Well, my dears: we didn’t wait? And I came! Contrary to the expectations of Comrade Gwinter in his blog on a related topic, the material on my behalf this week will be. And as the main friend of this comrade, I simply cannot miss the opportunity to continue such a well-raised topic. For this reason, before reading my work, I still recommend that you read this blog, where I put in my 5 cents on the topic. After reading, welcome back to this topic via bookmarks! Well, now your body, after putting a plus and subscribing, is filled with determination, your guide through this kaleidoscope of madness will be Mikhail Smertnov and we begin!
As with the Isaac Phenomenality blog, this time we’ll start with the main question: why Undertale, in principle, encouraged players to form their own works based on it? And indeed, the question is quite appropriate and good. It would seem: this is not a blockbuster with million-dollar budgets; not a AAA project at the level of the Witcher or Elder Scrolls universe . Not even a competitor to the Hyrule timeline with its 3 parallel timelines. But if I ask you about fan universes for these games, you’re unlikely to give me at least a dozen. But if we start discussing Undertale fan universes, it will take hours! And because of this, I have identified the following main questions for this material:
–What caught my attention the game has such a wide range of gamers?
–Why Undertale is more profitable most other worlds to create your own AU?
–What fan content at the moment can be distinguished as "core canon"?
-In what reason for Sansocentrism total fan content?
–What pushes the community to this day, making it one of the most active?
As you can see, there are quite a few questions. For this reason, make yourself some tea and cookies, or urgently order a batch of fried snowballs, it depends on your tastes. We go on an excursion into the world of the universe of Toby Fox and his fans: welcome to the dungeon!
I don’t promise alcoholic drinks, but I will definitely share wonderful stories!
Everything ingenious is simple..
I think it goes very well with the theme
You are clearly already tired of hearing this thesis over and over again among hundreds of similar works of various types, for this reason I want to say only one thing: no matter how much you and I would like to become someone great, associate ourselves exclusively with the highest figures of this world and build an aura of chosenness – it is worth admitting that, on average, all this remains only in our wet fantasies. In fact, the vast majority of people who read, like me, are quite ordinary and ordinary people. Who study/go to work, come and relax in their favorite games. Without ambitions, special aspirations or even the slightest skills. And here the Undertale experience comes to the rescue of you, as the “author”. Why? Yes, there are many reasons, so let’s take it in order. Unless we won’t touch the gameplay – casual Gwinter has already done this, as we know.
Firstly, the characters of the game are the simplest and closest to any person archetypes of the most attractive characteristics possible for the average person. Valor, friendship, bonds of camaraderie and, of course, unshakable DETERMINATION. The word that has become the hallmark of the game. (Much like MOTIVATED became attached to the DMC series and the character of Virgil after the 3rd part of the series) In short: early players don’t care about the game world or its structure. These are such minor things that most players don’t focus on them unless there are rare cases where the environment itself has artistic value. But within Undertale, most of the first locations are quite standard and typical gaming places that don’t stand out much. As the game progresses, the situation changes, which was the clear plan of the developer. Don’t believe me? Fine. Let’s do a little experiment. Use your playful imagination and imagine the scene: in front of you is an ordinary snowy field. You see a large number of trees, some of which are slightly taller and denser than others. At the same time, in front of you stands in the middle of a small free area a strange lamp that looks suspiciously like you. And behind it is a small house.
Perhaps you will choose something different, but I am sure that the vast majority will follow the lamp or the house. No one will care about trees and the possibility of some point of interest and the depth of the world inside them. No one will question the fact that the environment is deeper than it seems. The first thing that will catch your attention will become an area of interest. And it is for this reason that the first thing that catches the player’s attention is them: bright and simple characters. But you won’t be satisfied with them alone, I understand perfectly well.
Secondly, One important detail cannot be written off, namely memes. Yes, you didn’t think so. Undertale is a very meme project. It is impossible to list in a condensed list all the local jokes of the work that are used by fans on a regular basis. For this very reason I won’t even try to do it. The only thing I’ll say is this: the only thing better than a comedy of words is a comedy of action. And this game very well understands the importance of visual humor, using them wisely. Everyone rated the lamp in the shape of the main character higher? Well, here’s an example of fan work that took a one-shot joke to the next level just because it had a visual. I will follow Vasya’s trend and will discuss with you the entire first section only on the basis micro-cosmos of the entire game.
Thirdly, the author of the original does not forget that his goal is not to sell empty dolls for his potential fan, but completely complete and deep characters with their own problems and problems. And here Mr. Toby perfectly implements the game of contrast. The game, which originally felt like an innocent adventure, as it stretches and develops, slowly but surely becomes quite cruel and creepy. Gwin discussed this in more detail with examples, so I won’t drag this piece out for too long. I’ll just give an example from the scene with the lamp, which will no longer look unambiguous: when the hero is hiding, a dangerous skeleton comes and asks his fellow monster if he has seen the man. And the goals of this figure are clearly far from the most friendly, despite the rhetoric. We all remember the prologue: war between monsters and people led to the imprisonment of the former underground. I don’t think it’s worth mentioning that this is clearly not some sweet and innocent event. In short, the devil of the universe is in the details. And speaking of these, let’s highlight the last aspect..
The moment he kills us!
Fourthly, this, of course, is a huge scope for the SRSG. As I mentioned in Gwyn’s blog, the game is simply filled with hidden details and easter eggs that have a wide range of meaning and quality. The most intriguing of them, of course, is known to you: it is a mystery shrouded in darkness and only raises more questions than answers. What are you saying?? Gaster? Mysteries of who was the first man in terms of motives? Why is Sans so OP?? How monsters pumped determination into Undyne if they couldn’t give it back? Pfft, of course not. Everyone knows about this, sometimes even better than me… I’m talking about the legendary paired stones in the scene with the lamp! Their location and incredibly precise identity want to convey to us the idea of the duality of existence, they are symbols of dualism within the game universe and the personification of the skeletal twins. At the same time, the traces near the stones that look like eyes want to convey to us the main detail: one of the brothers sees the world with an open eye, while the other, in turn, is blind. But I understand why you have so many questions.
But sometimes stones near a lamp are just stones near a lamp. Please don’t take your love for any universe to the point of complete fanaticism.
So how can the Undertale experience https://casinovibes.uk/ ultimately help you as an AU author?? If you haven’t noticed yet, I’ll answer. It looks extremely simple and superficial, and all the basic truths of the universe lie on the surface and are sewn together with the whitest threads, having, within the framework of the world, understatements and unmentioned details in the form of extremely huge holes in this canvas. This is the very reason why I called the game DYRTail in my piece of text on the Gwinter blog. But does this ultimately spoil our product from the point of view of the basis for expanding this canon, which is not closed by the author?? Lord, of course not. Are you entertained by the jokes?? Of course. You got high with a happy/bad ending? I think yes. Would you like to see more of the characters’ history?? With great pleasure! Which means there is demand. And you, as a potential author, are able to give your proposal for it!
The end of a good story is just the beginning of a new universe expanding
Your desire to write your AU is reinforced DETERMINATION..
In fact, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, everyone can be the author of their own story. It’s just that not everyone has the proper level of different skills for something like this. Just one stage of realizing your creativity is already a colossal process that does not guarantee you success. A good example is my last blog, which, despite the greatest amount of effort among all past works, received virtually no response from others. Why? Because within the framework of this topic, I acted as an unsuccessful author, because in essence I entered the battlefield with material that did not have a serious fandom foundation and with an average level of design and organization of work.
But there is also the opposite example, on the basis of which there is a good foundation in the form of an active and wide fan community. At the same time, the Isaac blog mentioned at the very beginning turned out to be more successful, receiving a large amount of attention and response from readers. And I’m 80% sure that something the same will happen with the current one, even if I deliberately made the further performance worse. Why? Hehehehe… Well, get ready to learn the main secret of the Toby Fox universe and how to become a great fan content creator! Ready?
I don’t sleep, I just come up with content.
Release a graphically crude product, but with a working and interesting idea
Now, I am sure, you are sitting in complete bewilderment and cannot connect this thesis not only with the very meaning of the previous sentence, but also simply with the quality of the original work. Undertale is a great game! EVERYTHING is perfect about her! And it is precisely this kind of rhetoric that prevents you from looking at reality soberly. Yes, Fox’s project is really well developed and is a well-deserved success. But what exactly provided it? We found out what they were: gameplay, character personalities, good jokes, understatement and Easter eggs, and most importantly – music. You can bring the general design here, but I want to immediately say an important point after which, I’m sure, you will throw stones at me: Undertale is a visually terrible game. This graphics is worse than what was used in the antediluvian Chrono Trigger, for example. The locations are empty and monochromatic, and the monsters even have models only in battle scenes under black and white coloring. And here the question you can ask me will sound something like this: ok, the game is a dump and a mess, thanks clown. Now seriously – you are a complete fool? The game is great!
It is here that I am forced to answer the question in the most uncultured way possible: did I say that all the game is bad? It seems – no. Moreover, I will say more: precisely the fact that Undertale looks as cheap and simple as possible within its image and makes it an ideal candidate for forming a community of fans of the game lowest possible graphic quality requests the same fan content! Here he is – SUCCESS! This is what is the main factor in choosing the Undertale universe as a place for personal creativity – low threshold entering a niche and maximizing simple queries original audience. I remind you: demand creates supply. And looking at the demand for franchise content now, supply still does not dominate it! Here it is – the main phenomenon of the entire project! Even after so many years, he is still on the crest of an active wave and stands apart, despite the course of the hype train. Why? Yes, the answer is as simple as possible: if Toby Fox doesn’t give us Undertale 2, we’ll make our own, and even better than the original!
Due to the simple basis, anyone with a little bit of creativity could change the simple settings of the original characters to their own, because we: we don’t know anything from the backstory of the heroes, we don’t know most of the events from the past of a given world, we don’t have colossal amounts of information, but we have one good word: tale. For those not familiar with English, I will clarify what exactly “fairy tale"is the main argument that the community accepts more and more AU from other users with reverence. After all, it’s as nice as seeing your favorite classic story about, say, Snow White, but from a new angle, where all the characters became owners of, say, stands from JoJo. A person likes the original story so much that he is not ready to part with it and its characters and wants to relive this experience again and again. And no other gaming universe is capable of giving such an abundance of user love for the product as the Undertale fan base. And, not to be unfounded, I want very short go through the currently most popular AUs of this universe, so that you have at least a rough idea of how much the fan canon of this universe has expanded.
A fairy tale that became a new Bible..
We thought there would only be music from the game? But no, the fan community has riveted a lot of original soundtracks!
So, I hope that everyone understands the scale of this enterprise and will not be offended by me for not mentioning the AU from the ***** series, since there is only one reason for this: it’s not me who is bad and I want to annoy you. Over the course of almost 8 years, there has become an excessive amount of content… So don’t be angry)
Underfell is the first and one of the most famous iterations of Undertale. In this alternate universe, all characters change their character and appearance. They become angrier and look more intimidating. The exception is negative game characters and the main character – Frisk. Their appearance remains unchanged, but their character becomes kind.
Underswap is an alternative universe in which the characters change places, but the characters of their roles do not completely change, but retain a piece of the original.
Horrortal – a rather unusual universe, the plot of which takes place many years after the Neutral path traveled by Frisk. Monsters have gone mad and run wild due to widespread starvation, torture and new laws set by the new queen Undyne. Just the thing for fans of metal in their favorite universes.
Undermafia is a community where everyone has a gun. The meaning of the word "mafia" is a type of organized crime syndicate whose main activities are protection rackets, arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organization and supervision of illegal agreements and transactions. The role of leader in the group is assumed by the main character of the original.
Dreamtale – a universe where it is about a bright being with positive feelings who travels through the Undertale multiverse and beyond to restore balance and save everyone from a terrible force that threatens to destroy him.
Aftertale is an alternate universe where Chara gains control of Frisk’s body and constantly resets the timeline to "explore". To win, Sans injects Determination into himself, but after 536 attempts the man still wins. While dying, Sans was able to move to the loading screen, but was unable to reload. After resetting a person, Sans cannot leave the save screen, otherwise he will turn to dust.
Storyshift – characters change roles without changing their character. Storyshift explores the effects of placing characters in different roles: how they act and how their actions affect themselves and their environment.
Dusttale – a story in which Sans experienced hundreds of paths of Genocide and realized that judging a person is useless. Despite hundreds of resets, the skeleton gains Resolve, which allows him to remember past timelines and stop all this madness. Sans decided to make people tired of dying, but their soul is too strong for a monster with 1 lvl. To become stronger, the skeleton decided to sacrifice other monsters.
Underworld is a universe that is based on the idea that the Player hacks save files too often, reinstalls the game and resets, causing the characters to become horrifying monsters whose only goal is to hunt down and kill Frisk, and any attempts to use mercy are futile
Underlust — in a nutshell, this is a universe whose purpose is to reveal the theme of R-34. The basis is the excessive sexualization of the images of the original characters. As promised, I worked on the topic.
Glitchtale – a universe based on a failed genocidal path that glitches the timeline to the point where characters like Gaster, Asriel, and Chara were still alive. One of the largest AU projects on Undertale.
X-tale – the largest AU to date, takes place in a post-pacifist Timeline, where Sans and Papyrus are part of the royal guard. Later flows into Underverse.
So, summing up the section with a brief listing of all the main content, I would like to say only one thing: the game’s community is truly enormously huge and, importantly, is essentially quite creative. Even if many things themselves were unsuccessful, from a concept point of view they look interesting. I am sincerely delighted with what, at first glance, a seemingly quite simple concept has turned into. I’ll say right away: I left out too many things, otherwise this piece would have become prohibitively huge. To give an example of what was omitted, I will only mention Ink version of Sans in general, as well as many other pieces on this board. But why did I do this? Firstly, I would especially like to discuss the manic obsession of fans of the work with one specific character. A secondly – you will already find out at the end of the blog, this is a secret!
I’m not selfish! The world just revolves around me..
This is the one for whom you gathered!
Don’t get me wrong – I know exactly what fan love is. I myself have things that I love more than anything else. However, it is worth knowing the difference between fan love and fanaticism. In my understanding, in relation to the character of Sans, we all experience the latter rather than the former. Why? 90% of AUs start with thoughts or words like: "Nichoshi! Can you imagine what Sans would look like in…" And I’m not kidding, as you might imagine. Sans is currently the face of the franchise and its icon. Everything connected with this hero, like the touch of King Midas, turns into gold. And I have a strong feeling that we have found ourselves directly in this situation:
We, as players, wanted more – that’s Raja. And the mountain of gold in which we are increasingly unable to assess the value of each individual coin is the volume of versions of one character that we received.
Sans – this is a really important hero for the lore and history of the game as a whole, without whom it would not be half successful. But here the question arises – why?? What did Sans manage to do to deserve such an honorable status?? And to answer this question, I need to delve a little deeper into the original game itself. But since you and I pretend that everyone reading is familiar with it at least in general terms, this will be to save you and me time and effort in the form of abstracts. The blog is already huge, and you are clearly tired. Although, I think, as always, in principle… So, the main theses of the reasons for such manic love:
-One of the main meme sources games, and as we found out they are highly powerful
-Has pleasant character a lazy person who doesn’t care, which correlates very well with the majority of average players in the project. But having some background, so as not to appear in a pitiful light in front of the player
-In the lore aspect, the hero has a certain mystery and mystery that stands out quite strongly from the background of other floras, which means – open for any modifications
-Edgey image of a Mary Sue bender after the path of genocide as your strongest opponent, who became a grandfather insider. I’ll say right away – this item is special, since everyone who is not too lazy has exploited this brotherly tragedy on a regular basis in almost all poses.
-Well-built design, What has to yourself And simultaneously keeps you in suspense due to the dualism of its narrative component.
Summarizing, is this approach justified regarding this hero?? Personally I think not. If the fandom had concentrated not only on this character, but also on the modernization of other heroes of the original project, everyone would have won, because many other significant figures of the work would have been added to all the current Mary-Sue versions of our bender. Not in all AUs, of course, this is exactly the case, but even in such, the role of a skeleton with a big bone is more significant than the rest… To be honest, I have been getting the strong feeling for years that all the people made their “Alternative Universe” only for the sake of looking against the background of all its characters from “Alternative Sans” even cooler. T.e. it was an extra appendage to show the dominance of the central figure or a character with the character of this figure. But oh well, let’s chalk it up to the charm of the trio of skeletons and let’s move on to the results!
What is the fuel of this perpetual motion machine??
Answering the main question, namely “What pushes the community to this day?“, as a result, I still don’t have a definite answer. The seemingly simple Undertale was so brilliant at this that it spawned an army of fans who are ready to plug every hole and tear out every white thread, lovingly sewing the perfect tapestry for a good game. I won’t say Toby Fox didn’t do a lot of work to make Undertale a success – that would be a lie. But I cannot say that only he ensured such resounding success. The reason for success is you, the reader. You, who mastered this entire text from the beginning to this moment with sheer enthusiasm and determination to find out what this terrible skeleton on the author writes about his favorites. For this I am grateful to you: you breathed life into the fan content above, if you are familiar with it, and at the same time – into my blog, which is also a fan tribute. For this reason, there is one last push left: gather all the remnants of determination and write down what exactly moves you forward as a fan of this universe! Without you I won’t be able to give an objective answer.
In my subjective opinion, the fact that the themes raised in the game are close to many people plays a decisive role: discrimination, racism, cruelty. We live in a world that is saturated with this up to our ears. But, suddenly, we see a world full of monsters and monsters, who are sometimes much more humane than ourselves. And this is our hope. Hope and dreams of a bright future..
I let your eyes sweat!
But don’t mourn like it’s the end of the world! Good news for you. I officially announce an Undertale collab between me and the Gwinter mentioned at the very beginning! In a few weeks you will see the release of two blogs, where in total we will analyze 16 AUs of Undertale in full! So subscribe so as not to miss this significant event and see you soon at Stop… Game… Ru..