with the fangame Yellow, im even imagining that unintentionally, Kanako there can be an example, like her Receiving far less DT than the other monsters before, like she got injected lightly as the monsters were about to go home but before they turned to amalgmates, however her Amalkanako while still left melty, doesn't fuse with others and maybe hint that her being Boss monster, helped her handle DT better than most.
I will never forget how this video was LITERALLY whipped together in 2 weeks because Dorked was really salty about the writing on the wall theory asdfkoik amazing video! Lookin forward to more
I've seen people say "the fandom makes Gaster the one behind everything", and I can see why. *Maybe* in Deltarune he's behind it all, but in Undertale Gaster's significance to the greater plot is likely small. I wonder how far you could go with the whole "Gaster is behind everything" mindset. Now I wanna see some crack theory that Gaster is the true mastermind of basically all Video Games, or something like that. That'd be funny to me atleast.
I'm so glad someone made this video. The amount of people I've seen take things from Alphys' character to give them to Sans and Gaster goes back even farther than this, but that theory was probably the most blatant example of it. I get people's want to tie everything to Gaster but this particular case is icky to me.
undertale fans are not ready for this, but the urge to make gaster responsible for all the cool and clever things and have alphys be responsible for the failed derivative things is... kind of misogynistic. let alphys have her own accomplishments. she's a capable scientist in her own right.
i was looking all over for this, and this was what i was bothered about by the theory maker who made the vdieo in question!!! the only takeaway that the theorymaker had for Alphys was that she lied and that was the only thing he reduced her down into. It's a component to her character and it was really frustrating, even though I found some of his other ideas interesting.
I was actually hoping you would address this misconception. I really enjoy your rational takes and use of Occam's razor to explain the game's intentions. I dislike Alphys personally, but her accomplishments are her own. I hope one day we will get a "true lab" section for Gaster too, so that there would be less misconceptions and mix-ups regarding these two scientists. Thanks for the cool video, it was very much needed :)
"Gaster wrote the True lab entries" huh?? i thought it was abundantly clear that the only entry that is written by Gaster is the one that isnt accessible.. the erased one, the one literally written in wingdings.. everything else was Alphys, thats how ive always interpreted it, thats how every single person ive seen until now has interpreted it, including letsplayers, the amalgamates and the true lab are basically the only characterization she gets beyond just "funny (and sometimes creepy) science dork that watches too much anime"
The whole idea for the theory just baffles me. All the entries read as if Alphys wrote them, they all fit in nicely to the story and the arc, the only exceptions being those couple weird entries which don't fit but I'm pretty sure they're not even in-game anyway. Anyone but maybe like the humans, skeletons and the in-betweens is just forgotten about and considered to "not be important" for some reason... I did have this discussion with a friend about how "Alphys sucks" but the only reason for thinking that was most likely the lack of understanding of Alphys overall (which I found out to be the case after pulling out a whole wall of Lore), which is honestly a shame. The characters are all great, and for Alphys to be pushed aside for someone who's just been gutted across everywhere and nowhere and a short bonehead is kinda sad and makes me miss the older fandoms works that weren't always centered around them.
THANK YOU. I’m a gaster enthusiast but he was 100% already “dead” by the time the true lab experiments started happening. the only entry that could reasonably be his is the one in wingdings (which I think was about a different experiment n likely where alphys got “the blueprints” she mentions from). the others all make complete n total sense as alphys presenting her solo work professionally but slowly losing control until she breaks down n can’t manage to keep up appearances anymore. people are ABSOLUTELY not giving her enough credit, it doesn’t even make sense that gaster would’ve done the same experiments as her in the first place
Bro the fact that this video had to be created to explain something I thought was pretty obvious is kinda surprising. Like I honestly thought we all agreed it was Alphys lab therefore it was her entries.
Yeah! Sure! The blueprints that suddenly appeared in her lab, surely the previous royal scientist who created the core worked from snowdin or something.
I definitely feel like the UT/DR fandom is way too eager to latch onto Gaster when it comes to anything, even when doing so would ruin the narrative, so I'm glad to see this video addressing that. This actually does make me wonder how many people who have played Undertale at all know who Gaster is, I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if it's a small minority because of how unlikely it is you'll hear about him in a normal playthrough
If I did the math correctly, there's a less than 4% chance of finding out Gaster even exists ( the followers also have a chance to appear). However to find all the important lore about him it's a less then 1/1000000 chance
I will say, when I was gathering footage for my Gaster video, it was *really* annoying, because even with the corresponding fun values, there is only a slim chance for the followers to appear. Mysteryman is even worse.
Hell, I fear the day when Gaster gets explored more in Deltarune, and the fandom erupting in anger if he’s not portrayed exactly the way they thought he was for years.
@oranjaglad8648 This is 100% gonna happen since so many folks' impression of him is heavily derived from fanon content over the years. It's already happened with the recent Valentine's letters where people are downright insistent that that mysterious letter wasn't written by him because "it doesn't feel like something he'd say"... as if we know that much about him at all?
^ Not every game is written by Scott Cawthon. Some games have cohesive narratives that can be easily understood in a single playthrough (or two) without digging for secrets.
Also, Gaster ''writes'' the numbers as whole words(Seventeen, not 17). Whatever other Gaster entries that existed at some point are not visible to us. (I say ''writes'' because it seems Gaster is actually dictating and recording his entries, based on the garbage noise)
Literally never heard the theory that gaster wrote half the entries and I personally never held it, like it crumbles under the smallest scrutiny and it's heavily implied it's all Alphys anyway. What were people thinking???
I think the other video's production values and presentation played a big part in it. It's clear there was thought put into it in that it was very meticulously constructed, but the problem is the evidence ignores very blatant counter evidence. I didn't even touch upon the ink being wet in Asgore's journal because I really just wanted to focus on the greater argument regarding Alphys and Gaster that existed even before the Writing on the Wall video, but I also felt that the fact that so many people were swayed while missing all the counterevidence made it worth making a video on the subject because enough misinformation was spread. It can be very easy to forget what was in the original game, and I think it's healthy to step back, look at what's actually in the game, and consider writing and story structure and what makes the most sense in the form of a cohesive narrative.
15:05 You know, I've always just assumed that Gerson IS a Boss Monster. Think about it: he's lived unfathomably long, at least long enough to have participated in the War of Humans and Monsters, which seems to have occurred hundreds if not thousands of years ago. I don't care what species you are, not even turtles live that long. There's also nothing in the game that suggests that Boss Monsters have to look like goats, there could be other types of Boss Monsters. He has an uncanny awareness of the mechanics of the world he lives in, not unlike Asgore knowing that humans can relive events over and over (although in both cases, that could be chalked up to experience rather than what kind of monster they are.) Finally, consider the fact that Boss Monsters only age and die after they have children to pour their life force into. In the Deltarune universe, Gerson has a son, and guess what? He's dead. Edit: well, I probably should have watched that entire section before commenting since you already brought it up, lol. But I still stand by the fact that Gerson not being a goat monster is no reason to assume he can't be a Boss Monster. I see a lot of people pointing to that fact like it's damning, when in reality such a requirement is mentioned zero times in Undertale. As for Dogamy and Dogaressa, I tend to think the whole Nose Nuzzling Champ thing is a legitimate plot hole that Toby just missed. He wanted to make a joke/foreshadow the relationship between Asgore and Toriel, and ignored the timeline of events to make it fit. Either that, or the Dogi are much older than they look. But I doubt they're Boss Monsters, else we would get the heart-exploding animation that we get with Toriel and Asgore when they die. Either way, I think sometimes people try way too hard to make contradictory events work in a timeline when the more obvious answer is that Toby just made a tiny mistake. It's a problem in this and many, many other fandoms. Sometimes, part of loving a work is admitting that there are goofs from time to time. The Undertale universe isn't real, its creators aren't infallible, and sometimes an impossibly old dog is just an impossibly old dog, or a fish being comatose for an unnaturally long time is just a contrivance without much thought put into it. To paraphrase the Jojo fandom: Toby forgot.
Yeah, the boss monster theory is an interesting angle, but it really depends on if Alvin and any of his other kids exist offscreen in Undertale. We just don't know. I've also seen it argued that part of why he's still alive is because he's always in his shop. xD
@@DorkedI personally believe in the “Gerson is a Boss Monster” headcanon, and my two guesses for how Gerson’s alive in UT but dead in DR are: 1. The timeline is just different, the same way you have stuff like Rudy still being alive and Asriel being a college student at the same time MK is a teenager. 2. The concept of a Boss Monster doesn’t exist in DR. And of course both of these could potentially be true at the same time.
I always just assume Gerson live in UT but died in DT have something to do with the fact that he participated in the war. I was going to say he might have took a human soul during that time but that would be in conflict with the Waterfall lore drop. Well, unless they hided or not aware of it that is
ALPHYS FANS ASSEMBLE She is a imperfect lil lizard who deserves love and she wrote the entries burn me at the stake i will not stand gaster and sans credit steal
Thank you SO MUCH for this video. As a huge Alphys stan that doesn't care all that much about Gaster (no shade to his fans of course, I just personally am not very interested in him) I get so tired of people attributing her experiments to him especially with how pretty clear cut the game makes it that all the entries were written by Alphys. Like, not only does it pretty blatantly go against the text of the game, but it would make no sense for Toby to have made one of the biggest story parts of True Pacifist to so heavily involve a character people originally had to edit their save files to learn anything about and like you said, over-complicates the story a lot. I get that Undertale fans hunger for answers to all the game's mysteries (I do too) but Gaster is one of those things in Undertale that's supposed to be mysterious and lack answers. Trying to inject him into plot moments and events that clearly have nothing to do with him ruins the mystery.
Tbh, that would apply to any argument of other characters writing some of the entries, e.g. Sans. I do think Sans is aware of the DT experiments and has worked with Alphys on some projects, but I think people are so conditioned for big plot twists and layers of misdirection that it's harder to take simpler story arcs at face value.
oh thank you so much for this that theory has been paining me with how much i disagree with it. i needed something that just had all the facts to turn to. thank you for the healing.
I'm happy to help! A lot of people were trying to say that other video was fact in my Alphys analysis, and it made me think, "hm, maybe I should respond to the whole Gaster and true lab arguments in more detail, since this theory is hardly the first time it's happened."
You are so right about the Gaster insertion into these experiments being clumsy as an analysis, we really gotta remember the occam's razor sometimes. Alphys' story in the true lab is my favourite part of the game because of how well it explains and connects everything together. And it's genuinely so creepy and horrifying on its own too, I think we oughta meet the story on its own terms every so often because strictly from a narrative perspective it makes for a much more fulfilling story that than inserting secrets and niche lore into it. Gaster stuff is fun, I'd say way more so for Deltarune where it's more relevant. But Alphys having much deeper secrets than what was on the surface was so genuinely cool and interesting to me, and like you said it's a more elegant story, it's a better story than 'actually plot twist this was all done by a character that's not even in the game!' And yeah I noticed the different grammar and style in the entries too and always appreciated how they told a story of their own and how they established the tone for her character and research! Alphys is my absolute favourite character in the game for this whole storyline and the depth of character, and I'm so happy to see this video outlining this about her! Thanks for making this
the only way it works is if all memory of gaster was erased and reality rewrote everything he did to adjust to that, changing all of gaster's accomplishments to be alphys'. the problem with this is that there is no evidence that nobody remembers gaster. there is instead more evidence proving otherwise, but people keep hinging their theories on this fanon idea that was never proven.
Commenting for the algorithm! Also, this video's really well-put-together, gets your points across clearly and has good evidence backing it up. You did a great job here, Dorked, as per usual. :]
I've said it before, I'll say it again. If Gaster were the one to do the DT Experiments and Flowey, it would make the story ACTIVELY WORSE and be BAD WRITING. Alphys' arc is all about being honest and owning up to her mistakes--WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT OF JUST GOING 'WHOOPSY-DOODLE, SOMEONE ELSE DID ALL THAT STUFF!!!!'
I’m a day late, and I won’t be able to watch the video in its entirety right away, but I love analysis/theory content, and I appreciate what you do for the community
Please don't use this video as an excuse to harass the other theory maker! I may disagree with the their wholeheartedly, but I prefer constructive discussion over hate, and the big sigh at the start was meant to be a bit. If you like what I do, consider supporting me on Patreon: patreon.com/dorked I have an Undertale webcomic here: invertedfate.com/chapters You can watch my Gerson analysis here: ruclips.net/video/XPqxqRxFrfU/видео.html My original Alphys video is here: ruclips.net/video/2q3u1VffIOk/видео.html If you like Persona, check out my fic, The Crow Cries at Midnight: archiveofourown.org/works/48777436/chapters/123046261 If you wanna catch my streams, you can follow me at: twitch.tv/derpisms
True Lab Entries Pastebin: pastebin.com/Mr68qCp7
Undertale 2024 Newsletter Valentines: drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/10I1SDR5KxsqyxD8wqOVYf0STT0hJvB65
You are a braver SOUL than I am. (*salutes*)
Alphys is one of the most underrated characters in Undertale, probably more than Asgore.
I'm gonna use this video as an excuse to start watching even more of your theory videos. :)
I like to think Gaster was working on deciphering Souls, but he was too caught up or more interested in the entry 17 experiment (and either lacking human souls or not having enough material to study) to actually do anything.
And the idea that Alphys perfected the blueprints just makes her look more intelligent.
This isn't important but I took a screenshot of the video so I could show my friend what I was watching and I caught it at 666 likes, just thought I should share :]
The single BEST argument that not all the stuff in the True Lab was Alphys' work is her "using the blueprints" line, and even then, it's more of a "I'm using leftover equipment and i'm not confident" rather than "my predecessor solved everything i'm just gonna do what he did."
Anyway, thank you @Dorked
This video is a big relief.
I swear the fandom has been abandoning Occam's Razor in favor of Occam's Rube Goldberg machine.
i could be either or if its for something that important those blueprints wouldn’t have just been leftovers
Had the same thoughts.
But even then I think people massively underestimate how much work actually goes into the phases between having just blueprints and a finished product that produced the desired results.
People treat it like blueprints are like an Ikea manual that anyone could just assemble and then Alphys messes the whole thing up by injecting to much Determination.
Even If Gaster had previously laid the theoretical foundations for the research Alphys still contributed huge amounts to it by actually building the machine, getting the DT and performing the experiments.
Yes it didnt work in the end, but that could have been treated as a huge breakthrough milestone If Alphys wasnt so anxious about what the others would think of her now.
with Deltarune, and the googer world at the start of the game having the same ""material"" as the dark fountains, and the dark fountains being made with Determination, it's not unreasonable to assume that the blueprints *were* made by Gaster and that he just used the Determination for an entirely different experiment from the avenue Alphys took.
@@gremlin2239
Considering the DT extractor hadnt left the blueprint stage and was only completed by Alphys, I think its safe to say that he didnt get very far with these experiments before he had his accident.
"no No NO NO NO NO NO" -- Alphys, 20XX
Everyone talks about Entry 17, but 16 is where it's at. Just look at this absolute masterpiece of an entry.
Honestly, that entry is proof enough that her emotional state influenced how the entries were written.
@@Dorked Exactly! It's far from a normal way (or time) to write an entry, it's pretty neat character development.
Why did I read that in Cleveland’s voice?
@@birdboy16 lol
imagine this but as a choir quartet singing each no
Another very minor point is the fact that Gaster's confirmed entry is called "Entry number seventeen", whereas all of the other entries are "Entry number 1", "Entry number 2", etc.
That's actually a fantastic point, though. The number is spelled out.
I'll bet the reason Gaster even got an entry seventeen was as a reference to Alphys's scrapped entry 17, since Gaster's whole deal in Undertale is "What if cut content was diagetic?"
Well, the writing on the wall theory that this video is debunking said that the entry seventeen we find is the files is a recording of gaster dictating the entry, not the entry itself.
@@aimfulRenegade true. wow that really adds to the idea that gaster's entry does just belongs to a whole different series of experiments.
That's because it's a recording it's being spoken
Genuinly hope Gaster has his own lab in the Deltarune bunker where you can read all HIS journal entries (which are clearly from a different experiement than the True Lab notes) in a manner similar to the true lab, and where Alphys's unused Entry 17 has been swapped for his somehow, because I think that would be the best punchline.
I had the same thought. 😌
That would be so poetic
Not only would this be very fun for those in the know, it would also be very interesting lore-wise on the connection between deltarune and undertale. Now I really want it to happen even though it most definitely won’t lol
Maybe his entries would be like "voice recordings" or video tapes just like the Asriel and Chara ones we found in the True Lab, rather than writings. I've seen theories suggesting that Gaster's entry 17 is actually not written but rather recorded and that's how it is "written" in his font. Meanwhile, when we see Gaster speaking to us in Deltarune, it's all written rather than him speaking directly.
counterpoint: you sound exactly like what a confident alphys would sound like.
this video was in fact created by alphys herself /j
@@verity_amo Trust nobody. Not even yourself.
Au with assertive alphys, with her standing upright and all that
@@dylanzlol7293 yeah i need a confident alphys back
i mean her past self did so i gotta see it again atleast
@@dylanzlol7293 so... basically.... true ending(pacifist) Alphys?
i love how this entire debunk can be summarized as "this is wrong because there was already a sensible and simple explanation of it in the main text of the work" lol.
kinda reminds me of jojo fandom and the araki forget stuff somehow.
Yeah, I think there's this desire in a lot of fandoms (not just Undertale) for big, complex plot twists and lore reveals, but sometimes that's just not good storytelling. And I say that as a Kingdom Hearts fan. :P I know big, weird plot twists all too well.
@@Dorked yeah. i'm all for theories, speculation, overanalysis and whatnot, but not where it's unnecessary and could be borderline misinformation. a lot of people nowadays seem to believe theory and fan-canon are synonyms so people make and read those kinds of stuff with that in mind.
i'd rather just read and/or write fanfic if that was the case...
@@DorkedYES, THANK YOU!
Alphys comes up with one of the most prominent themes in the game(determination,or at least the extracted stuff of it) and Flowey who's responsible for freeing all monsters and yet she's treated dirty smh.
People really seem to want every indie game to have some deep hidden twist a-la FNAF lore or something when Toby's writing is generally more straightforward. We have the Spamton Sweepstakes stuff, but that mostly just builds on stuff we already had to work with and is fun supplementary material and characterization.
It’s cause we find her boring, yes there are *SOME* of us who hate her but they are annoying gremlins who can’t comprehend morality. No I hate her because I find nothing enjoyable or interesting about her character and the interesting things that are there feel like they have been forced upon her character (no this is not to say they don’t “fit” or don’t make sense for her character, they do but they are concepts that are applied, attatched to and sometimes created by a character I find to be incredibly boring).
This along with the fact she created my favorite characters just makes it worse, she’s *S O* important and undertale wants me to care about this “important” character she’s boring in the game and any fancontent she’s in is only interesting due to how she affects other characters.
Edit: about chara cause I’ve seen some people bring em up WE DONT THINK THEY ARE EVIL (canonically) WE USE THEM AS A VILLAIN BECAUSE THEY ARE A VOID-MOUTHED-EVIL-SPEAKING-EVIL-LOOKING-DEMON-CHILD-FROM-THE-DEPTHS-OF-HELL.
“Why not use flowey” he’s weaker, he’s a joke in the fandom (often getting tortured and overpowered by everyone’s favorite skeleton) and he gets humiliated and killed off in the genocide route (the route that has chara’s big villain moments) in a cutscene you don’t control (making a lot of people interpret the moment as chara taking control and turning their previous friend into powder thus making them more evil).
So yeah show me a villain I can use that isn’t my favorite humanity-hating enby demon 👁👁
You used parenthesis wrong 🤓 lemme nerd out. So so, parenthesis are used for many reasons, but the ones we commonly use is for additional context. We use them to add on to our sentences, but the sentence can still work without them. Let's use this: The dog is jumping. If you wanted to add more context, you'd use parenthesis like this: The dog (whom I adopted 3 years ago) is jumping. Notice how the sentence itself wasn't changed? For you, the sentence should actually be "...in the game. Determination (or at least extracted stuff of it) and Flowey, who's responsible for..."
@@Lagw1020 Thanks.
@@resumethyvideo7631 Honestly, you can dislike Alphys if you want... That is not what is really been discussed here.. Is just that disliking a character is not the same as erasing the contributions the character made to the plot just because I hate them/dislike them. Is immature and goes against what the person that created the game you like wanted with that character. I dunno but I respect what Toby intended with his characters because I like the game he did.
At best, you can MAYBE connect Gaster to the blueprints for the DT extractor. If you follow that theory it has the interesting implication that Gaster might have been looking into similar stuff before he fell, but of course never got the opportunity to do any experiments on the subject himself.
Given what we know about dark worlds, that's entirely possible, too, and not something I want to rule out entirely.
@@Dorked
Wow I had never thought about it like that before.
Yeah, in order to open a dark world you need Determination, which Monsters in Undertale famously lack.
So If Gaster had researched them it would make sense hed also be looking Into ways to get Determination.
Good point!
Makes you wonder If the only reason Deltarune Gaster was succesful as opposed to Undertale Gaster is because monsters can naturally have more DT in the Deltarune universe.
@tobiasbayer4866 I think possibly it's due to the lack of Core in the Deltarune universe, he didn't fall in. My head canon is that the Undertale universe is what happens when the 1st fallen child is the older sibling to Asriel, and the Deltarune universe is what happens when the 1st fallen child is the younger sibling. Perhaps they managed to leave the underground far earlier, and Kris' ability to separate their souls from their body is related to how they escaped the underground with Asriel, but that's a reach since the underground isn't mentioned, and it's heavily implied that Kris grew up on the surface with everyone.
No doubt the blueprints were made by Gaster, when Flowey uses it as a second head he does a laser like a Gaster blaster and in the Asriel fight as an attack called hyper goner, goner being in the names of characters appearing with fun value. It doesn't look like any of Alphys or Mettaton attack and there would be no reason for the extractor to be able to attack if it was made entirely by Alphys since she only accidentally ever harm you troughout the game.
As for Mettaton attacking you then, since some monsters like Undyne spars and she wanted Mettaton to look as much like a killer robot than possible she may have put his attacks, but even then it's because Mettaton goes off track.
My personal theory is that Gaster was looking into Time Travel and potentially interdimensional travel. Perhaps even theorizing that a vessel with enough of some bizarre quality could send information from the future to its past self. Part of me wonders if he's somehow connected to not just Deltarune vessel shenanigans, but Undertale's as well...
Through some mishap or another, he gets sent by his machine to nowhere specific, thus sending him nearly _everywhere._ And by some other fluke of fate, the crude schematics for a soul harvesting machine ended up in the hands of Alphys, who then put these theories into practical use
TLDR: Gaster was a mad scientist, Alphys was a mad engineer. Well, less mad, more sad
i love gaster as much as the next guy but it bothers me when people erase other characters out of the game to make room for him. great video, thanks for making this!
^
People fr see anything mildly lore related and go: GUYS GASTER SEE LOOK ITS HIM and overcomplicate the story just as an excuse to ignore any clever character design /:
@@spudthefith Their idealized version of Gaster does not overcomplicate the story, and in fact, it simplifies the story so much that it reads like a fanfic.
@@Grundrisse Yeah
Eh, "Writing on the wall" is still pretty solid imo.
FNaF and it's consequences have been disastruous for the lore-heavy Indie game community
Ive seen people defend the “Gaster wrote the entries!!!” Theory by saying “If you cant accept alphys is a fraud, then you don’t understand her character arc” and it boggles my mind. Alphys’ character arc is Alphys learning to come clean about her mistakes. She fucked up, and she knows it. But she cant just hide it forever, and she grows to face her mistakes head on. If these mistakes belonged to GASTER and not Alphys, it completely butchers Alphys’s arc and is just sloppy writing
Yeah, people saying it strengthens her arc... it just feels like an excuse. Alphys was never a complete fraud. She made Mettaton out of junk from the dump, turned a brick phone into a device with texting, dimensional storage, and a jetpack, and was able to discover a compound of human souls that gave them their power. She messed up, but she was also put to task in an unprecedented field and under a lot of pressure.
I dont even think her arc is about coming clean as a fraud.
Objectively speaking her research has been a huge breakthrough. It just had less than favorable side effects...
Its more about her avoiding to take responsibility and caring about her image, and how her friends perceive her.
Her arc isnt just about stopping to lie or smth, its to accept that she has to be true to herself even If she will risk that some people will like her less. And ultimately the real lesson is that people still like her regardless and it really was her lying that was hurting people and that she was worried for nothing.
@@tobiasbayer4866 that's literally the same thing as coming clean though
Yeah she came clean about her mistakes but not as a fraud who had no original research. There's a HUGE difference between those two
@@redactedinfo8557
No. Yes she comes clean, but she isnt a fraud. She isnt even really a liar, as she has simply ignored everyone thats asks about the amalgamations.
Thats a huge difference.
I remember when my brother believed in the "sans wrote some of the true lab entries" and one of the first all-lowercase messages is about working on mettaton's body and we laughed really hard
Not everything needs to be about Gaster, the fandom needs to realize that Sans and Gaster aren't the only people important to the lore of Undertale.
It sucks because I think Sans is a great character and Gaster is a compelling mystery, but you don't need to undercut Alphys to make him cool.
I think I would put a crown of truth on you and make you the queen of truth, if I had a crown :p@@Dorked
@@Dorked Yeah my thoughts exactly. You can have the mystery of Gaster while also acknowledging that Alphys, too, is important.
Ironic how the character that’s only mentioned without a clear-cut design is constantly shoved in everyone’s faces in the fandom.
Exactly! Though I do believe the theory that Faster had written some of the entries, I hate the fact people try to add Gaster and Sans every where.
one of my biggest gripes is that the undertale fandom will attribute some of the entries to gaster and then not blame him for what he did to the amalgams, instead deciding that it’s all alphys fault for some reason. thanks for clearing everything up that it was only alphys for the people who do think it was anyone else.
Yeah, that too! People always blame Alphys for the worst of it and then act like Gaster was a saint.
@@Dorkedit's quite ironic that the guy that is associated with the number of the devil is viewed as a saint
It’s like this fandom blaming Chara for the genocide route when it’s clearly the player’s fault for the events there.
@@oranjaglad8648 yeah but then they would say why not frisk since its a self insert or something
ok to be fair most theories attribute the amalgams to Alphys and gerson/dogamy and dogaressa to gaster
I have a feeling this comment section will end up getting a bit toxic,mostly from people who have an irrational hatred of Alphys.
Yeah, I suspect there will be a lot of people mad that I'm criticizing a theory they like, too, even though I tried to be respectful about it and avoid naming names.
Honestly, I feel like in most cases it's less "I hate alphys" and more like "I have this particular idea of gaster in my head and whenever I find anything even partially ambigous in ut I will do all I can to stuff this gaster in it no matter what, ignoring the general context of the scene "
@@Fannintendociccio1 Yeah, a lot of people really want Gaster to be a bigger dale in Undertale's story than he was likely meant to be (as it seems all the fun events overall are meant to foreshadow Deltarune, barring perhaps some of the sillier ones like the refrigerator call).
Undertale fandom be filled with ppl who hate moral ambiguity. Even if the characters they deem as morally superior can be just as “bad” as the ones they hate lol
Yeah this comment section is deemed to be filled with arguments and blatantly toxicity. I just wish people could just stick their opinions and call it a day
I think what also doesn't help is that so many people believe it's a canon fact that everyone forgot Gaster existed, even though that is never directly stated by any of his followers. Yes, there is Goner Kid with his whole "Have you ever thought about a world where you don't exist" but that primarily applies to him and the other Followers not specifically Gaster himself.
He was erased from/shattered out of reality but it is never said that the memory of him was erased too. This can be used as an easy excuse to say "well he actually did all that but people forgot so Alphys thought she was responsible instead" when there is, again, no actual evidence of this in the main story.
People need to remind themselves what was actually stated in the game and what is headcanon/fanon.
Gaster is very much a case where people accept popular fan interpretations as canon without looking into things more deeply.
There is actually evidence to back up Gaster's memory fading but not due to the time and space shatter it just due to time. in the core Wiki Papyrus says nobody knows where the ice blocks go. Undyne recalls and remembers that they go to Hotland, but only due to Alphys telling her. and alphys would be the only one aside from asgore and maybe other dog enemies (like the one throwing the ice) and other old monsters would remember the cores begining which WE KNOW gaster made. Newer monsters may know of the core but don't even know the basics as of why its cooled and how. This is evidence of knowledge among monsters simply being lost unless said knowledge was stashed somewhere. he doesn't need to be shattered to be forgotten but having been certainly helped speed the process.
also just because 1 person discovers a thing about the world, doesn't mean the person who discovered it second is any lesser and the base premise of that is stupid. You still have to understand the science you're performing in order to evolve and forward it and we have no proof that gasters experiments (if even there) was were fruitful
@@shortyfizlo. Papyrus has never gone to Hotland nor does he particularly enjoy the place. Which can explain why he doesn't know where the ice goes. And Alphys knows because she is directly responsible for maintaining it, as the Royal Scientist. People not knowing how the CORE works can also be chalked up to it not being a particularly interesting subject. Only that it gives electricity.
11:58 I just realized Undyne is the only character in this scene who is visibly struggling against Flowey with any success. Every little detail in this game is just so full of character.
After all she suplexed a boulder because she can.
Love how very consistent Gaster’s way of speaking is, it basically assures what is and isn’t his writing. I’ll say the mysterious Valentines message in the newsletter from somebody unnamed that people have obviously suspected to be gaster, likely isn’t him. It doesn’t match with the way he speaks in every single instance. There’s some other video on the whole thing that just kinda confirmed my ideas more valid so that’s a thing.
The thing about the "Gaster" valentine is that the Japanese version is not localized the same way that his other speech has been in the past, which tells me that it might be a red herring or something else is going on. It's very peculiar.
Nah out of all people JaruJaruJ had a great video and a set of comments describing why exactly it’s most definitely Gaster I know people have their gripes with him but he actually made some really solid points this time that the Japanese translation not being localized in the correct way doesn’t really mean much
@@Crackedcripple I think at the very least, there's a strong likelihood it's related to Gaster. I just find Toby's usually very deliberate w/ the localization teams, so it's a case of me not wanting to assume too much, so I decided not to include that specific valentine to err on the side of caution.
@@Crackedcripple man I read your name as Cracked Nipple I’m dying 😭
@@Dorked yeah that’s reasonable, but for me when you check out the legends of localization book that has a secret message in Wingdings on the CORE page from Gaster the style it’s written in is very similar to the valentine and it has led me to believe it’s probably him.
“IF YOU HAVE PIRATED THIS BOOK
I UNDERSTAND
I CANNOT LEGALLY CONDONE IT
BUT I UNDERSTAND
JUST TRY TO MAKE THE WORLD AROUND
YOU
A SLIGHTLY NICER PLACE I GUESS
BUT IF I MEET YOU SOMEDAY I MIGHT ASK YOU TO EMBARRASS YOURSELF OR BUY ME
FREE PIZZA UNTIL WE'RE COOL"
-Gaster’s secret message in the book, he’s a goofy guy after all
The thing that really annoys me about Gaster writing the entries is that Deltarune will likely give us way more Gaster, while Alphys will likely play a much smaller role, so giving the DT experiments to Gaster will just be a footnote compared to what he did in Deltarune while Alphys would lose her main achievement.
I think there's also something interesting to be said about how Alphys is the successor to Gaster in UT and Gerson in DR.
Yeah, plus with entry 17 being Gaster’s, it means there’s way more entries of his to explore. It’s exciting
@@Dorked That's true. This parallel could end up being important in Deltarune.
@@BelBelle468 Thank you for proving why it's more interesting for Gaster to not write the entries.
Alphys, the most lore significant character in Undertale, being sidlined for a character with zero presence in Undertale.
I think it really is a combination of people finding Alphys annoying, being drawn into the mystery of Gaster, and like... as I said in another comment, this desire for simple questions to have convoluted answers because of the precedent set by things like FNAF theories.
a complicated messy and realistic character with lots of screentime being overshadowed by a man that DOESN'T EVEN EXIST and only appears during very specific events is absolutely insane
its even more absurd how the ut fandom hates alphys for her mistakes and reduces her character only to her flaws but has no problem with fanon interpretations of gaster being evil and cruel. the double standards
There's so much buildup and hype around gaster for the past decade so people desperately want him to be as important as he is to them. Once he finally shows up in deltarune and does whatever weird shit he's gonna do, I think people will be satisfied and chill out with stuff like this
Ppl wanting more convoluted BS stories over more simple stories is something I’ll never get. FNAF’s story makes little sense and lost the plot. Same as KH’s. KH’s story isn’t too hard to understand but when you write a story vaguely, with holes you fill in later, it becomes overly complicated.
Ppl prefer potential and mystery to just regular stories. It kinda sucks
"The most lore significant character in Undertale" Stop tripping. That's obviously Asriel/Flowey. He's literally the cause of everything that happens in multiple ways. Not like Alphys isn't important, but she's not as important as Asriel is.
Personally the only thing I put Gaster to is the blueprints, I believe it was something he was working on in it's early stages before he fell, this would also give some credit to why Asgore gave Alphys the task very soon after becoming the royal scientist as it was already a planned work in progress that he wanted to come true and some work was already done to make it happen
I can buy Alphys iterating on older blueprints, and I did try to at least acknowledge the possibility even if I don't think it's conclusive. I don't think that necessarily makes her a fraud, though, since scientists often iterate on the works of their predecessors.
Dorked: The Fandom's Reality Check
As someone who really is not fond of Alphys, undercutting her ENTIRE CHARACTER ARC by saying she wasn't the one doing the DT experiments has always been a baffling concept to me. The timeline seemingly presented in the way the entries are shown is suspect, but people are definitely exaggerating the weirdness of it.
people want to see gaster everywhere so bad. the way i see it the point is that he is in the background, that he is hard to find, like a legend of sorts
Gaster's mystery seems like it'll be resolved in Deltarune, since I personally figure all the Gaster teasing was just to set up Toby's next project.
@@Dorked I believe this too
It's so crazy people keep saying Gaster wrote those entries, WHEN ALPHYS SAID SHE WAS THE ONE DOING THE EXPERIMENTS. It makes no sense to me. Gaster has ONE ENTRY, and it's a SECRET ONE, just like EVERYTHING RELATED TO HIM IS. What would be the consistency of everything gaster related being secret except these entries??? That Alphys ADMITTED TO MAKING, it's such an important part to her character, and people taking that from her just to push that into Gaster (or even sans??) for no reason makes me so upset :(.
I know it's fun to theorize, but let's not cost another character's lore for it.
Also, Entry Number 15 ends in a smiley face. o_o Alphys uses them a lot in her text messages, so it makes more sense for it to be her. Plus one of the lowercase entries is a direct followup to a proper grammar entry.
I agree lol
@@Dorked"Dark. Darker. Yet Darker : )"
People don't claim Alphys didn't do the experiments, they claim that they both conducted the same experiment. That's the whole point of the theory.
Not to mention Alphys has her own 17th entry.
You want to tell me people gaslighted themselves into believing Alpys isn't responsible for all the studies her whole arc is based around taking responsibility for?
I dont get how someone could think that the entries were wrote by gaster. This misconception is interesting...
VERY VERY INTERESTING
Tbh, it's because people take the grammatical shifts to mean two writers when Alphys is shown to write differently depending on her mood in the actual game.
@@Dorkedi mean the valentine cards were released after the theory and deltarune is a whole other universe so i get why some people thought this
Also another thing of note. Even if it took longer for Alphys to start experimenting with determination we see that when you kill Shyren there's just a second half left behind. So maybe they used that. It is the part seen in the amalgam fight
That's also a really good point! I should've mentioned that. Love when people add extra contributions. o>
...Wait, but that's not part of Shyren herself, but her manager?
Yep, the sprites say spr_shyren_agent
Not only that, you can see the agent in a oficial mettaton drawing, that with the fact that she isn't there in deltarune means that they're really diferent characters
that second half is actually her agent
I heard an headcanon that as lemon bread(shyren sister) is more similar to shyren agent(leech,slug thingy) than shyren(fish) herself, it means one of 2 things.
-
Shyren sister also has an agent, the other agent take a part of lemonbread body, while shyren sister is that big teethy and slimmy head(a little of Moldbygg fault), it would be fun if shyren sister is just scarier than her
-
Or shyren agent and lemon bread adopted shyren and are all sisters or something, I find the headcanon cute.
-
But again, is not like the agent is with them after the pacifist ending, maybe something happened, it would be fun if we know more about shyren in Deltarune, the only time we see her she's sick in bed
As someone with complete and utter Gaster brainrot, I fully agree with the analysis you've provided here. I watched the other video this one is in response to, and while some of the ideas there are interesting (like Flowey manipulating the power in True Lab to show Frisk a certain narrative) I wholeheartedly agree that those types of theories are of great disservice to both Alphys and Gaster. There are so many interesting fanworks theorizing on what Gaster may have done outside of creating the CORE, and those are so fascinating BECAUSE they have nothing to do with DT experiments. It's fresh and it's new, and they allow the two characters to have their own unique accomplishments. Something I came across recently was a tumblr post talking about comparisons between Gaster and Lucifer (thanks Toby for all the 666 references) and it's really good! To think that Gaster is comparable to Lucifer not in the way that he was an evil scientist, but because his pursuit for knowledge led him to disaster is such an interesting literary take that a lot of people tend to overlook. Probably because people don't or won't look at the story of Lucifer much closer than "he's the devil," instead of acknowledging that he was the angel of light who challenged his creator and was cast out for his insubordination and giving knowledge to God's creation. Provides some really interesting food for thought on what all G may have done while he was the Royal Scientist.
Yeah, I have no ill will toward people who spend their time theorycrafting and constructing longform videos. Even if I disagree with the other video overall, it had so much clear time and effort put into it. I just wish it didn't spend so much time discrediting and bashing Alphys as a part of its core arguments. Gaster is a fascinating character to speculate about, so I do understand why he draws so much attention.
This may be a reach, but if kris' many parallels to apples (like the forbidden fruit) and gaster's parallels to lucifer end up getting paid off at any point of the game, I might have an aneurysm.
It's just ABSURD to me, how much attention that video got and the amount of people praising it- when it misses so, so many obvious things.
It claims that Asgore hasn't gone in his home since Chara died, when the ink in his journal is still almost wet.
It claims that Alphys ONLY writes in lowercase, when there's that note right outside the True Lab.
It claims that Gaster wrote the entries, when Alphys plainly says that she's the one that named Determination.
They were SO tunnel-visioned on making a Fun Gaster Theory, that they completely ignored everything that disproved it. There's footage of them from when they were playing through the game, making note of the wording on the note in Asgore's kitchen, swapping between a simultaneous playthrough of pacifist and genocide they were doing, to come to the conclusion that Asgore hasn't been in his own home, adding it to a big list of evidence and notes they were gathering. They were clearly putting in a lot of work... but missed something as obvious as the journal in Asgore's room.
And that's just the surface level stuff. There's the other ways it completely falls apart if you think more about it.
Like, people remember Gaster's work. The CORE is still there and still functioning, there are people working there. So if Gaster found a way to cure monsters who had fallen down... why would anyone EVER consent to let their Fallen Down family members be used for Alphys's experiments, where she wants to wait for them to die to get the SOULs?! Why would Asgore allow monsters to Fall Down at all, if there's a cure ready to go? Why would he needlessly let monsters like Rudy Holiday die?
Why would you diminish Alphys to such a degree, by implying she's so stupid she can't even follow the simple directions of 'inject determination and wait?'
These are all fantastic observations! I think Rudy is a great example of why the immortality angle just doesn't really jive because, as you said, it opens way too many questions, and Gaster being forgotten was never confirmed and is even contradicted by the followers saying Asgore took a long time to replace him.
This, this, freaking this! I've been saying most of these things since the first video was released! (and more as I thought of more of the flaws!)
iirc, the dude made the argument that Alphys _wrote_ normally, but _typed_ in lowercase, and that the entries were electronic.
But beyond that, I agree with these criticisms.
confirmation bias lol
I mean its just a theory you dont have to get mad about it
I remember relating to Alphys a lot especially the whole anxiety about mistakes and being too scared to tell the truth. So it really made me sad to see people dimissing her character arc in favor of adding more stuff to Gaster that he really doesn't need. Very glad to see this video and happy at how good it turned out!
Toby Fox is very good at writing complex female characters and I hate seeing that being undermined by the fandom
based and same
It's saddening to see people's personal distaste in Alphys' personality influence their whole perception of the character. Alphys is unarguably one of the best written Undertale characters which says a lot given just how greatly written all characters are in UT.
PS - I find her nerdy personality adorable :P
I think a lot of the reason people dislike Alphys is because they see themselves in her, and not in a flattering way, tbh.
@@Dorked
Y'know how the saying goes:
*"People hate in others what they hate in themselves."*
As someone who likes the character, I can kind of see how people might be put off by her because of the reveal that she was staging obstacles in the Hotland arc in order to make herself a "hero" in the protag's story. Even though it was for sympathetic reasons and she does come clean in the end, it probably reinforced the notion of her being a "fraud". It did feel like a betrayal to me when I found out, but at the same time, I still found her endearing and sympathetic.
Hey just a friendly reminder that she inflicted existential torture on Asriel for what may have been thousands of years through his eyes!
I really just think she's overbearing, I actually like her in DR because she's a minor character who doesn't interrupt the game every 20 seconds with her undernet posts. Plus did she really need to have the 2 longest areas in the game dedicated to her plus a third smaller but still sizable area? Some of the other main characters (Asgore especially) only had half of an area to themselves at best.
Question! How do you feel about the “entry seventeen is a video recording” portion of the OG video?
Since it and “the golden flowers” are, imo, are the most interesting bits of the video, tho the latter would need a bit of restructuring to make sense again.
The recording angle is very valid and possible. As for the flower stuff, my biggest gripe is that buttercups are an entirely different flower and are known to be poisonous, and so Asgore drinking golden flower tea further cements that they are different.
I didn’t know people attributed the entries to Gaster, when I first played through the true lab I thought it was pretty clear that it was Alphys’ writing.
I will mention that it was back around 2016 when I first played Undertale, and theories were still somewhat primitive, since I didn’t know about the unused Alphys entry, I thought it was implied that Alphys wrote over some of the previous entries, and that entry 17 was one that she didn’t touch , haha! It just added more to Gaster’s mystery, and left me wondering why would Alphys do that... Glad that the video could clear things up even for me.
I'm gonna start turning the tables and saying stiff thsts Gaster related is just Alphys lore.
That actually sounds really funny as a bit, ngl.
"Something was shattered across time and space? Oh yeah, that was just Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2"
alphys fell into mettaton, shattering her across anime
Deltarune is just a fic Alphys is writing clearly
@@paulgrotebeverborg1119 why would a self-insert of Undertale Alphys like Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2???
us alphys fans owe dorked our life tbh 🙏🙏🙏
The amount of hate Alphys gets is very disheartening. Somebody has to defend her honor. Huff!
Alphys fan here dorked tysm
Mew Mew fan here, still thank you because alphys is Mew's number 1 fan
@@Dorked Alphys fan here! And Mew Mew fan.
@@DorkedI also hate her character frankly, but at least it’s because of personal taste and not because I lack media literacy and try to force Gaster into anything remotely vague.
Thank you SOOO much for making this video!! It's very well put together and thought out!! I believe that theory to be very dismissive of Alphys's character arc, and I think the idea that Gaster is just "Alphys if she was good" to be extremely stupid and disrespectful. I also believe it to be really boring? He has so much potential as a character, especially with his relation to Deltarune. Do we really need to steal the spotlight from another character just to hype him up? It's especially a funny mindset to have because the only reason Gaster is even relevant is because he FELL into his own creation. I really don't understand why people take the word of the Gaster Followers when they describe him as this "flawless genius." Would it really be that big of a stretch to say that the self-proclaimed GASTER FOLLOWERS may be a little biased when speaking about the new royal scientist? I just think that if you need to take away all nuances away from a certain character for your theory, it may not be a very good one.
I also remember reading a comment on the "Writing On the Wall" theory video that grinded my gears, and it stated that Gaster succeeding with the DT experiments before Alphys tried and failed "adds to the tragedy," which I HIGHLY disagree with. A huge aspect of the DT experiments that makes them so tragic is that they CANNOT be done correctly, at least not with what Alphys was given. Asgore asked her to find a way to make monster souls persist after death, for even the SLIGHTEST CHANCE at freedom. Alphys had not only the crushing weight of the King's expectations on her shoulders, but also the entire fate of monsterkind in her hands. She was so hyperfocused on doing these experiments correctly she didn't even stop to think about the fact that they may not even be possible. And when she realized they weren't going as planned she freaked out and made things so, SO much worse. THAT is why it is so tragic. She was reaching for a goal that was unreachable, she was trying to solve something that was unsolvable. She was trying to do the IMPOSSIBLE. She was trying to set everyone free.
Gaster somehow weaseling his way into perfecting the DT experiments not only makes Alphys's mistake LESS tragic, but it also just.. doesn't make sense? You already stated this in your video, but it just overcomplicates everything and makes what Alphys did seem like it stemmed from incompetence, rather than it being something that is GENUINELY impossible (which it is.) And that's another thing. People who wholeheartedly believe in this theory always hold true to the idea that Alphys is not WORTHY of being the royal scientist. They believe that she doesn't know what she's doing, that she cheated her way into Gaster's position without doing the work that he did. When that just... ISN'T the case at all. Yeah Asgore hired her because he misunderstood how Mettaton worked, but Alphys wasn't intentionally trying to mislead him? Besides, she is still shown to be VERY capable and smart. She turned a cellphone into a JETPACK for christ's sake!! She knows what she's doing, she was just tasked with something that was not only impossible, but outside of her capabilities. Which shows a lack of thought on Asgore's part more so than Alphys's (which he later apologized for.)
And Gaster being the one to make Flowey just gives another one of Alphys's works to Gaster, which is lazy. Especially since Alphys creating flowey makes the DT experiments that she carried out even more nuanced. Yes, she fucked up, really badly. And she also made things worse by not telling anyone about what she did. But good DID come from it. The amalgmates were reunited with their families, AND they were brought back to life. And not only that, but FLOWEY was the one who set everyone free. Well- Asriel was, but they are one in the same. Alphys is technically responsible for monsterkind's freedom, SHE is the one who created Flowey. She made a horrible mistake while trying to free her people, that later led to her people being freed. Giving all of that to Gaster just takes away from all of that nuance, and makes it boring.
Anyways, sorry for rambling in your replies, I am very passionate about Alphys as a character and I really hate to see her shoved to the side like this. I hope more people will grow to like her over time!!
No need to apologize! I love when people share their own thoughts and responses like this. It helps generate discussion, which is always healthy. I agree with a lot of what you're saying.
I'm beginning to think that if Gaster were 'Alphys but good,' he maaaaaaaybe would've found a way to avoid falling into his own creation. Perhaps Gaster was more brilliant or influential than Alphys, but that alone, one of the few things we know about him, should show that he was not infallible. Depending on how one interprets how or why he fell, it might even illustrate one critical manner in which Alphys was more fortunate than he was--Alphys has people who prevent her from 'falling' or 'shattering' by dragging her out of the dark and into the light again. She has people that love her and ground her. And Gaster says 'what do you two think,' so maybe once he did have people, and he sure has admirers--but none of them successfully stopped him from shattering. Whether what happened with Gaster was deliberate or accidental, whether it was borne from despair or obsession, whether he viewed it as a fatal fall or an enlightened ascent, Alphys has suffered and slumped, but not shattered. No one mourns her as a brilliant, irreplaceable, tortured genius YET. She can heal, and she can improve, and she can learn from her mistakes--whatever happens in Deltarune, Gaster will unfortunately never get that chance in Undertale.
Very well said!
I just realized something interesting about Alphys:
When she explains Mew Mew Kissy Cutie to you/Frisk she mentions how the moral of the story is that controlling people... before cutting herself off, my guess is that the moral would be that controlling people to solve your problems is wrong which kinda foreshadows Alphys' character arc of revealing her mistakes instead of continuing to lie to others.(and also telling Undyne that anime isn't real)
Though I may just be reading too much into it.
If gaster did write any of the entrys i feel like at the end of the true lab she would have mentioned it at the end becuase she you know wants to tell the whole truth if they were hiding it that does really mesh. Plus i would like to mention entry 17 is completely different to the others becuase gaster wrote it if gaster wrote them they would be far more similar to entry 17.
I get why people want to put gaster in the true lab but it Frankly doesnt add anything to him and it just hurts alpheys character. There is no reason for toby to have made them actually gaster
Yeah, like... we only see one example of an entry by Gaster and it's characterized so differently from all the others (including Alphys' own entry number 17). The characterization there matches Deltarune and the twitter takeovers, and frankly it seems like Gaster's experiments were tackling something else entirely.
heyo, i doubt you'll ever see this, but i truly appreciate all that you do! you're quite possibly one of the greatest figures and voices in this community, bringing about the wonderful inverted fate as well as all of these theory and analysis videos, among other things! keep up the good work, and great job with this video as well!
you deserve much more recognition and praise, truly.
Hey, thanks for the kind words! Honestly, a big thing for me is that I adore Undertale and Deltarune and like to share that passion through analysis and reexamining aspects of the game that are often misinterpreted or forgotten.
3:12 This. Just, this. People can so often get so caught up in "le lore" that they forget they're playing a game with an actual story. A well written, coherent story. It doesn't matter how much "evidence" you find to support something, if it's overly convoluted, or lame from a writing perspective and doesn't contribute at all to the game's story, or outright diminishes it, then... Why? Why would it be true? This is something that absolutely plagues the internet nowadays, people try to treat anything like it's convoluted fnaf lore just so they can come up with these "cool awesome twist theories" about how "le thing is actually le other thing, and isn't that so cool and unexpected waow!!!". But this video being made gives me hope, it's nice to know there are still people who care
Was listening to a video just yesterday jumping through hoops to fit Gaster in to the true lab and it reminded me this was coming out soon. Now it's here! Bless! Haven't listened yet, but im sure its going to be a huge pallet clense to have someone appreciate Alphys and let her be a brillant scientist in her own right. Not only does making Gaster the inventer of DT rob Alphys of all her scientific acheivement, but it also robs her of her greatest flaws and the source of her darkest secret. People need to realize that ascibing *all* events as actually being secretly Gaster really robs other characters of their agency and role.
Yeah, I never got the whole "Alphys being a fraud makes her story better" thing because the entire point of her arc is that she was still a skilled enough scientist to build mettaton, modify the phone, discover DT, and she just got in over her head due to the lack of past work to draw upon. And her own fears and regrets kept her from coming clean for a while.
@@Dorked That checks, pretty much.
@@Dorked Yeah!! She's way better being too smart for her own good than just some fraud trying to impress people. A young prodigy biting off way more than she can chew and digging herself deeper and deeper in a panic is so much more compelling, complex, and quite frankly relatable than some swindler with a crush on the king. Alphys *does* lie sometimes, she does set up scenarios to impress people because of her insecurities, but those lies come when she's done something incredible already and she doesn't have the confidence to believe she can do it again.
I think FNAF has really scrambled people's brains. Everyone thinks there needs to be this big, complicated theory to explain everything, but with Undertale it's pretty straightforward.
Toby's games don't have many plotholes that require these grandiose theories in order to make sense, his stuff is pretty tight.
Yeah, I think the FNAF theory scene has colored the way people look at indie game theorycrafting and analysis. FNAF leans into these complex webs of speculation, whereas while Toby occasionally dabbles into teasing the lore through means like the Spamton Sweepstakes, I believe that the core plots of his games are pretty easy to understand without outside materials. The outside materials are just fun speculation fodder, especially in DR's case where chapter releases are often years apart.
@@Dorked I think a definite part of this is that Undertale was released in THE flash point of FNAF theory-crafting in 2015. The Gaster junk was, quite honestly, a means by Toby to keep conversation going and reinforce a sense of mystery throughout Undertale. Alphys is, however, part of the narrative. She's part of the game's themes. She's right there.
Why do people hate Alphys when she does all the horrible stuff written in the entries but when Gaster does it everyone cheers.
Well you see it's because when our lord and saviour Gaster did it he did it all correctly and somehow managed to make people immortal because he's such an awesome and cool genius unlike that fraud Alphys /s
@@moon4236
You are writing /s but that is literally the point of the video that this one is a response to 😂
Because Alphys KILLED my grandma, okay?!
Misogyny. GOD FORBID WOMEN HAVE HOBBIES 😭
Because... I dunno? I guess They just hate Alphys that freaking much. So much so that they made a double standard.
I think Gaster discovering dark worlds/fountains is so much cooler than the DT experiments. Also I think it’s interesting to see that Gaster and Gerson are somehow connected and their prominence is seemingly swapped in Deltarune, wonder how that’ll end up playing out.
Yeah, I touched upon that in my Gerson video. The Gerson and Gaster parallels are fascinating stuff.
Thanks for this. There's so much half-assed Undertale "analysis" out there.
Tbh, the thing that really irks me about the recent theory that blew up is how much of it is cherrypicked. I can acknowledge the work that went into the video, but it sucks that people aren't engaging with it more critically and are just taking it at face value. OP worked hard, and I wish them the best in future projects. I just disagree with what was said.
@@Dorked I just meant in general tbh
How were you able to comment 13h ago on a video that was uploaded 14 minutes ago?
Are you a channel member or something?
@@El-Aziz_El-Jasimithink it might be patreon supporters get early access
I feel like the fandom’s fervent desire to discredit Alphys and replace her with Gaster or even Sans (I remember seeing this a lot in fan content around 2016-2017- having Sans be involved in the true lab, only for him to completely overshadow Alphys) can also be attributed to misogyny. The fanbase doesn’t like that a female character is “annoying” and flawed in a way that isn’t quirky or cutesy and so they scramble to completely scrub her out of the picture. I’m expecting to get a lot of angry replies to this comment, because many people don’t like facing their own unconscious biases and how they affect their perceptions of the media they consume, but I really think that if Toby’s original intent of Alphys being male (as stated in the Undertale artbook) had gone through, she would be much more popular than she is now. Basically, I just think the way that some people dislike her so much that they would rather completely undercut her personal story and relevance to Undertale’s narrative to replace her with a male character that, at the time (and to a lesser extent now, still), had basically zero confirmed personality or character says a lot about how people treat female characters that don’t fit what they perceive to be acceptable for a female character. They’d rather have a blank slate, easy tumblr sexyman than a genuinely interesting and complex woman.
Yeah, the thing is, *if* misogyny is a factor, I think it's probably internalized or unconscious? I definitely am not in this to accuse Sock Muppet of it, for instance, because I'd rather assume good faith (even if I am frustrated with how he discussed Alphys). But I have seen other fans experience more vitriolic behavior toward Alphys from other UT fans in the past that does call these things into question. That being said, I think some of the harsher comments here are kinda just misinterpreting some of my statements and intentions, and to an extent I probably walked into that by beginning the video with a comically exaggerated sigh that was meant to be hyperbolic but has been misinterpreted. It's not something I can fix now, but eh. Comments are good for the youtube algorithm. :P Plus, RUclips comments aren't typically known for good faith discussions.
I think the far more likely explanation is that people are simply obsessed with the mysteries surrounding Gaster and the time he spent in the True Lab as the Royal Scientist. It's not like people are ascribing these negative character traits to her without any basis whatsoever. She's known to be a liar, and some of the True Lab's entries makes her scientific reasoning seem shaky at best - "nothing is happening. i don't know what to do. i'll just keep injecting everything with "determination.""
Regardless, just because people are speculating that she may not be fully responsible for this one thing despite all of her other achievements doesn't mean they are misogynistic.
@@Wolfcat22 That’s fair assessment! I’m more just kind of lining the points of this video up with how I’ve seen people treat female characters in media as a whole, beyond just Undertale and Deltarune, and putting my thoughts into words surrounding Alphys. She’s been one of my favorite Undertale characters from the start, flaws and all- so it’s more just this as it falls into place with other ways I’ve seen people treat her in fanworks and discussions. My comment wasn’t meant to be accusatory in any way, so much as just an observation of a potential unconscious bias. I hope that makes sense.
@@mochasumi idk man , i personally think that alphys was annoying not in personality but annoying in that...she paused the game non stop with her messages which were totally vapid too , like anime reviews and all . if she didnt do that i really dont think people would be annoying . if it were misogyny would people love UNDYNE so much? the super strong macho type insane warrior ?? or suzie in deltarune ? or queen ? etc etc . also the appeal of the gaster mystery is what makes people cling to him so much . like if he had the same mysterh but instead of the former scientist he was like...idk asgore's former brother in arms people would say ''uh look at *gerson* taking all the credit ! i mean hes a turtle , how would he even move to be a wariior? a humanoid skeleton makes much more sense-'' and you get the picture . i dont want to be accusaroty either , but i feel like a lot of people kinda rush to ad hominems ''its misogyny , its racism , its homophobia'' etc without really thinking about...the actual characters and writing you know? like , ive seen people really annoyed with gay characters but ive never seen anyone annoyed with captain holt from brooklyn 99 if you know that show , and its not like his gayness is subtle , there are whole episodes about it
I think it's funny that the different authors theory supposes that Gaster... Succeeded in bringing the monsters who fell down in his time back to life and was like "oh well back to messing around with something else".
Guy invented immortality supposedly and then rather then further those experiments.... Did something else instead?
Yeah, that's another thing that makes it all feel rather odd to me. I just think the immortality thing is a reach that adds nothing to the story, creates way too many questions. Especially since... y'know, endogeny exists and blows holes in that theory since the Dog Marriage's parents are a part of it.
Honestly, I just think it's funny how many people got so aggressively angry and obviously didn't even watch my video and felt they had to whiteknight Sock Muppet, because I made it clear that I didn't want people to harass him. :p Because I genuinely don't want people to do so and simply feel that it's important in fan discussions to be open to critique when it comes to theories and open discussion. But people got offended at the mere existence of a video that provides counterevidence that they threw ad hominem attacks and accused me of starting a ~gang war~ and like... guys, chill out. Fan discussions and disagreements are healthy and you don't need to throw an explosive fit.
I'm not upset or intimidated, just perplexed. Gang war just sends me. And the guy who got mad because I pointed out their ad hominem as if tumblr invented it when it's a logical fallacy that's been known for ages.
i mean the bits of dialog that's not him being a spooky mysterious guy i wouldn't put it past him, he's probably smart enough to know immortality was pointless especially for monsters seeing most live for quite a while (maybe forever for ghosts or skeletons) and or decided he can't really know if they are immortal till like a long time in the future and he didn't expect to stop existing in his world.
or he could embody adhd and can't focus on one experiment for enough time and moved on.
I admit, I didn't pay much attention when this video came out because I was busy, so now that I paid attention to the title and beginning, I wonder if people really have doubts about who left the lab messages or if they are just projecting this into their favorites characters because they want more of them.
Ive been waiting for this video to come out when you announced it!! So glad its here. The Writing on the Walls theory video felt really slanderous to Alphys and I hated it when they kept referring to Alphys as a fraud. Alphys has been so mistreated in the fandom and Im glad shes getting the recognition she deserves!
Yyyyeah, that's my biggest gripe. The amount of bashing on Alphys really soured me to the whole thing.
To me she is so much more than an fraud , now i remember that she activated an jetpack on the phone for frisk. dang we need more fanart of frisk flying an jet pack. also she can do alot of things like make icecream out of seeweed i think. man i need to play the game again.
I see what you mean, but personally I thought of the alphys is a fraud, as a part of the theory. For me it was interesting to see how they interpreted her character. I see a lot of comments saying how people ruined alphys because they want gaster, but honestly Toby made it really confusing too as well, I mean there is literally an entry 17, which is gaster's. And we know he was a scientist, most people will connect the dots (when you see two ways of speaking, you may think one is gaster). But all that to say I agree alphys is left out of too much discussions, but I don't play people for it.
@@AscafunI'm referring to the parts where he makes it sound like Alphys is a bumbling idiot who doesn't know what she's doing. Always referring to her as a fraud who can't do anything right and can only copy Gaster. When she's created a phone that can serve as a dimensional box, jetpack, and a blaster. And other devices such as the hot fridge. Entry 17 isnt even accessible in the True Lab in main game. You have to go to a special room that is unaccesible.
Gaster has a way different way of speaking though as pointed out in the video. Speaking with all caps and spacing or wing dings. Alphys has been shown speaking with both proper grammar and no proper grammar via her text messages and her written message. Any average first time player will obviously think all the entries are Alphys. Suddenly throwing in Gaster, which they woukd not know about at all just muddies Alphys character arc in the story
@tropicalpunch49 Yeah I guess people tend to forget about her creations (if I had to guess, probably because mettaton reveals that she faked it all)
But yeah, for me it was alphys, just saying that I do understand people thinking it's gaster.
I really dont understand why the community says that Gaster created almost everything. And leave Alphys like she did nothing in the game
It’s weird people forget she literally created arguably the most important character in the game
@@kingofdemons948 The community just remember Alphys as the one who created Mettaton and Flowey, but they ignore that she is the one that experimented with determination and the souls
The community just concentrates on Gaster, even tough we dont have much information about him
I think it's more the fact that every significant accomplishment she has ends up being a lie, several of which end up inflicting great pain and suffering on others.
In the kindest possible light, she's the Toriel of the Amalgams but won't let them leave unless you force her arc. Really she's a psychopath who locked them in her basement for years and that's not even mentioning the utter hell she inflicted upon Asriel.
@@Nulonistic she made a great deal of accomplishments, look at Mettaton for example. And she isn’t a psychopath, you think she enjoys having to take care of the amalgamtes? Imagine the mental toll that took on her. And she didn’t “Inflict” hell onto Asriel. She unknowingly created Flowey and by the time she realized what happened it was too late.
This was definitely an important video to make. When I started watching this video, I was confused that people thought that the true lab entries were written by Gaster; I always believed it was Alphys and I still do. Gaster’s cool and all, but Alphys is a more important character to Undertale, at least, and shifting the focus away from Alphys to suggest that the two most used characters in the UT fandom (sans and Gaster) are so important is just stupid bias. I hope people give more respect to everyone’s favorite nerdy lizard after this video
Tbh, I'm kinda relieved that so many people are like, "Wait, people think that?" But sadly, as you can see by several of the comments here, that isn't universal. There are enough people who genuinely want to insert Gaster into a story arc that has no bearing on him, who think this somehow improves Alphys' character. I've seen that argument in a few places and it baffles me, tbh.
yea this makes more sense, i think what makes the other video so compelling is the framing/editing and the fact that it involves gaster. It's the little details that make you realize it doesn't have to be two authors.
"He is a character you can go the entire game without knowing about, so why would Toby make him the true driving force behind a sequence of events that are central to Alphys' development arc?"
i was eating yogurt like a total nerd while watching this video and i have a feeling alphys would do the same
anyways, great analysis! i hate it when people decide to give alphys's actions to gaster for whatever reason, so i'm glad you mad this analysis. it was very well-researched and inspires me to make analysis's like this someday.
My first thought about those entries on my first playthrough is that they've been written by Alphys, never thought that they were written by someone else because if they were (especially Gaster), we would have found them in a different room or they would talk about something that doesn't match with her personality.
Alphys is so important to the pacifist run's theme that I think the fandom ignoring/hating her has contributed to a lot of the oversimplification of the game's message into just "violence bad" rather than a more nuanced take on how to care about things responsibly.
It is so clear within the text of the game that Alphys is supposed to represent the type of person who would love Undertale. She is the most relatable main character to the average rpg player. I think the reason why she is hated so much (besides misogyny) is because we don't want to admit that she's a commentary on us.
There is a reason why the deciding factor separating a pacifistic neutral run from a true pacifist run is the alphys date/true lab segment. There's a reason why monsters literally cannot be free until she learns to love herself. There is a reason why she is the character who created flowey. There is a reason why she is important.
Ppl love the goat boy but don’t seem to understand the ending just left Flowey to a fate worse than death all alone in the underground (besides mushroom man and snowman).
The game’s supposed message of violence being bad becomes null when we consider that morally gray actions, messed up experiments, and 2 children ending their lives for others is what saves the monsters.
Oh, that's a great point, though! Alphys is a fantastic example of the core themes of Undertale and how even people who make huge mistakes can change and improve. That's a core theme that shines through a lot of the cast. Like how Mettaton treated his friends and family like shit once he became a star, but in the end reaches out to them and includes them in his life again or how Undyne went from being so hostile toward Frisk that she told them they should give up their life to genuinely enjoying their company.
i think you overstate how much someone's dislike of alphys could play a part in their injection of gaster into the true lab entries but the actual analysis of their place in the narrative and capacity for storytelling and characterisation is great
I've seen a few comments that have their perception of Alphys color their approval of the theory that Gaster did the DT experiments first, saying that it adds to her arc because she's a lying scammer.
I'd be inclined to agree if I hadn't seen it happen again and again over the years. Sadly, this video was also partially made because the recent Writing on the Wall theory is but the latest example of this topic coming to light, and I wanted to have an easily digestible video that points out the problems with the angle of two writers of the entries and other things (e.g. how it doesn't mesh with how Toby characterizes Gaster).
May I interest you in a friend of mine because they are kind of like that.
Dorked based alphys defender
really glad this video was made! despite the fact that i did really enjoy watching the other video that likely sparked this response (a lot of non-alphys points made were interesting, and i'm a sucker for any long-form undertale/deltarune content), how heavily a lot of the points relied on alphys being incompetent kinda soured my view on the theory as a whole. this video does a great job at clarifying a lot of details in the true lab
Yeah, like... I'm not saying the other video had no merit or that it was poorly made. The problem is a lot of it seemed to be made in bad faith where Alphys was concerned.
wait what, I didnt even know this was a question, of course she did :o
Sadly, this has been a thing since at least 2016 with people like Underlab and Camila Cuevas stoking the flames. =_=
@@DorkedKnowing Camila as a person, I’d say the Gaster and Alphys thing isn’t even the *worst* thing she’s lied about.
@@oranjaglad8648 oh no... i think i know what u are referencing!!
@@MetalizedSoul Yeah. It's for the better we don't forget what she's like.
@@oranjaglad8648 ... true, like I enjoy Glitchtale I even put it in my top favourite 5 AU's of all time but it's not an excuse for what she's done.
The theory about the entries being from other sources thinks so little of Alphys that it was probably written by Alphys herself.
that made me laugh
Your Alphys impression is spot on, the exact voice I pictured for her in my head.
... Like. Doesn't Alphys give a speech immediately after you activate the elevator about how *she* was asked to investigate Souls? And she feels guilt about the amalgamations. And... are people really that determined to not give Alphys credit for literally anything?
Yes. It's founded mainly on the idea that the entries are not all written in the same grammatical style, when Sans alternates between normal grammar and text in serious moments and Alphys herself is shown to both write in proper grammar with her letter and Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 Review in Deltarune and lazier texts on the Undernet (and even then, sometimes she uses all caps or Talks Like This).
@Dorked I mean that's a fair mistake I suppose but one of if not the most famous line in Undertale features Sans breaking his lower-case habit (Should be burning in hell). As you've pointed out, different characters use different grammatical styles, that is extremely prevalent.
So everything Alphys claims that makes her look better is a lie... except this one thing. Got it.
@@Nulonistic You'll have to forgive me but I've sat here reading this for a solid 5 minutes and cannot understand what you mean.
@@Beegsire She is a serial and compulsive liar. She lied to Asgore about Mettaton. She lied to the citizens of the underground about their relatives fate. She lied to the player about everything in Hotland. She lied to Undyne about her human interests. She lied to the player about the soul power necessary to leave the Underground. She lied to Mettaton about their new body. She lies during your date repeatedly.
Her primary character flaws/traits are her dishonesty and her insecurity and they almost always go hand in hand. Her first instinct in every situation is to lie in order to make herself look better because she fears the truth will make her unloveable.
And once she created Flowey and the Amalgamates, she was right. Locking living beings in your basement and inflicting an eternity of suffering on a dead child are utterly unforgiveable crimes.
I think you should make a mettaton analysis because there a literally 0 on youtube and i also think he is very interesting character-wise. Great video btw, I love all the content dedicated the underappreciated characters rather than just sans again and again. :D
Good idea! Give Mr. Legs his time in the sun.
I'm glad this video was made, there are some comments under the other theory video pointing out the flaws in logic, but its very helpful to have a well made video outlining it. Thank you! Regardless of theory crafting and having fun, the reason I dislike the other theory, aside from how it shafts Alphys and all her accomplishments, is the wording. Any time flimsy logic is brought up, the person in the video says things like "it HAS to be this way because of the timeline I made, otherwise its bad writing and Toby is a bad writer."
I've seen a few people use this logic. They bring up a point, then say that anything opposing it would mean the creator is a bad writer. It's ludicrous, honestly. It's far worse if the True Lab entries are not written by Alphys, THAT would be bad writing. People need to remember Undertale is meant to be enjoyed by everyone, including new players who don't know the lore and FUN values stuff.
Thanks again for the video! It's a good watch
The only fraud Alphys ever did was lying about Mettaton being an AI that she programmed. MTT isn't software, he's a ghost in a machine. Yes, I know that's pretty much Ryle, but my point stands.
Aside from that and lying to Frisk, Alphys is NOT a fraud overall. She's a brilliant engineer who didn't stay in her lane and made promises she couldn't keep.
Yeah, it's not that Alphys didn't lie, obviously, but people try to lean *too* hard into the fraud angle.
@@Dorked And you're right, that's giving her way too little credit. Especially considering that, if Alphys had the foresight to come up with a way to measure the DT intake levels for each of the monsters, she could've avoided the Amalgamates fiasco and instead created a cure for Falling Down. Hell, that could still happen, and it'd be a really good drug for humans to take who have Anxiety or Depression.
@@ethicalapemen3686and also thinking that i could also be that in the post-true pacifist stuff, she with much more confidence and likely help from human scientists and what not, looks to salvage the DT experiment, with the thing you said of proper DT inputing to monsters so they don't melt, or even figure out a way to undo the amalgamates melting down and fusing, even if its not fully perfect.
And even imagining that with the fangame Yellow, im even imagining that unintentionally, Kanako there can be an example, like her Receiving far less DT than the other monsters before, like she got injected lightly as the monsters were about to go home but before they turned to amalgmates, however her Amalkanako while still left melty, doesn't fuse with others and maybe hint that her being Boss monster, helped her handle DT better than most.
I will never forget how this video was LITERALLY whipped together in 2 weeks because Dorked was really salty about the writing on the wall theory asdfkoik
amazing video! Lookin forward to more
i love alphys i wish people didn't hate her sm :((
Same. :((
I've seen people say "the fandom makes Gaster the one behind everything", and I can see why. *Maybe* in Deltarune he's behind it all, but in Undertale Gaster's significance to the greater plot is likely small.
I wonder how far you could go with the whole "Gaster is behind everything" mindset. Now I wanna see some crack theory that Gaster is the true mastermind of basically all Video Games, or something like that. That'd be funny to me atleast.
that would make for a good shitpost video for someone to make
Good? That sounds like a phenomenal shitpost.
“Until everything goes to sh*t”
Call me surprised because I was NOT expecting you to say that 😂
YEAH, I only swear sparingly in my videos. xD
@@Dorked But to be fair, how ELSE is the honestly screwed up situation Alphys accidentally got herself into would be appropriate to describe lol
I'm so glad someone made this video. The amount of people I've seen take things from Alphys' character to give them to Sans and Gaster goes back even farther than this, but that theory was probably the most blatant example of it. I get people's want to tie everything to Gaster but this particular case is icky to me.
undertale fans are not ready for this, but the urge to make gaster responsible for all the cool and clever things and have alphys be responsible for the failed derivative things is... kind of misogynistic. let alphys have her own accomplishments. she's a capable scientist in her own right.
i was looking all over for this, and this was what i was bothered about by the theory maker who made the vdieo in question!!! the only takeaway that the theorymaker had for Alphys was that she lied and that was the only thing he reduced her down into. It's a component to her character and it was really frustrating, even though I found some of his other ideas interesting.
Omg I’ve been so hyped for this!!! Love your analysis :>
Thanks a bunch! :)
I was actually hoping you would address this misconception. I really enjoy your rational takes and use of Occam's razor to explain the game's intentions.
I dislike Alphys personally, but her accomplishments are her own.
I hope one day we will get a "true lab" section for Gaster too, so that there would be less misconceptions and mix-ups regarding these two scientists.
Thanks for the cool video, it was very much needed :)
"Gaster wrote the True lab entries"
huh?? i thought it was abundantly clear that the only entry that is written by Gaster is the one that isnt accessible.. the erased one, the one literally written in wingdings..
everything else was Alphys, thats how ive always interpreted it, thats how every single person ive seen until now has interpreted it, including letsplayers, the amalgamates and the true lab are basically the only characterization she gets beyond just "funny (and sometimes creepy) science dork that watches too much anime"
Alphys: Literally causes the entire story by creating Flowey
Fandom: Meh.
Sans: doesn't contribute to society in any way
Fans: OMG MAIN CHARACTER
Thinking Alphys wasn't the sole one responsible for the DT experiments is the biggest Occam's Razor I've seen in the fandom lmao
I always enjoy your videos. You pay attention to the details without losing the whole picture. I’ll be sure to check out your other recent videos too!
The whole idea for the theory just baffles me. All the entries read as if Alphys wrote them, they all fit in nicely to the story and the arc, the only exceptions being those couple weird entries which don't fit but I'm pretty sure they're not even in-game anyway. Anyone but maybe like the humans, skeletons and the in-betweens is just forgotten about and considered to "not be important" for some reason...
I did have this discussion with a friend about how "Alphys sucks" but the only reason for thinking that was most likely the lack of understanding of Alphys overall (which I found out to be the case after pulling out a whole wall of Lore), which is honestly a shame. The characters are all great, and for Alphys to be pushed aside for someone who's just been gutted across everywhere and nowhere and a short bonehead is kinda sad and makes me miss the older fandoms works that weren't always centered around them.
THANK YOU. I’m a gaster enthusiast but he was 100% already “dead” by the time the true lab experiments started happening. the only entry that could reasonably be his is the one in wingdings (which I think was about a different experiment n likely where alphys got “the blueprints” she mentions from). the others all make complete n total sense as alphys presenting her solo work professionally but slowly losing control until she breaks down n can’t manage to keep up appearances anymore. people are ABSOLUTELY not giving her enough credit, it doesn’t even make sense that gaster would’ve done the same experiments as her in the first place
Bro the fact that this video had to be created to explain something I thought was pretty obvious is kinda surprising. Like I honestly thought we all agreed it was Alphys lab therefore it was her entries.
Yeah! Sure! The blueprints that suddenly appeared in her lab, surely the previous royal scientist who created the core worked from snowdin or something.
Happy you did a video on this, Dorked. I was kind of hoping you would
I definitely feel like the UT/DR fandom is way too eager to latch onto Gaster when it comes to anything, even when doing so would ruin the narrative, so I'm glad to see this video addressing that.
This actually does make me wonder how many people who have played Undertale at all know who Gaster is, I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if it's a small minority because of how unlikely it is you'll hear about him in a normal playthrough
Synchronicity...
If I did the math correctly, there's a less than 4% chance of finding out Gaster even exists ( the followers also have a chance to appear). However to find all the important lore about him it's a less then 1/1000000 chance
I will say, when I was gathering footage for my Gaster video, it was *really* annoying, because even with the corresponding fun values, there is only a slim chance for the followers to appear. Mysteryman is even worse.
Hell, I fear the day when Gaster gets explored more in Deltarune, and the fandom erupting in anger if he’s not portrayed exactly the way they thought he was for years.
@oranjaglad8648 This is 100% gonna happen since so many folks' impression of him is heavily derived from fanon content over the years.
It's already happened with the recent Valentine's letters where people are downright insistent that that mysterious letter wasn't written by him because "it doesn't feel like something he'd say"... as if we know that much about him at all?
Sometimes the most simple explanation is the answer.
^
Not every game is written by Scott Cawthon. Some games have cohesive narratives that can be easily understood in a single playthrough (or two) without digging for secrets.
Also, Gaster ''writes'' the numbers as whole words(Seventeen, not 17). Whatever other Gaster entries that existed at some point are not visible to us.
(I say ''writes'' because it seems Gaster is actually dictating and recording his entries, based on the garbage noise)
You... debunked your own argument?
Literally never heard the theory that gaster wrote half the entries and I personally never held it, like it crumbles under the smallest scrutiny and it's heavily implied it's all Alphys anyway. What were people thinking???
I think the other video's production values and presentation played a big part in it. It's clear there was thought put into it in that it was very meticulously constructed, but the problem is the evidence ignores very blatant counter evidence. I didn't even touch upon the ink being wet in Asgore's journal because I really just wanted to focus on the greater argument regarding Alphys and Gaster that existed even before the Writing on the Wall video, but I also felt that the fact that so many people were swayed while missing all the counterevidence made it worth making a video on the subject because enough misinformation was spread.
It can be very easy to forget what was in the original game, and I think it's healthy to step back, look at what's actually in the game, and consider writing and story structure and what makes the most sense in the form of a cohesive narrative.
15:05 You know, I've always just assumed that Gerson IS a Boss Monster. Think about it: he's lived unfathomably long, at least long enough to have participated in the War of Humans and Monsters, which seems to have occurred hundreds if not thousands of years ago. I don't care what species you are, not even turtles live that long. There's also nothing in the game that suggests that Boss Monsters have to look like goats, there could be other types of Boss Monsters. He has an uncanny awareness of the mechanics of the world he lives in, not unlike Asgore knowing that humans can relive events over and over (although in both cases, that could be chalked up to experience rather than what kind of monster they are.) Finally, consider the fact that Boss Monsters only age and die after they have children to pour their life force into. In the Deltarune universe, Gerson has a son, and guess what? He's dead.
Edit: well, I probably should have watched that entire section before commenting since you already brought it up, lol. But I still stand by the fact that Gerson not being a goat monster is no reason to assume he can't be a Boss Monster. I see a lot of people pointing to that fact like it's damning, when in reality such a requirement is mentioned zero times in Undertale.
As for Dogamy and Dogaressa, I tend to think the whole Nose Nuzzling Champ thing is a legitimate plot hole that Toby just missed. He wanted to make a joke/foreshadow the relationship between Asgore and Toriel, and ignored the timeline of events to make it fit. Either that, or the Dogi are much older than they look. But I doubt they're Boss Monsters, else we would get the heart-exploding animation that we get with Toriel and Asgore when they die. Either way, I think sometimes people try way too hard to make contradictory events work in a timeline when the more obvious answer is that Toby just made a tiny mistake. It's a problem in this and many, many other fandoms. Sometimes, part of loving a work is admitting that there are goofs from time to time. The Undertale universe isn't real, its creators aren't infallible, and sometimes an impossibly old dog is just an impossibly old dog, or a fish being comatose for an unnaturally long time is just a contrivance without much thought put into it. To paraphrase the Jojo fandom: Toby forgot.
Yeah, the boss monster theory is an interesting angle, but it really depends on if Alvin and any of his other kids exist offscreen in Undertale. We just don't know. I've also seen it argued that part of why he's still alive is because he's always in his shop. xD
@@Dorked >the secret to monster immortality is owning and operating a shop
Jesus Christ, h-how old is Temmie exactly??
@@DorkedI personally believe in the “Gerson is a Boss Monster” headcanon, and my two guesses for how Gerson’s alive in UT but dead in DR are:
1. The timeline is just different, the same way you have stuff like Rudy still being alive and Asriel being a college student at the same time MK is a teenager.
2. The concept of a Boss Monster doesn’t exist in DR.
And of course both of these could potentially be true at the same time.
I always just assume Gerson live in UT but died in DT have something to do with the fact that he participated in the war. I was going to say he might have took a human soul during that time but that would be in conflict with the Waterfall lore drop. Well, unless they hided or not aware of it that is
ALPHYS FANS ASSEMBLE She is a imperfect lil lizard who deserves love and she wrote the entries burn me at the stake i will not stand gaster and sans credit steal
ALPHYS FAN HERE!
Correction: She’s an IMPERFECT lil lizard scientist who still deserves to be loved.
Thank you SO MUCH for this video. As a huge Alphys stan that doesn't care all that much about Gaster (no shade to his fans of course, I just personally am not very interested in him) I get so tired of people attributing her experiments to him especially with how pretty clear cut the game makes it that all the entries were written by Alphys. Like, not only does it pretty blatantly go against the text of the game, but it would make no sense for Toby to have made one of the biggest story parts of True Pacifist to so heavily involve a character people originally had to edit their save files to learn anything about and like you said, over-complicates the story a lot. I get that Undertale fans hunger for answers to all the game's mysteries (I do too) but Gaster is one of those things in Undertale that's supposed to be mysterious and lack answers. Trying to inject him into plot moments and events that clearly have nothing to do with him ruins the mystery.
Tbh, that would apply to any argument of other characters writing some of the entries, e.g. Sans. I do think Sans is aware of the DT experiments and has worked with Alphys on some projects, but I think people are so conditioned for big plot twists and layers of misdirection that it's harder to take simpler story arcs at face value.
I always enjoyed Alphys and the overall lore implications around her.
Glad to see there are more out there that also enjoy Alphys. :)
oh thank you so much for this that theory has been paining me with how much i disagree with it. i needed something that just had all the facts to turn to. thank you for the healing.
I'm happy to help! A lot of people were trying to say that other video was fact in my Alphys analysis, and it made me think, "hm, maybe I should respond to the whole Gaster and true lab arguments in more detail, since this theory is hardly the first time it's happened."
You are so right about the Gaster insertion into these experiments being clumsy as an analysis, we really gotta remember the occam's razor sometimes. Alphys' story in the true lab is my favourite part of the game because of how well it explains and connects everything together. And it's genuinely so creepy and horrifying on its own too, I think we oughta meet the story on its own terms every so often because strictly from a narrative perspective it makes for a much more fulfilling story that than inserting secrets and niche lore into it. Gaster stuff is fun, I'd say way more so for Deltarune where it's more relevant. But Alphys having much deeper secrets than what was on the surface was so genuinely cool and interesting to me, and like you said it's a more elegant story, it's a better story than 'actually plot twist this was all done by a character that's not even in the game!' And yeah I noticed the different grammar and style in the entries too and always appreciated how they told a story of their own and how they established the tone for her character and research!
Alphys is my absolute favourite character in the game for this whole storyline and the depth of character, and I'm so happy to see this video outlining this about her! Thanks for making this
the only way it works is if all memory of gaster was erased and reality rewrote everything he did to adjust to that, changing all of gaster's accomplishments to be alphys'.
the problem with this is that there is no evidence that nobody remembers gaster. there is instead more evidence proving otherwise, but people keep hinging their theories on this fanon idea that was never proven.
Commenting for the algorithm! Also, this video's really well-put-together, gets your points across clearly and has good evidence backing it up. You did a great job here, Dorked, as per usual. :]
Gaster wishes he could be as cool and mysterious as Alphys.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. If Gaster were the one to do the DT Experiments and Flowey, it would make the story ACTIVELY WORSE and be BAD WRITING. Alphys' arc is all about being honest and owning up to her mistakes--WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT OF JUST GOING 'WHOOPSY-DOODLE, SOMEONE ELSE DID ALL THAT STUFF!!!!'
I feel like Alphys was really popular at one point but then as W.D Gaster’s fan base grew, she got shelved like stall ramen.
I’m a day late, and I won’t be able to watch the video in its entirety right away, but I love analysis/theory content, and I appreciate what you do for the community