A gjenganger could have several reasons to return from the
afterlife. Murdered people could seldom sleep peacefully in their
graves. The same went for their murderers. People who had committed
suicide often came back as gjengangere, because Christian
tradition held that “self-killers” were fit neither for heaven nor hell.
At other times, people came back from the grave because they had left
something undone. Most often they needed someone to help them do this,
before they could finally be at peace.
The biggest difference between modern ghosts and the gjenganger is that the gjenganger in the Scandinavian tradition took on an entirely corporeal form. It normally had no spectre-like qualities whatsoever. In older traditions the gjenganger
was also very malicious and violent in nature, coming back from the
grave to torment its family and friends. In the way they acted, and in
the extensive precautions their relatives took to make sure they stayed
in their graves, gjengangere are more akin to eastern-European vampires than modern-day ghosts.
so, like, forget “sans is an irish revenant.“ you know who the REAL semi-obscure european folklore walking corpse zombie dude in undertale is?
murdered (well, angry mob’d)
unfinished business (”There’s just one thing left I want to do. Let’s finish what we started. Let’s free everyone.”) (”There’s something I have to do. […] It’s time for monsters… To finally go free.“)
bodily remains (monster dust)
thoroughly corporeal (moreso that when he was alive)
this is random but I see a lot of #undertale fanwork characterize papyrus as “someone who doesn’t understand anything/is always the wacky one in a joke.” now this obviously isn’t true, since he plays the straight man to both sans semi-intentional bizarreness and undyne’s high-spirited ridiculousness
but it’s also just…plain old not as funny? humor comes from subversion of expectations, and if your joke is how wildly wrong your character is about things they need to comprehend things up until the moment when they DON’T.
a character who doesn’t get anything it is just lost. a character who gets most things but has massive, absurd blind spots in their common sense is what’s funny
the more generally competent a character is, the funnier it is when a goofy and unexpected blind spot is revealed
Me procrastinating on eating and studying by drawing my daughter.png and the crowd favorite, Me procrastinating on eating and studying by sprite editing my daughter.png
honestly just really like undertale 