Sans (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ribticklers) wrote2020-10-11 05:45 pm
ribticklers) wrote2020-10-11 05:45 pm
We're Still Here Application
PLAYER INFO.
NAME: Mel
PREFERRED PRONOUNS: she/her
ARE YOU OVER 18? yes
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
maiiau
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Sans (no canon last name; I would like to use "Undertale", as required by law or something)
CANON: Undertale
CANON POINT: Exiled Queen Ending; both Undyne and Papyrus are alive
AGE: 30 (no specified canon age, but he's definitely an adult, and he just feels like he's about 30; in his normal form he looks like a skeleton but if you can tell how old a skeleton looks he does actually look his age)
GENDER: male
HISTORY: here
APPEARANCE: skeleton; human
ABILITIES:
Supernatural
-skeleton monster
Sans is a skeleton monster. His body is composed primarily of magic, plus some dust for matter. He looks like a four-foot tall skeleton. He doesn't need to breathe and is less impacted by (but not totally immune to) temperature changes. All monsters are more fragile than humans, but Sans is particularly fragile. As he normally only has 1HP (and therefore would not be able to be struck at all without dying; sleeping buffered his HP up above maximum to prevent him from dying of a stubbed toe, but that's different from a battle), he will be gaining a small resilience boost, making him at about the resilience level of a human child. Still weak, but he can be hit without immediately dying. When killed, Sans turns to dust rather than leaving a corpse.
-vulnerability to intent
Monsters are vulnerable to the intent of their enemies. The more someone wants to hurt or kill him, the more damage they will do to him if they successfully strike him.
-lv and exp perception
Sans is capable of seeing the amount of LV (LOVE, or Level Of ViolencE) and EXP (EXecution Points) someone has. You gain EXP by killing, and when that EXP is high enough, your LV increases. The higher your LV, the greater your capacity to hurt others and the less you are hurt by others. This would be handled with a permissions post; anyone who doesn't want Sans to perceive this about their character could just let me know and he'll see a weird blank spot instead.
-unique damage dealing
Sans deals one damage at a time. Per thirtieth of a second. Normally a monster's magical attacks grant some period of invincibility, but Sans's don't. This means he is capable of doing a massive amount of damage in a very short period of time, with the damage being added to as long as someone is touching one of his attacks.
-bone magic
Sans has the ability to summon bones that do a very small amount of damage very quickly while not knocking the person they're being used on away. This means if someone doesn't step out of the way of the bones, they're going to die a rapid death of a thousand cuts. Sans's bones ignore defense almost entirely; something that provides temporary invincibility should still work. As is monster custom, Sans tends to organize these bones into patterns. Sans's patterns require precision, careful timing, and sometimes platforming, but unless someone has completely let their guard down, it's always possible to dodge through these patterns without taking any damage. Sans is capable of also using light blue bone attacks. These do not do damage if you stand still while they go through you (automatic movement like breathing doesn't count as movement).
-blue magic
Sans utilizes blue magic--gravity manipulation. He can turn someone's soul blue and manipulate their gravity, be that lifting them up, keeping them down, or slamming them into walls, although throwing someone hard enough to slam them into something hard enough to hurt uses a significant amount of energy.
-gaster blasters
Sans is capable of summoning large monster skulls that shoot large beams of magic. He can summon many at a time aimed as he pleases. They take a few moments to warm up before firing, providing potential time to get out of the way. Their damage works like his other attacks: one point of damage but applied very rapidly.
-karma
Sans's attacks apply KR, or KaRma. This is a poison effect that drains health over time. It stacks based on how many attacks have been taken, with the gaster blasters applying more poison at once than a bone attack. Karma's effects are based on LV; the more LV, the worse the poison. Karma is incapable of killing someone alone; it will always leave someone just on the brink of death at worst.
-teleportation
Sans is capable of teleportation, which he refers to as shortcuts. He prefers not to be watched when he takes them, because when he's observed, the whole world blacks out for a moment for whoever is watching as he changes his position. Sans has to know where he's going in order to teleport; he can't teleport into somewhere completely unaware of the layout, and having been there before is ideal. He cannot teleport through magical barriers. Sans's teleportation can be used to dodge attacks and swap up the attacks he's using as well, hopping from one attack pattern to another in the moments the world blacks out. Sans is capable of bringing other people and objects with him if he touches them. He is also capable of teleporting small objects short distances on their own (such as a teleporting a key onto someone else's keychain).
Standard
Sans can cook and sew to a competent degree, although he generally avoids doing so unless the interest or the need to help out Papyrus strikes him. He's great with jokes and knows how to play trombone, ideally for jokes. Sans is incredibly observant and great at reading people, especially when he knows what he's looking for--he can count the player dying up to twelve times just based on their expressions before he stops being able to distinguish the exact amount. Sans is masterful at dodging and much quicker on his feet than you'd expect when he puts his mind on it; he's very good at ducking and twisting around someone trying to attack him. Sans has a background in science, with a working knowledge of quantum physics (he keeps his joke books and quantum physics books in a superposition, because that's just the kind of person he is) and an interest in astronomy, though considering he lives under a mountain, that knowledge isn't nearly as developed.
SUITABILITY: In his canon, Sans is aware that he's stuck in a time loop of resetting the same period of time over and over at the whims of an anomalous human child (and before that, anomalous, soulless flower). He can't remember the various timelines beyond moments of deja vu, but he's got plenty of familiarity with existential horror. In the worst timelines, he witnesses the death of his brother, all his friends, and basically everyone in his society, until he fights and is killed by the human who murdered everyone. Sans is generally depressed already and will tend toward being passive but trying not to die. He's more social than you'd think, so he'll end up forming friendships and attachments to others which may help to pull him out of his passive "wait until it's over" tendencies, especially once he gets used to the idea of things not just resetting. He'll be upset by all the horror, but he's also not going to just immediately fall apart, and ideally the circumstances will eventually push him into participating more actively.
PERSONALITY.
WRITING SAMPLES.
SAMPLES:
log sample
network sample
NOTES.
QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS:
NAME: Mel
PREFERRED PRONOUNS: she/her
ARE YOU OVER 18? yes
CONTACT:
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Sans (no canon last name; I would like to use "Undertale", as required by law or something)
CANON: Undertale
CANON POINT: Exiled Queen Ending; both Undyne and Papyrus are alive
AGE: 30 (no specified canon age, but he's definitely an adult, and he just feels like he's about 30; in his normal form he looks like a skeleton but if you can tell how old a skeleton looks he does actually look his age)
GENDER: male
HISTORY: here
APPEARANCE: skeleton; human
ABILITIES:
Supernatural
-skeleton monster
Sans is a skeleton monster. His body is composed primarily of magic, plus some dust for matter. He looks like a four-foot tall skeleton. He doesn't need to breathe and is less impacted by (but not totally immune to) temperature changes. All monsters are more fragile than humans, but Sans is particularly fragile. As he normally only has 1HP (and therefore would not be able to be struck at all without dying; sleeping buffered his HP up above maximum to prevent him from dying of a stubbed toe, but that's different from a battle), he will be gaining a small resilience boost, making him at about the resilience level of a human child. Still weak, but he can be hit without immediately dying. When killed, Sans turns to dust rather than leaving a corpse.
-vulnerability to intent
Monsters are vulnerable to the intent of their enemies. The more someone wants to hurt or kill him, the more damage they will do to him if they successfully strike him.
-lv and exp perception
Sans is capable of seeing the amount of LV (LOVE, or Level Of ViolencE) and EXP (EXecution Points) someone has. You gain EXP by killing, and when that EXP is high enough, your LV increases. The higher your LV, the greater your capacity to hurt others and the less you are hurt by others. This would be handled with a permissions post; anyone who doesn't want Sans to perceive this about their character could just let me know and he'll see a weird blank spot instead.
-unique damage dealing
Sans deals one damage at a time. Per thirtieth of a second. Normally a monster's magical attacks grant some period of invincibility, but Sans's don't. This means he is capable of doing a massive amount of damage in a very short period of time, with the damage being added to as long as someone is touching one of his attacks.
-bone magic
Sans has the ability to summon bones that do a very small amount of damage very quickly while not knocking the person they're being used on away. This means if someone doesn't step out of the way of the bones, they're going to die a rapid death of a thousand cuts. Sans's bones ignore defense almost entirely; something that provides temporary invincibility should still work. As is monster custom, Sans tends to organize these bones into patterns. Sans's patterns require precision, careful timing, and sometimes platforming, but unless someone has completely let their guard down, it's always possible to dodge through these patterns without taking any damage. Sans is capable of also using light blue bone attacks. These do not do damage if you stand still while they go through you (automatic movement like breathing doesn't count as movement).
-blue magic
Sans utilizes blue magic--gravity manipulation. He can turn someone's soul blue and manipulate their gravity, be that lifting them up, keeping them down, or slamming them into walls, although throwing someone hard enough to slam them into something hard enough to hurt uses a significant amount of energy.
-gaster blasters
Sans is capable of summoning large monster skulls that shoot large beams of magic. He can summon many at a time aimed as he pleases. They take a few moments to warm up before firing, providing potential time to get out of the way. Their damage works like his other attacks: one point of damage but applied very rapidly.
-karma
Sans's attacks apply KR, or KaRma. This is a poison effect that drains health over time. It stacks based on how many attacks have been taken, with the gaster blasters applying more poison at once than a bone attack. Karma's effects are based on LV; the more LV, the worse the poison. Karma is incapable of killing someone alone; it will always leave someone just on the brink of death at worst.
-teleportation
Sans is capable of teleportation, which he refers to as shortcuts. He prefers not to be watched when he takes them, because when he's observed, the whole world blacks out for a moment for whoever is watching as he changes his position. Sans has to know where he's going in order to teleport; he can't teleport into somewhere completely unaware of the layout, and having been there before is ideal. He cannot teleport through magical barriers. Sans's teleportation can be used to dodge attacks and swap up the attacks he's using as well, hopping from one attack pattern to another in the moments the world blacks out. Sans is capable of bringing other people and objects with him if he touches them. He is also capable of teleporting small objects short distances on their own (such as a teleporting a key onto someone else's keychain).
Standard
Sans can cook and sew to a competent degree, although he generally avoids doing so unless the interest or the need to help out Papyrus strikes him. He's great with jokes and knows how to play trombone, ideally for jokes. Sans is incredibly observant and great at reading people, especially when he knows what he's looking for--he can count the player dying up to twelve times just based on their expressions before he stops being able to distinguish the exact amount. Sans is masterful at dodging and much quicker on his feet than you'd expect when he puts his mind on it; he's very good at ducking and twisting around someone trying to attack him. Sans has a background in science, with a working knowledge of quantum physics (he keeps his joke books and quantum physics books in a superposition, because that's just the kind of person he is) and an interest in astronomy, though considering he lives under a mountain, that knowledge isn't nearly as developed.
SUITABILITY: In his canon, Sans is aware that he's stuck in a time loop of resetting the same period of time over and over at the whims of an anomalous human child (and before that, anomalous, soulless flower). He can't remember the various timelines beyond moments of deja vu, but he's got plenty of familiarity with existential horror. In the worst timelines, he witnesses the death of his brother, all his friends, and basically everyone in his society, until he fights and is killed by the human who murdered everyone. Sans is generally depressed already and will tend toward being passive but trying not to die. He's more social than you'd think, so he'll end up forming friendships and attachments to others which may help to pull him out of his passive "wait until it's over" tendencies, especially once he gets used to the idea of things not just resetting. He'll be upset by all the horror, but he's also not going to just immediately fall apart, and ideally the circumstances will eventually push him into participating more actively.
PERSONALITY.
First, a forward: these questions are amazingly good at digging into Sans's particular issues, and so it's important that I say here that Sans is a funny, pun-loving skeleton monster who loves greasy food, hanging out with people, and taking as many union-mandated breaks as possible. He likes science fiction (especially when it's real) and telling knock-knock jokes. It's not a façade, it's who he is. As serious as his issues can get, that Sans really wants to be, and if not prodded at is, the lighthearted funny guy is just as important, it just doesn't fit these questions. Anyway, if anyone who played Undertale asked him about why he's messed up, he'd look them right in the eye with his big black skeleton eye sockets and say and whose fault is that? And then maybe make a joke about his room being messy. So yeah. Funny skeleton. Important.
● Your character has a chance to undo a terrible mistake, but in doing so, there could be unintended consequences for everyone they know. Is it worth the risk? Or should the dead stay dead? (Hint: Who is dead?)
The short answer is "maybe". Sans would want to know as much as he can about the unintended consequences, ideally to the point where he knew exactly what they might be. Undertale is entirely built around the concept of saving, loading, and resetting as things that exist within the world and not just as a part of RPG gameplay, with that power lying in the hands of the player character. Sans is aware of the existence of these things, but has no power to control when they happen and no memory of anything that was reloaded or reset over except for the moments of familiar feelings that every character gets, and so he would be automatically wary of any ability with this much very familiar power. It would depend very heavily on what that mistake was. While it's not covered in canon, Sans has a workshop in the basement of his house where a machine that can't be fixed lies, and at one point he tells the player character that sometimes you have to know when to quit. A power that can barely be understood or controlled is not something that can be trusted to really fix anything.
And so--"who is dead?" Well, if it was Papyrus, then yes, he would do it. Papyrus is Sans's brother and the most important person in the world to him. In general, Sans tries to entertain the player character, working under the assumption that the anomaly is unhappy and needs friends and entertainment, and once they get that they'll stop messing with the world. He does this even when people die, because he doesn't know what else to do to convince the anomaly to stop, and the consequences of an unsatisfied anomaly are potentially catastrophic. But if the player kills Papyrus, even if they only kill Papyrus, Sans vanishes entirely from the game except to stalk the player and judge them near the end. He calls them a "dirty brother killer", even being fully aware of the kind of horrific power they hold. In contrast, if a player begins a genocide run, killing every single monster, but then ends it by sparing Papyrus? Sans thanks them and says he respects them. Papyrus is Sans's entire world. When Papyrus is killed, he just waits morosely for the reset, when Papyrus will return. It's only when it seems like the whole world is going to end that Sans actually takes a stand and fights. If Sans was presented with a power that he thought could permanently keep Papyrus safe, he would take the risk of other people getting hurt. He would even do it if it got himself hurt.
● If your character had the option to permanently lose the ability to feel certain negative emotions like fear or grief, or permanently forget certain memories, would they take it? What if they will never know that something has been taken from them? Does loss only matter if it's known what's missing?
The problem with with permanently forgetting memories is that he knows right now that he will have had memories that were taken from him. It's a prospect he's considered before; Sans is aware of the resets without being able to do anything about them, and the fantasy of becoming unaware of that fact and existing unaware of the existential crisis he's in can be a comforting one. He also knows there are countless timelines that have been reset and that he can't remember at all aside from the occasional feeling of familiarity. His first impulse is a desire to have those memories back, if anything--the idea that if he could retain the knowledge, maybe he could stop being so useless and actually stop things. Because of all this, there's a strange split. What Sans really wants, sometimes, is to have never known about any of this at all. Now that he has the knowledge, and the realization that memories are snatched away from him all the time, he wouldn't be able to take the opportunity if it were presented to him. Sans is prone to self-loathing, even if he hides it, and he would definitely make a bunch of jokes about how he's even too lazy to forget, or maybe too cowardly. Ultimately, Sans would keep himself trapped in the cage of memories--and yes, some of it is out of that fear of losing more than he already has, but there's a sense of obligation that he doesn't admit to as well. Sans is the one who watches the anomaly, the one who judges them, the one who attempts to frustrate them into a reset if they're on the path that will bring an end to every timeline. If he doesn't do it, nobody will, and he can't let himself abandon that job, even if he sees it as hopeless.
Emotions? Absolutely not, and Sans would actually find the idea sickly hilarious. Because of his situation, Sans has fallen into a depressed apathy when it comes to anything serious. He sticks to surface level feelings and distractions. There are a few things that do pierce this: Sans's love for his brother is the strongest thing he can feel, and he enjoys bragging about Papyrus, encouraging Papyrus's antics, teasing Papyrus, and just Papyrus in general. He likes people; his friendship with Toriel, as they tell each other jokes with a sealed door between them, is great enough that he accepts a promise not to harm a human from her without even knowing her name. He sticks to that even when that very human is the anomaly. He has a joke and a smile (well, his face is kind of stuck that way) for almost every monster in the Underground, and almost everybody knows him. Sans's feelings are more superficial than he would like, due to his depression, but he gets attached to people. He wants people to be happy. In the true pacifist timeline, where Frisk (the human anomaly only has a name that isn't someone else's in the true pacifist timeline) harms no one and breaks the barrier to free the monsters, Sans even likes Frisk when of anyone he should have the most reasons not to. Sans is laid-back and has a lot of issues, but at heart he's an extravert. Sans is also still capable of anger. Papyrus presents another good example for this: when the player kills Papyrus, there is no doubt Sans is angry. He stalks the player from a distance with his hood up. His few interactions with them range from passive aggressive to just aggressive. In a genocide run, it's anger fueling him to fight. Beneath all that apathy is anger.
So here's why Sans would not agree to have his negative emotions removed: he feels like he's had a lot of emotions removed already, and the thing they get replaced with is nothingness. He would never believe that taking away his ability to feel sadness would mean he was happy more often, he would believe that when things happened that would otherwise make him sad, he would feel a gaping emptiness. Even if whatever was promising this said otherwise, he would believe they were lying. He wants his emotions to just work normally, not to be taken away.
● Could your character ever forgive themselves for something morally wrong that they've done? No matter how much time has passed? No matter how much penitence has been done? Is being sorry enough to be a good person?
Sans does not believe just being sorry is enough. Sans thinks actions speak more loudly than words. You can say sorry all you want and still keep hurting people, after all. There is part of Sans that wants to believe that people can change and be good no matter what, but that's because this is what Papyrus believes. Sans believes in Papyrus, and he wants Papyrus to be right. Unfortunately, he ultimately doesn't believe in that himself. There are limits for Sans, things you can't come back from. If the player character kills Sans's brother, even though he still won't kill them unless they continue along a very drastic path, his disappearing from the rest of the game makes it obvious he's given up on the anomaly in this timeline. His returning to judge them and to call them is to encourage them to reset and bring back his brother and anyone else the player killed. During the genocide fight, he offers to spare the player. If they accept this mercy, Sans kills them. In the genocide fight, Sans proves there is a limit to how much he thinks someone can change. The only thing that matters to him at that point is getting the player to stop; there is no forgiveness he is willing to grant if they keep coming back.
With this as Sans's general viewpoint on moral transgression and forgiveness, right now Sans is not in the best place to forgive himself for much of anything. He calls himself lazy, takes the blame for some bad things happening because he didn't act, and is generally harsh on himself. Sans is prone to lying and avoiding things, but the act of lying and avoiding makes him feel worse. Sans cannot forgive himself by himself, but reaching a point where he could forgive himself isn't impossible. He would need to face the people he's hurt and have them know exactly what he's done, and he'd have to have people at his side to keep him pushing through. It would take a long time and a lot of recovery and, above all else, it would have to take place in a world that was no longer resetting, but theoretically, there is a point where Sans would be able to reach a healthier place and settle things with himself.
● Your character has a secret they have been sworn to, but revealing this secret could save the lives of countless others. Is it worth breaking the promise to save others, or is betrayal never justifiable?
Betrayal is almost always sometimes necessary and/or justifiable. Those aren't always the same thing in Sans's eyes, but Sans keeps countless secrets, lies all the time, and in general never tells anybody anything. Sans tells his brother his dead friends are on vacation. Sans only half-keeps the promise he made to Toriel. But he does attempt to keep the parts of it he feels he can keep, which is noteworthy. He does not hurt the human until they're about to destroy the entire world, and he even tosses out an apology to Toriel for it. Sans hates making promises because he expects to not be able to keep them, but if you can actually get him to say "I promise", he will generally attempt to keep at least some of it. Still, he's always ready to break these promises, too.
That said, Sans does have a secret that could maybe save lives: he knows about the human being able to save, load, and reset. And Sans tells nobody. This isn't because he doesn't want people to be alive or anything; he doesn't say anything because it's pointless. If he tells people, then the human will just realize and reset back to before he said anything. Maybe they'll kill whoever he told earlier to prevent it. Maybe they'll kill him, and then he can't try to convince them to stop. Betrayal of all sorts is sometimes necessary and sometimes justifiable. Sans doesn't think other people would believe that he was justified in this case, but hey--nothing matters when you're stuck in time loops!
● Has your character ever gotten joy out of hurting others, physically or mentally? If they have, does it scare them?
In general, Sans doesn't like fighting. He's very fragile even for a monster, but even without that considered, Sans has never found it fun. Most monsters get into fights fairly often in the name of mutual understanding by way of magical bullets, but Sans doesn't do that. In general, Sans doesn't really want to hurt people, or get hurt, or expend all that effort running around fighting for no reason.
But in a genocide run, when everyone is dead and Sans is the final thing standing between the anomaly and the complete destruction of his world, yes, Sans gets some satisfaction out of hurting them. The core of Sans's depression is anger, and it comes out here. He taunts the anomaly, he counts up their deaths based on their facial expressions all the way up to twelve (and he only stops because he loses count), he offers them mercy and then kills them and then tells them to get dunked on. And that snatching away of mercy is the most obvious way this anger, this satisfaction in hurting this human, expresses itself: how dare this anomaly murder everyone else in the Underground and then expect to just get mercy out of him, how dare this anomaly try to get past him just by pretending to be nice, how dare this anomaly think his false mercy is better than the honest mercy of his brother? Sans is very angry and, pushed to an extreme, that anger expresses itself in satisfaction at being able hurt the thing hurting him back, and to hurt it a lot, and to hurt it over and over.
But he doesn't think this is a good thing. He hates this part of himself. That's not really anything new to him--he doesn't think a lot of good things about himself in general. But this in particular is something he really dislikes. Sans talks at length about how cool Papyrus is. Papyrus is the cool brother. Sans thinks Papyrus is the cool one because of his ability to believe in others no matter what, because Papyrus really does always think someone can be better, because Papyrus is capable of a seemingly endless mercy that Sans is incapable of. That's what makes someone cool! Being nice is cool! The way Sans acts? That's just another example of how much cooler Papyrus is than he is.
WRITING SAMPLES.
SAMPLES:
log sample
network sample
NOTES.
QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS: