Balance Application

[ribticklers]

	sans: i've gotten a ton of work done today. a skele-ton.
	APP HMD SORCERER MEL

Player Name: Mel
Age: 29
Contact: maiiau
Timezone: EST
Other character currently in game: N/A

Character name: Sans
Age: late 20s, early 30s
Canon: Undertale
Canon point: True Pacifist End
History: Wiki link

Three key adjectives: clever, jokester, apathetic

Influential Events:

it's raining somewhere else
Sans isn't from around here--which is to say, in some way he and his brother Papyrus aren't from Snowdin, or maybe the timeline they're in, or maybe the universe they're in. It's not made clear in canon (and I try not to specify it in case cast members show up later), but for Sans's purposes the point is that he and his brother have been displaced, and Sans has tried very hard for a long time to get back, but has since given up on it. He keeps a picture of people he doesn't want to forget from there in his secret workshop behind his house. This is the first major loss Sans suffered. It contributes to his apathy; when there's a place you can't return to and a machine you can't fix no matter how smart you are, you have to give up and live where you are. He's very familiar with science, specifically quantum physics, astronomy, and timespace magics (which counts as science here), and there's plenty of evidence in his workshop and the way Papyrus is familiar with Sans's scientific inclinations that he used to be much more active and involved. He's still every bit as clever as he's always been, but he can't help but feel a sense of hopelessness in his attempts.

He's really smart, he knows he's really smart, and he still can't get back. Sometimes you just can't, so you have to give up and make the best of it, whatever that means. He's made friends where he is now--almost everyone is at least aware of Sans, and most are fond of him in a vague, friendly acquaintances way. As we'll address later, it's very intentional that, if you notice, nearly everyone knows him superficially.

telling jokes through the door
Eventually, Sans meets someone he can't see. It's Toriel, although he doesn't learn her name until the very end of the game. He and Toriel exchange knock knock jokes through the door on a regular basis. This points to something important to know about Sans: he really does like bad jokes and puns. This may seem obvious, but with Sans, a lot of what he does can seem like a facade once you look at everything underneath that motivates him. It's not that the way he behaves is entirely false, it's that the way he behaves is devoid of him really trying. He's lost motivation, he can't help but feel a sense of fatalism about everything, but the person Sans acts like is still part of who Sans is.

So: he loves telling puns. He loves knock knock jokes. Getting someone to groan is just as good as getting a laugh, although he especially appreciates others with his particular sense of humor. He's quick to poke at someone's annoyances in harmless ways. He leaves a sock out in the living room and, instead of just taking it back into his own room, he exchanges many ridiculous notes with Papyrus while Papyrus grows increasingly frustrated with his brother's refusal to just take his sock back to his own room and leave it there. He keeps his quantum physics books in a superposition with his joke books. He really is that ridiculous.

Papyrus
Papyrus deserves his own section, and anyway, you can argue he counts as an event all on his own. Papyrus is Sans's brother, and the most important person to him by far. The only one who arrived with him from wherever they came from, Sans takes care of Papyrus. While Sans does seem lazy, he's willing to put in effort for his brother--Sans is the one shown to actually have a job (or several), and he's definitely the more practical of the two, always keeping an eye out to try and keep Papyrus safe and happy. He introduces the human player character to Papyrus just because Papyrus wants to meet a human and he thinks it would make Papyrus happy; he asks the player to play along with Papyrus's puzzles. If the player kills enough people for Papyrus to end up king of the monsters, Sans is the one who does most of the work--it's enough that even Papyrus notices Sans putting effort into things. Notably, Sans will not take the throne on his own: the only time he does the work of ruling is when it's on Papyrus's behalf. If the player is murdering people, he says in no uncertain terms that if they hurt Papyrus, they aren't going to like what happens.

For the most part, Sans is willing to put up with a lot from the player character. If they murder absolutely everyone in the game except Papyrus, while Sans will have a lot of nasty things to say to them, he will keep interacting with them throughout the game. Kill Papyrus, though, even if he's the only one you kill, and Sans disappears from the game until he passes judgment on you at the end, calling you a "dirty brother killer". Still, the fact that this is all he does is a sign of how absolutely hopeless he's become. It's not that he doesn't care about Papyrus dying. It hurts him more than anything the player can do in the game. He just knows that there's nothing he can do--the player can reset the whole world, and Papyrus will be alive. Or maybe he'll step in, stop the player from killing Papyrus, and then the player will reset that, too. At that point all he can do is wait for the reset and for Papyrus to be alive again. But at the very least, he won't entertain you after that.

the anomaly
Sans is aware of the player character's ability to save and reset. He doesn't remember the resets any more than any other monster (which is to say, in little, deja vu bursts), but his magical/scientific background means he knows there's something that's resetting the timeline and changing things around, and this reality really seals in his hopelessness.

Everyone knows Sans superficially. Sans is a joker who entertains people. He wants to keep the anomaly happy--he wants them to be satisfied and then stop. He can't muster up the effort to really form deep relationships with people when he knows they'll just get reset back to zero. Anything he does to the anomaly directly can be reset at an instant. He's extremely observant--he's able to tell just from facial expressions and body language certain things about what the player character has done, such as if they've met before or if the player character has died before. If any effort you put in can be wiped away, why even try?

And yet, Sans does try a little. He keeps his promise to Toriel to keep the human safe under 99% of circumstances. He tries to satisfy the anomaly in little ways. As long as the player doesn't kill Papyrus, he appears again and again, selling food, telling jokes, taking the player character out to dinner. It's so little, compared to what he could do, but it's something, and from Sans, that's a lot.

true pacifist
...And then the anomaly gave him this. During the true pacifist end, where the player kills nobody, Sans grows fond of the human despite himself. While he doesn't quite grasp the distinction, he's fond of Frisk the human instead of the anomaly controlling Frisk. He's vaguely aware that there's some sort of difference, but there wasn't a place to figure that out during the game, so he's left with this confusing desire to protect this nice kid while also being incredibly wary of what they're capable of. Sans sees Frisk make friends with and go on "a date" with Papyrus, let him balance thirty hot dogs on their head, help Alphys and Undyne get together... Frisk is a good kid! And everything Frisk has done inspires him to try just a little more--to go to check on the kid at the end, after Asgore. He doesn't really do anything, but he's there, and he tells the kid he's rooting for them. For Sans to have actual hope in anyone is a big deal.

Taking him from here is at one good and terrible. He's had happiness snatched away again, this time by some strange third party he wasn't even aware of. He's somewhere else, again, and this time Papyrus isn't even with him, and maybe everyone's dead. But the kid is back there, and he knows what the kid can do, so it's not hopeless, and maybe he'll have to try a little. It will take time, but maybe, just a little, Sans can learn to try.

genocide--which never happened
When I'm taking Sans from, the player has never done a genocide route--so none of this happened, but it's also very important to Sans's character. Sans is very clear about his distaste for the anomaly here; he tells them to keep pretending to be a human for Papyrus's sake, and before the player has to fight Papyrus, he warns them not to hurt his brother before teleporting right in front of him in the first direct display of that ability in the game. This display of power is a warning: he's capable of more, and the player is really pushing his buttons.

And, indeed, if the player keeps going, killing everyone in the underground right up until the end, Sans finally knows he has to do something. He's aware that this is different from the resets--this is something lasting, something final. He knows he can't win against something that can keep resetting over and over. But he tries, and he acts with the best tactics he knows how to use: he cheats.

Sans is extremely powerful in a fight, and now, at the end of things, he gives it all he's got. He hits the player for damage every single frame, he poisons them, he's the only enemy who dodges the player's attacks, he attacks in the menu. He's not here to win, but he's here to be as difficult and obnoxious as possible. He's here to make the player go away. He wants them to give up and reset. At the end, when he's exhausted himself, his last move is to just never let the player have their turn, willing to sit forever at the end of the world if that's what's necessary to bore the player into giving up. Sans is deeply depressed, hopeless, and knows any battle he fights against the player is a losing one, but at the end of the world, he's there to do what he can to protect it.

It's not enough, but maybe it still means something somewhere else.


Link to Samples: Link to Sample 1; Link to Sample 2

Chosen path: Sorcerer
3 Abilities: Misty Step, Haste, Subtle Spell
Why this path?: Sans, as a monster, is magical by nature. He's secretly really good at it, and teleportation is one of his main in-game tricks, so this fits for him. Subtle spell is also very good for him, since it means he can act in secret.

blurb code by photosynthesis