It’s just a good story using meta elements as a metaphor for power dynamics. I thought people here would appreciate that.
Undertale’s message isn’t “doing RPG thing make you bad”, it’s that if you are in a state of privilege, you have more moral responsibility than those who are not. As a protagonist with the literal privilege of warping time and space, it is treated in-game as cruel to kill monsters because they are a political underclass that is nearly powerless to your massive systemic advantages.
The good ending is what happens when you show solidarity with Monsterkind and have genuine sympathy for them. That’s why it’s so cheery and positive, it’s the result of you leveraging your own systemic advantage against the human/monster class system and for liberation, allowing Monsterkind the space to develop a true mass movement and escape the Underground. This is also why, despite doing stuff like killing six children, people like Asgore are not treated narratively as evil, merely cowardly. Undyne, someone who I would never describe as cowardly but is arguably just as murderous, is treated in a significantly more positive light, even though she is also trying to kill children. This is because the children she (and Asgore) are trying to kill are members of a reality-warping upper class, and humanity are the people that put truly put those children into this position, not the monsters trying to kill them. This is reinforced by the heavy implications that all of the human children that fall to the underground are ostracized or struggle with immense mental health issues- Humanity both literally abandoned them and figuratively abandoned them by putting them into a situation where they have to choose between their own freedom and the freedom of Monsterkind.
This isn’t me doing the whole “media I like is communist!” thing, by the way. It’s a reading of the game that other people have mentioned and talked about. There’s an entire essay online of someone from Ireland comparing the themes to the Irish independence movement. It’s not even really subtle, the way the game actively treats the violence of monsters as less reprehensible than the player makes it the only sensical analysis of it.
This entire thing is also heightened even more by the fridge logic when you realize that all of the other human children that fell would have ALSO had the ability to save and load (UT Yellow sadly can’t be canon because of this), and would have to had to actively give up to die like they did, meaning that at least some of them likely realized the state Monsterkind was in and actively sacrificed themselves to work towards freeing them, an echoing and final act of solidarity between ostracized people. The high capability for humans being able to kill to gain more power means that with proper saving and loading, it probably wouldn’t be hard for any of the children to do a more low-intensity equivalent of the no-mercy route and escape, so this theoretically implies that every single child made this choice independently.
You don’t have to enjoy the game, but the hype isn’t really unwarranted IMO. It’s a rare example of genuine art in the medium getting actually popular. There’s plenty of other artistic and well made (and arguably better!) games out there, don’t get me wrong, but we live in hellworld and for some reason none of them get the attention they deserve. Undertale is just a rare exception to that.
This is also why, despite doing stuff like killing six children, people like Asgore are not treated narratively as evil
Okay I know they murdered 6 innocent children but if you look at the narrative…
I agree with your interpretation generally but fuck do most of the monsters deserve to be beaten up if not killed from a purely game play perspective. Do their souls disappear if they die of old age? Why not give them a happy life underground, use that one soul to travel to the human world, kill 6 landlords, and then go back to free everyone like Toriel explained.
Asgore not only deserves to be beaten up but like canonically is in the pacifist ending (burnt but same difference)
Edit: In reference to the other monsters, I think it’s sort of a situation where what they’re doing is 100% wrong and suboptimal but, again, it’s treated with some narrative leniency because they’re an oppressed group. It’s also worth noting that their policy WAS originally raising humans underground, but it changed massively AFTER their prince got mercilessly slaughtered for taking their adoptive sibling’s corpse out of the barrier to be buried by their own species.
It’s also worth noting that their policy WAS originally raising humans underground, but it changed massively AFTER their prince got mercilessly slaughtered for taking their adoptive sibling’s corpse out of the barrier to be buried by their own species.
Adults murdered my son so I must slaughter unrelated children. I will also not use my power upon the death of the first child to go and collect the other souls from more deserving people. Instead I will sit around waiting, condemning the first 7 children who show up to death. Nor will I decide to stay underground and let the children go if that was my goal in the first place.
Even in context Asgore is objectively evil. If Asgore went out in anger and slaughtered 6 humans in retaliation then that’d be wrong but still understandable. The comparison to the IRA is absolutely shit because they never decided to target unrelated children of British people at the expense of their own goals. If the IRA had a choose between bombing a daycare center or Margaret Thatcher then they’d be evil if they decided to bomb the daycare.
Y’know, Toriel was right that Asgore was cowardly but he wasn’t necessarily wrong. It was emphasized multiple times that a single human soul could theoretically rival the power of every single monster in existence, and Asgore the people Asgore killed were children. Do you think he would have survived a single second outside the barrier, just trying to pick off randos? (Ignore those, lore brain fart)
And yeah, the monsters are definitely a lot more morally… sus, than the IRA or any real life resistance movement, but I think that’s because part of the point is to show how it’s not justifiable to just start killing oppressed people because they respond to their oppression badly. It’s a hyperbole, and shows how even in a situation where you grant reactionaries all the conspiracies and horrific fake accusations they make against freedom movements, they’re still wrong
But, let’s just make an assumption that Asgore was entirely in the wrong (which to be fair, he probably was, I forgot that he would have had an extra soul in him by this point, so he could easily take multiple humans in combat given how creatures like that are described and depicted). This is mostly handled in the narrative. As previously mentioned, Toriel literally divorced him and fucked off to the other side of the Underground to get away from him, and treats him with distaste for the entirety of the game. And, while Asgore is wrong, the interpretation still works, because it’s still a horrific act of oppression for a timebender with nearly unlimited power to kill people in cold blood.
I will concede the comparison to the IRA is very offensive to the IRA, and the IRA (and practically any real life freedom movement) is basically morally flawless in comparison to Asgore and Monsterkind’s shittery, but I’m not the one making the comparison- The person in the video is. And I think it works as a metaphor when you take it as hyperbole for the sake of making a point. The point being, the fact that many of the monsters are not only fucked up but basically evil doesn’t justify continuing the oppression, and it’s still fundamentally the responsibility of those with immense privilege to use it correctly, even when those who don’t have it are reacting to it wrong. The fact that you can instead choose to basically act like an impromptu therapist, and that fixes basically everything, highlights this point perfectly. If you commit yourself to actually helping them work through their issues, rather than murder them indiscriminately or abandon their cause because you don’t like their leader, it ends well.
thats fair but i do genuinely think the things i’m saying, i’m not just starting shit for no reason. i would rather have arguments earlier and get out what i want to say than not say it for ages and let things fester and grow until i can’t say it anymore. worst case scenario then someone can change my mind, or have their mind changed themselves. thats just my feelings on it though. i feel like conflict is a regular part of any website or space and if that makes people uncomfortable than im doing conflict wrong
Edit: Thank you though, I’ll try to pull it back a little
It’s just a good story using meta elements as a metaphor for power dynamics. I thought people here would appreciate that.
Undertale’s message isn’t “doing RPG thing make you bad”, it’s that if you are in a state of privilege, you have more moral responsibility than those who are not. As a protagonist with the literal privilege of warping time and space, it is treated in-game as cruel to kill monsters because they are a political underclass that is nearly powerless to your massive systemic advantages.
The good ending is what happens when you show solidarity with Monsterkind and have genuine sympathy for them. That’s why it’s so cheery and positive, it’s the result of you leveraging your own systemic advantage against the human/monster class system and for liberation, allowing Monsterkind the space to develop a true mass movement and escape the Underground. This is also why, despite doing stuff like killing six children, people like Asgore are not treated narratively as evil, merely cowardly. Undyne, someone who I would never describe as cowardly but is arguably just as murderous, is treated in a significantly more positive light, even though she is also trying to kill children. This is because the children she (and Asgore) are trying to kill are members of a reality-warping upper class, and humanity are the people that put truly put those children into this position, not the monsters trying to kill them. This is reinforced by the heavy implications that all of the human children that fall to the underground are ostracized or struggle with immense mental health issues- Humanity both literally abandoned them and figuratively abandoned them by putting them into a situation where they have to choose between their own freedom and the freedom of Monsterkind.
This isn’t me doing the whole “media I like is communist!” thing, by the way. It’s a reading of the game that other people have mentioned and talked about. There’s an entire essay online of someone from Ireland comparing the themes to the Irish independence movement. It’s not even really subtle, the way the game actively treats the violence of monsters as less reprehensible than the player makes it the only sensical analysis of it.
This entire thing is also heightened even more by the fridge logic when you realize that all of the other human children that fell would have ALSO had the ability to save and load (UT Yellow sadly can’t be canon because of this), and would have to had to actively give up to die like they did, meaning that at least some of them likely realized the state Monsterkind was in and actively sacrificed themselves to work towards freeing them, an echoing and final act of solidarity between ostracized people. The high capability for humans being able to kill to gain more power means that with proper saving and loading, it probably wouldn’t be hard for any of the children to do a more low-intensity equivalent of the no-mercy route and escape, so this theoretically implies that every single child made this choice independently.
You don’t have to enjoy the game, but the hype isn’t really unwarranted IMO. It’s a rare example of genuine art in the medium getting actually popular. There’s plenty of other artistic and well made (and arguably better!) games out there, don’t get me wrong, but we live in hellworld and for some reason none of them get the attention they deserve. Undertale is just a rare exception to that.
I agree with your interpretation generally but fuck do most of the monsters deserve to be beaten up if not killed from a purely game play perspective. Do their souls disappear if they die of old age? Why not give them a happy life underground, use that one soul to travel to the human world, kill 6 landlords, and then go back to free everyone like Toriel explained.
Asgore not only deserves to be beaten up but like canonically is in the pacifist ending (burnt but same difference)
Edit: In reference to the other monsters, I think it’s sort of a situation where what they’re doing is 100% wrong and suboptimal but, again, it’s treated with some narrative leniency because they’re an oppressed group. It’s also worth noting that their policy WAS originally raising humans underground, but it changed massively AFTER their prince got mercilessly slaughtered for taking their adoptive sibling’s corpse out of the barrier to be buried by their own species.
Adults murdered my son so I must slaughter unrelated children. I will also not use my power upon the death of the first child to go and collect the other souls from more deserving people. Instead I will sit around waiting, condemning the first 7 children who show up to death. Nor will I decide to stay underground and let the children go if that was my goal in the first place.
Even in context Asgore is objectively evil. If Asgore went out in anger and slaughtered 6 humans in retaliation then that’d be wrong but still understandable. The comparison to the IRA is absolutely shit because they never decided to target unrelated children of British people at the expense of their own goals. If the IRA had a choose between bombing a daycare center or Margaret Thatcher then they’d be evil if they decided to bomb the daycare.
Y’know, Toriel was right that Asgore was cowardly but he wasn’t necessarily wrong. It was emphasized multiple times that a single human soul could theoretically rival the power of every single monster in existence, and Asgore the people Asgore killed were children. Do you think he would have survived a single second outside the barrier, just trying to pick off randos?(Ignore those, lore brain fart)And yeah, the monsters are definitely a lot more morally… sus, than the IRA or any real life resistance movement, but I think that’s because part of the point is to show how it’s not justifiable to just start killing oppressed people because they respond to their oppression badly. It’s a hyperbole, and shows how even in a situation where you grant reactionaries all the conspiracies and horrific fake accusations they make against freedom movements, they’re still wrong
https://youtu.be/XjGIimOuGnc?si=vHyvb8KkHZLtcbfo
But, let’s just make an assumption that Asgore was entirely in the wrong (which to be fair, he probably was, I forgot that he would have had an extra soul in him by this point, so he could easily take multiple humans in combat given how creatures like that are described and depicted). This is mostly handled in the narrative. As previously mentioned, Toriel literally divorced him and fucked off to the other side of the Underground to get away from him, and treats him with distaste for the entirety of the game. And, while Asgore is wrong, the interpretation still works, because it’s still a horrific act of oppression for a timebender with nearly unlimited power to kill people in cold blood.
I will concede the comparison to the IRA is very offensive to the IRA, and the IRA (and practically any real life freedom movement) is basically morally flawless in comparison to Asgore and Monsterkind’s shittery, but I’m not the one making the comparison- The person in the video is. And I think it works as a metaphor when you take it as hyperbole for the sake of making a point. The point being, the fact that many of the monsters are not only fucked up but basically evil doesn’t justify continuing the oppression, and it’s still fundamentally the responsibility of those with immense privilege to use it correctly, even when those who don’t have it are reacting to it wrong. The fact that you can instead choose to basically act like an impromptu therapist, and that fixes basically everything, highlights this point perfectly. If you commit yourself to actually helping them work through their issues, rather than murder them indiscriminately or abandon their cause because you don’t like their leader, it ends well.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
deleted by creator
Sorry I’m an annoying fan at heart
nah you’ve just been kind of annoying in general for the past week
in what specific context
like this is coming out of no where, genuinely
idk i’ve just seen you in an argument with someone everytime i see you
thats fair but i do genuinely think the things i’m saying, i’m not just starting shit for no reason. i would rather have arguments earlier and get out what i want to say than not say it for ages and let things fester and grow until i can’t say it anymore. worst case scenario then someone can change my mind, or have their mind changed themselves. thats just my feelings on it though. i feel like conflict is a regular part of any website or space and if that makes people uncomfortable than im doing conflict wrong
Edit: Thank you though, I’ll try to pull it back a little
well ur pretty chill now, i take back what i said for the most part. have a nice day
thank you, sorry for being kinda defensive.
😠