Guess which fight made the biggest impression on me.
Little doodle of my favourite amalgamation. The saddest freaking thing…
One of my favorite things about Undertale is that the amalgamates were ultimately happily reunited with their families, who seemed to adapt pretty well to the whole thing.
Life was different for them, but it went on. They were, and are, always loved.
So my headphone cable is dying and one channel keeps flickering out, but because of this I noticed something kind of neat.
One of the background beats in Here We Are is barking, the same barking used in Dogsong and whatnot.
… Never mind her friends, I really have to wonder how the amalgamates came to forgive her after what happened. Did they try caring for her in return and let her know they don’t resent her somehow, even if she kept them locked away? Did, even in their state, somehow understand, or…?
It feels like some of the fandom tends to overlook the significance of this scene. Like… it’s just something that happened and then we move on to get the best ending. But I’ll be honest in my opinion; you don’t really, truly appreciate Alphys and her character arc until you’ve been to this part of the game. I can barely describe the kind of mixed emotions I felt when I saw this scene. It took weeks if not months to let it all sink in. To this day, I still can’t imagine the kind of traumatic guilt she went through and the kind of (permanent) damage that can do to a person, and I honestly feel the game can’t capture that in its entirety –for justified reasons, probably, but the subtext is there.
It really drives home a message that’s pretty unheard of (in my opinion) in creative works like these; you can make the biggest mistakes, but that doesn’t make you irredeemable. If you have enough of a conscience to recognize you screwed up and you have to face the consequences, you still have the chance to make amends, ad you will have your friends’ support. That you still matter, and that you are still loved. Tons of people have said all of this better than I have, but heck, what she says at the end of this level is basically that word-for-word message directed to the players.
(I hope Tumblr doesn’t kill the quality on this one.)
Chara does not find the Amalgamates existence to be “humorous"
Despite what people may interpret this bit of narration when you select “Laugh” to mean.
If you ignore the “it’s not funny” callback to Snowdrake’s dad that the flavor text makes when you select laugh twice: (link) (link) Or if you think that the "laughing to hide your sorrow” explanation is something that has no in game context to support it: look at the truth mimic bug for evidence that it does (link)
Then yes, you would probably read this at face value and walk away thinking Chara legitimately thinks that the Amalgamate’s condition is something hilarious.
But the thing is…they don’t.
The above is what comes up after you Check Reaper Bird when you are able to Spare it. What was once an indecipherable message now is an observation full of hope for the future.
All the Amalgamate encounters start off terrifying and are handled with an uncertain caution by the narration (and rightfully so, these battles are dangerous and ramp up the difficulty in this final segment of the game) and in the case of Lemon Bread maybe even with fear? (Call, Scream, and Cry are all actions that do nor relate to any of the monsters in the amalgam but are made available.)
Snowy’s mom may have the “Laugh” and “Heckle" option but why wouldn’t she, when the previous monster encounter that relates with her monster type (snowdrake, her son) also had those options? Except this time the way to spare her is with the “Joke” action.
You could try to argue that it’s the state of her body that is making Chara laugh but there is another monster who can be seen in a similar state to the Amalgam that Chara shows no signs of enjoyment in.
In Undyne’s neutral death scene she starts to "loose itself" in a near similar fashion to Snowy’s mom, and here is how the narration reacts to it:
It’s a solemn incomplete observation that trails off into one of the few examples of the narration going completely silent. (link)
If Chara is the narrator we can not just cherry pick bits of narration/flavor text and develop their entire psychological profile from there. We have to look at all the narration, cross examining the differences and the context of the situation, in order to form a solid idea as to what kind of person Chara was like, is like, and can be like.
I saw a whole bunch of people also wanting to see what happened with Reaper Bird and Lemon Bread, so I just did some really quick sketches for them in a post-pacifist setting.
Reaper Bird and its families enjoy their first sunset on the surface!
And Lemon Bread is part of the test audience for Shyren’s new show!
Extra bonus: Lemon Bread and Mettaton, because Mettaton thinks that every monster is beauitful:
honestly just really like undertale 