Illmet Application
Jan. 3rd, 2020 01:13 amPlayer Information
Name: Swirl
Contact: PM this account or![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
swirlingflight
Over 18?: Yep
Invited by: Quix
Character Information
Name: Papyrus
Canon: Undertale
Canon Point: Post-game, neutral ending where Mettaton rules a beautiful dystopian underground
Age: Unspecified, let's call it early/mid-20s
History: Wiki, but it's strangely organized, so I'm offering two supplements:
A few years before the start of the game, Papyrus and Sans moved together to Snowdin, into a house on the edge of the small town. Sans paid the rent from the beginning through mysterious means (outstanding pay from his past as a scientist, something to do with him showing up to Judge the human, and/or gambling). Papyrus handled the housework (Sans is a slob) and other details of finance (taxes). Papyrus got a job as a sentry, and pressured Sans to do so also.
They made a big impact on the town, entertaining the locals with their noisy shenanigans, between Papyrus redesigning puzzles, chasing rabbits and bone-stealing dogs, and Sans making bar trips to eat/drink/socialize (and Papyrus making bar trips to complain about it and pull Sans away).
About a year before the start of the game, Papyrus pestered Undyne - Captain of the Royal Guard - to let him join the Royal Guard too. He asked by knocking on her door at midnight. While she slammed the door in his face at that point, she later relented to training him and testing him, only to privately conclude she couldn't let him in on account of his unwillingness to kill anyone (he was strong enough, skilled with magic enough, and they had fun sparring - but Royal Guards need to guard the underground by killing intruders). She came up with "special training" (cooking lessons, except she can't cook) as something to buy time while she waited for him to come up with a new dream.
By the start of the game Papyrus was discouraged by his lack of progress, and had been manipulated by a talking yellow flower (one who knew him - and everyone else - very well, thanks to thousands of timeloops worth of knowledge) for some time. Between his own ideas and whatever the flower planted, Papyrus' hopes for popularity and prestige were pinned on joining the Guard, and the notion that being the one to capture a human would show Undyne that he was ready.
When a slightly dusty human appeared in the woods, he talked a big game about capturing them... But when they played along with some of his puzzles, his desire for friendship began to win out over his ambitions. He admitted this to the human, three times, through a strangely rehearsed speech about his feelings, while pummeling the child with bones to the point of unconsciousness - twice.
Papyrus eventually let them by, and met with Undyne to admit he hadn't captured them, only to get dismissed from the task. He tried to play both sides, helping the human while pretending to help Undyne. The human returned a short while later to hang out, then called him for advice a few times as they proceeded... but when Papyrus went to loiter by Undyne's house, the human pushed on and killed her instead of running away. They never returned again, only called a few more times, and went on to kill a few other monsters - including the King - before vanishing.
Thankfully, Mettaton was stillalive...? around, and willing to take the throne! Everything ended well enough!! Because now King Mettaton rules the underground with a glittery, slightly dusty, four-fingered robotic fist. There's no coordinated efforts to improve food supplies, or educate children, or maintain a guard for safety's sake... But monsterkind has entertainment and a glorious celebrity to idolize. Or else. Those who don't adequately appreciate their new ruler, those who speak out against him, tend to disappear. But it's fine!
Papyrus and Sans work now as Mettaton's agents, possibly through Sans' previous connections to the MTT Resort or to Asgore, possibly through Papyrus applying for the position, most likely a combination of both, wearing suits and shades working a variety of undefined tasks like PR, being a bouncer, and keeping Mettaton satisfied. The experience of working closely with a leader who he does still admire, yet who punishes and disappears those who don't agree with him, should stand as excellent practice for surviving life beyond the Hedge.
Despite being the character with the most lines in the game, Papyrus doesn't ever mention where he was raised, who raised him, or anything from before he and Sans moved to Snowdin. This is unusual! Toriel, Napstablook, Undyne, Alphys, Mettaton, Asgore, all of them have at least one family member or old friend who mentions at least one anecdote of them from years past. Papyrus and Sans have mysterious pasts that they don't seem to acknowledge or talk about, even to each other - Papyrus complains about how Sans never tells anyone anything, and in a different ending Sans refuses to even explain how he and Alphys know each other.
We know that they recently moved to Snowdin, so - at least in the minds of the other residents of the town - they're new to the area. Papyrus has presumably never been in the Ruins, as Toriel left the door closed so long that no one in the town remembers it ever being open. Papyrus claims to know very little about Waterfall or Hotland, which he demonstrates in some unhelpful advice about the areas, and he doesn't know basic facts about the capital city of New Home - like whether they have trains.
It's as if he's not from anywhere in the underground, but there's no other in-game explanation for where he's from. Is he from an area that didn't appear in the game? Is he from an alternate timeline's version of Snowdin, one where Gaster still existed? Is he from New Home, but didn't get out much? Is he somehow from the Deltarune timeline? Was he made in a lab?
We know that he and Sans are both skeletons with font names. The creator of the game posted photos from the game's planning process, including a note that Papyrus has a brother called Comic Sans and a [redacted] named [redacted]. There's a few easter eggs in the game about a previous royal scientist, one W.D. Gaster, who disappeared in an accident with one of his experiments... and datamining reveals an entry like the current royal scientist's, except in Wingdings font, about an experiment with darkness. (It seems to be foreshadowing for the game Deltarune rather than directly relevant to Undertale, but it's there.)
The main fandom theory is that W.D. Gaster is Doctor Wingdings Gaster, father and/or creator of Sans and Papyrus, and that he retconned himself from memory when he exploded himself across time and space. If everything directly connected to Gaster is difficult to remember (unless the person remembering is "holding a piece of him"), it explains some of the oddities in the game: the skeleton brothers' unusual lack of longterm connections or personal history, why Papyrus is fixated on being important, why the game describes him as Forgettable at one significant point, why Alphys stammers and fails to explain how she and Sans know each other, and why Alphys trails off abruptly when telling the human about the construction of the CORE.
I'd like to proceed with the theory that W.D. Gaster is/was their father, raising them during his tenure as royal scientist, and that Papyrus was at least about 10 when Gaster's experiment went awry. I don't know if the Gentry would have any special interest in memories that are already largely forgotten, or in a servant already accustomed to moving around gaps in memory - be it others' or his own.
If that's a little too out there, being unsupported by explicit canon, or if it's just not something that would be relevant, I can stick with the other main theory: that Papyrus was even more awkward as a kid, a tremendous homebody who mostly played with toys and read books, and that the reason there's no stories of childhood shenanigans is that he barely left his room. Half of why I'm interested in using the Gaster theory is to increase the number of memories he could possibly share and lose.
Personality:
"POWERFUL! POPULAR! PRESTIGIOUS!!! THAT'S PAPYRUS!!!" - Ambitious
Our first impression of Papyrus is his brother's description of him, a "human-hunting fanatic." Papyrus is introduced as a sentry with grander ambitions, someone who got the idea that the key to his hopes and dreams is promotion into the Royal Guard, and that capturing a human is the best way to show Captain Undyne that he's got what it takes. He's willing to go right up to important figures and ask for what he wants, be they captains or kings, never mind if it's midnight or if the underground has just been freed from centuries of imprisonment. In many of the endings, Papyrus ends up connected to the leadership of the monsters, whether as ambassador or mascot of monsterkind, being the captain of the royal guard under Queen Toriel, being the (newly minted) Most Important Royal Position for Empress Undyne, an agent to King Mettaton, or being King himself. The only exceptions are when he's dead, or when there's something more important than his ambitions: looking out for someone he cares about.
"NO! YOU CAN'T ESCAPE FRIENDSHIP!!" - Friendship-oriented / Lonely
For all his ambitions of power and prestige, popularity is the really important one. Papyrus wants to be liked. He's a little desperate to be liked, cared about, and to have people to care about. His whole fight monologue is a rehearsed speech - he repeats it on followup fights after capturing the human - about how conflicted he is about what he wants most, and seems like a way of making his friendship into a grand prize that the human would be grateful for. He talks about how few friends he has, but those he has, he sticks to: if Undyne is homeless and grieving, or Sans wants to avoid the militarized underground to stay with exiled Queen Toriel, Papyrus abandons his greater ambitions to be there for them. In Flowey's timelines, Papyrus repeatedly started a fan club in support of the flower. And though we never see Papyrus alive in a timeline without his brother - and despite how he frequently complains about Sans and blames things on him - we know that Papyrus goes to Grillby's to check on Sans so regularly that other characters could use him to tell the time.
"THAT'S MY EMPTINESS, NOT YOURS." - Eccentric
Let's be honest: his brother calls him a star, and his absence from Snowdin would bring the mood of the whole place down, but the real first impression of Papyrus is that he's weird. He capslocks constantly, in what many players - quite reasonably - interpret as a Skeletor-like screeching. At the start of the game he's been wearing the same costume every day for weeks. His 'sentry station' isn't a practical thing that helps him towards his ambitions, it's a cardboard box held together with pasta screws... for the sake of a pun. Papyrus coordinates with his brother to prank the human he's supposed to be capturing, with Sans pretending to give helpful advice about Papyrus' "blue attack" - a barrage of blue bones that won't hurt if the human holds still - only to follow it up with his other blue attack - a trick where the human's suddenly more subject to gravity, and has to jump quickly to avoid another attack. He painted a rock archway to look like a wooden bridge for the artistry of it. His customized sink is taller than him, tall enough to hold a lot of bones - or a tunnel to a secret dog shrine. One of his attempts to make friends consists of posting a selfie of himself, with paper muscles taped to his arms, with sunglasses on him and the muscles. And this doesn't cover his many, many odd turns of phrase, or floating about in defiance of gravity or momentum, or the way his handwriting is in papyrus font. He is whimsical as hell.
"OKAY... I GUESS I'LL REPEAT MYSELF..." - Passive-aggressive / Sarcastic
Fandom tends to oversimplify him as an innocent cinnamon roll who yells about puns and doesn't notice the signs of a serial killer, but Papyrus can be a knowing and passive aggressive jerk when the mood takes him. He's loud, and sometimes blunt, but mostly he makes a lot of snitty comments. He leaves his brother sticky notes about incomplete chores, a back and forth chain of notes on a sock left in the living room an unspecified length of time. He makes faces and complains about the human when they don't play along with his shenanigans quickly or thoroughly enough, with especially irritated remarks for the dusty serial killer. He rapidly reverses his positions when he thinks the listener won't agree, from milder things like swallowing his own discomfort about greasy food to more severe things like people being disappeared by the leadership. When faced with obfuscation from Sans, he complains and argues. When faced with dismissal from Undyne, he lies to her, disobeys her through omission, and works to outright manipulate her.
"JUST DO WHAT I WOULD DO... BELIEVE IN YOU!!!" - Optimistic
But for all his sarcastic and passive aggressive tendencies, Papyrus strives to be confident, kind, and comforting. Optimism isn't necessarily his innate nature, but it's a practiced one. He wants to be liked, and that includes liking himself, and he doesn't settle for a superficial pretending to. He catches himself thinking negatively and actively reframes things to focus on whatever positives he can find, even if he still uses them to make jabs. He dwells on his strengths and successes, his willingness to work hard, his greatness. He shouts it to any who would hear, but mostly he shouts it for himself. And his efforts to help people come from the same direction: he suggests first what works for him, second what's worked for others, and thirdly random guesses. If called on to help someone with their self confidence, he demonstrates the merits of exercise and "hooting about how great we are." If serving as the king, he refuses to give up, and works to make everyone else give up on giving up.
Where and how did your character enter the Hedge?
He was in Snowdin, making sure that everyone's still getting reception of everyone's (mandated) Favorite Celebrity, because the viewing numbers have been a bit down and Mettaton sounded a little put out about it. The (surviving) dogs - those previously of the Royal Guard - slunk out of sight when Papyrus started asking around. He followed to check on them, and got lost in the woods thanks to how much time he's been spending in Hotland at the MTT Resort. When he distantly heard barks and howls as he tried to move his way through the surprisingly tangled vines and thorns, he followed the sounds in hopes that it was the dogs he knew (it wasn't).
Skillsets:
- Artistic: impressive snowman crafting, realistic painting of a rock overhang to look like a wooden bridge, and his handwriting is in the papyrus font
- Carpenter, plumber, electrician, and general handyman skills: installing puzzles in the frozen ground, adjusting his sink to be tall
- Housework: does all the vacuuming and cleaning of a house
- Dramatic monologues: he practices little speeches for all his puzzles, but he's less good at improv when the other person doesn't play along
- Optimism: works hard to believe things will work out, and to instill that belief in others
- Mental and emotional compartmentalization: he believes that his new boss might have killed his old boss and friend, and that's just part of life now. this is fine.
- Precise magical control: skill enough to spell words with his attacks, and could do just just enough damage to knock someone out
- Astonishingly terrible chef: the taste is indescribable
Inventory:
- Cool glasses
- Suit
- Phone
- Spare bones
Sample: TDM thread
Name: Swirl
Contact: PM this account or
swirlingflightOver 18?: Yep
Invited by: Quix
Character Information
Name: Papyrus
Canon: Undertale
Canon Point: Post-game, neutral ending where Mettaton rules a beautiful dystopian underground
Age: Unspecified, let's call it early/mid-20s
History: Wiki, but it's strangely organized, so I'm offering two supplements:
Summary of his known history, with a little headcanon and guesswork on the timeline:
A few years before the start of the game, Papyrus and Sans moved together to Snowdin, into a house on the edge of the small town. Sans paid the rent from the beginning through mysterious means (outstanding pay from his past as a scientist, something to do with him showing up to Judge the human, and/or gambling). Papyrus handled the housework (Sans is a slob) and other details of finance (taxes). Papyrus got a job as a sentry, and pressured Sans to do so also.
They made a big impact on the town, entertaining the locals with their noisy shenanigans, between Papyrus redesigning puzzles, chasing rabbits and bone-stealing dogs, and Sans making bar trips to eat/drink/socialize (and Papyrus making bar trips to complain about it and pull Sans away).
About a year before the start of the game, Papyrus pestered Undyne - Captain of the Royal Guard - to let him join the Royal Guard too. He asked by knocking on her door at midnight. While she slammed the door in his face at that point, she later relented to training him and testing him, only to privately conclude she couldn't let him in on account of his unwillingness to kill anyone (he was strong enough, skilled with magic enough, and they had fun sparring - but Royal Guards need to guard the underground by killing intruders). She came up with "special training" (cooking lessons, except she can't cook) as something to buy time while she waited for him to come up with a new dream.
By the start of the game Papyrus was discouraged by his lack of progress, and had been manipulated by a talking yellow flower (one who knew him - and everyone else - very well, thanks to thousands of timeloops worth of knowledge) for some time. Between his own ideas and whatever the flower planted, Papyrus' hopes for popularity and prestige were pinned on joining the Guard, and the notion that being the one to capture a human would show Undyne that he was ready.
When a slightly dusty human appeared in the woods, he talked a big game about capturing them... But when they played along with some of his puzzles, his desire for friendship began to win out over his ambitions. He admitted this to the human, three times, through a strangely rehearsed speech about his feelings, while pummeling the child with bones to the point of unconsciousness - twice.
Papyrus eventually let them by, and met with Undyne to admit he hadn't captured them, only to get dismissed from the task. He tried to play both sides, helping the human while pretending to help Undyne. The human returned a short while later to hang out, then called him for advice a few times as they proceeded... but when Papyrus went to loiter by Undyne's house, the human pushed on and killed her instead of running away. They never returned again, only called a few more times, and went on to kill a few other monsters - including the King - before vanishing.
Thankfully, Mettaton was still
Papyrus and Sans work now as Mettaton's agents, possibly through Sans' previous connections to the MTT Resort or to Asgore, possibly through Papyrus applying for the position, most likely a combination of both, wearing suits and shades working a variety of undefined tasks like PR, being a bouncer, and keeping Mettaton satisfied. The experience of working closely with a leader who he does still admire, yet who punishes and disappears those who don't agree with him, should stand as excellent practice for surviving life beyond the Hedge.
And then there's the unknown history, as Papyrus' childhood is a mystery, and leads me to some questions for modly approval:
Despite being the character with the most lines in the game, Papyrus doesn't ever mention where he was raised, who raised him, or anything from before he and Sans moved to Snowdin. This is unusual! Toriel, Napstablook, Undyne, Alphys, Mettaton, Asgore, all of them have at least one family member or old friend who mentions at least one anecdote of them from years past. Papyrus and Sans have mysterious pasts that they don't seem to acknowledge or talk about, even to each other - Papyrus complains about how Sans never tells anyone anything, and in a different ending Sans refuses to even explain how he and Alphys know each other.
We know that they recently moved to Snowdin, so - at least in the minds of the other residents of the town - they're new to the area. Papyrus has presumably never been in the Ruins, as Toriel left the door closed so long that no one in the town remembers it ever being open. Papyrus claims to know very little about Waterfall or Hotland, which he demonstrates in some unhelpful advice about the areas, and he doesn't know basic facts about the capital city of New Home - like whether they have trains.
It's as if he's not from anywhere in the underground, but there's no other in-game explanation for where he's from. Is he from an area that didn't appear in the game? Is he from an alternate timeline's version of Snowdin, one where Gaster still existed? Is he from New Home, but didn't get out much? Is he somehow from the Deltarune timeline? Was he made in a lab?
We know that he and Sans are both skeletons with font names. The creator of the game posted photos from the game's planning process, including a note that Papyrus has a brother called Comic Sans and a [redacted] named [redacted]. There's a few easter eggs in the game about a previous royal scientist, one W.D. Gaster, who disappeared in an accident with one of his experiments... and datamining reveals an entry like the current royal scientist's, except in Wingdings font, about an experiment with darkness. (It seems to be foreshadowing for the game Deltarune rather than directly relevant to Undertale, but it's there.)
The main fandom theory is that W.D. Gaster is Doctor Wingdings Gaster, father and/or creator of Sans and Papyrus, and that he retconned himself from memory when he exploded himself across time and space. If everything directly connected to Gaster is difficult to remember (unless the person remembering is "holding a piece of him"), it explains some of the oddities in the game: the skeleton brothers' unusual lack of longterm connections or personal history, why Papyrus is fixated on being important, why the game describes him as Forgettable at one significant point, why Alphys stammers and fails to explain how she and Sans know each other, and why Alphys trails off abruptly when telling the human about the construction of the CORE.
I'd like to proceed with the theory that W.D. Gaster is/was their father, raising them during his tenure as royal scientist, and that Papyrus was at least about 10 when Gaster's experiment went awry. I don't know if the Gentry would have any special interest in memories that are already largely forgotten, or in a servant already accustomed to moving around gaps in memory - be it others' or his own.
If that's a little too out there, being unsupported by explicit canon, or if it's just not something that would be relevant, I can stick with the other main theory: that Papyrus was even more awkward as a kid, a tremendous homebody who mostly played with toys and read books, and that the reason there's no stories of childhood shenanigans is that he barely left his room. Half of why I'm interested in using the Gaster theory is to increase the number of memories he could possibly share and lose.
Personality:
Our first impression of Papyrus is his brother's description of him, a "human-hunting fanatic." Papyrus is introduced as a sentry with grander ambitions, someone who got the idea that the key to his hopes and dreams is promotion into the Royal Guard, and that capturing a human is the best way to show Captain Undyne that he's got what it takes. He's willing to go right up to important figures and ask for what he wants, be they captains or kings, never mind if it's midnight or if the underground has just been freed from centuries of imprisonment. In many of the endings, Papyrus ends up connected to the leadership of the monsters, whether as ambassador or mascot of monsterkind, being the captain of the royal guard under Queen Toriel, being the (newly minted) Most Important Royal Position for Empress Undyne, an agent to King Mettaton, or being King himself. The only exceptions are when he's dead, or when there's something more important than his ambitions: looking out for someone he cares about.
For all his ambitions of power and prestige, popularity is the really important one. Papyrus wants to be liked. He's a little desperate to be liked, cared about, and to have people to care about. His whole fight monologue is a rehearsed speech - he repeats it on followup fights after capturing the human - about how conflicted he is about what he wants most, and seems like a way of making his friendship into a grand prize that the human would be grateful for. He talks about how few friends he has, but those he has, he sticks to: if Undyne is homeless and grieving, or Sans wants to avoid the militarized underground to stay with exiled Queen Toriel, Papyrus abandons his greater ambitions to be there for them. In Flowey's timelines, Papyrus repeatedly started a fan club in support of the flower. And though we never see Papyrus alive in a timeline without his brother - and despite how he frequently complains about Sans and blames things on him - we know that Papyrus goes to Grillby's to check on Sans so regularly that other characters could use him to tell the time.
Let's be honest: his brother calls him a star, and his absence from Snowdin would bring the mood of the whole place down, but the real first impression of Papyrus is that he's weird. He capslocks constantly, in what many players - quite reasonably - interpret as a Skeletor-like screeching. At the start of the game he's been wearing the same costume every day for weeks. His 'sentry station' isn't a practical thing that helps him towards his ambitions, it's a cardboard box held together with pasta screws... for the sake of a pun. Papyrus coordinates with his brother to prank the human he's supposed to be capturing, with Sans pretending to give helpful advice about Papyrus' "blue attack" - a barrage of blue bones that won't hurt if the human holds still - only to follow it up with his other blue attack - a trick where the human's suddenly more subject to gravity, and has to jump quickly to avoid another attack. He painted a rock archway to look like a wooden bridge for the artistry of it. His customized sink is taller than him, tall enough to hold a lot of bones - or a tunnel to a secret dog shrine. One of his attempts to make friends consists of posting a selfie of himself, with paper muscles taped to his arms, with sunglasses on him and the muscles. And this doesn't cover his many, many odd turns of phrase, or floating about in defiance of gravity or momentum, or the way his handwriting is in papyrus font. He is whimsical as hell.
Fandom tends to oversimplify him as an innocent cinnamon roll who yells about puns and doesn't notice the signs of a serial killer, but Papyrus can be a knowing and passive aggressive jerk when the mood takes him. He's loud, and sometimes blunt, but mostly he makes a lot of snitty comments. He leaves his brother sticky notes about incomplete chores, a back and forth chain of notes on a sock left in the living room an unspecified length of time. He makes faces and complains about the human when they don't play along with his shenanigans quickly or thoroughly enough, with especially irritated remarks for the dusty serial killer. He rapidly reverses his positions when he thinks the listener won't agree, from milder things like swallowing his own discomfort about greasy food to more severe things like people being disappeared by the leadership. When faced with obfuscation from Sans, he complains and argues. When faced with dismissal from Undyne, he lies to her, disobeys her through omission, and works to outright manipulate her.
But for all his sarcastic and passive aggressive tendencies, Papyrus strives to be confident, kind, and comforting. Optimism isn't necessarily his innate nature, but it's a practiced one. He wants to be liked, and that includes liking himself, and he doesn't settle for a superficial pretending to. He catches himself thinking negatively and actively reframes things to focus on whatever positives he can find, even if he still uses them to make jabs. He dwells on his strengths and successes, his willingness to work hard, his greatness. He shouts it to any who would hear, but mostly he shouts it for himself. And his efforts to help people come from the same direction: he suggests first what works for him, second what's worked for others, and thirdly random guesses. If called on to help someone with their self confidence, he demonstrates the merits of exercise and "hooting about how great we are." If serving as the king, he refuses to give up, and works to make everyone else give up on giving up.
Where and how did your character enter the Hedge?
He was in Snowdin, making sure that everyone's still getting reception of everyone's (mandated) Favorite Celebrity, because the viewing numbers have been a bit down and Mettaton sounded a little put out about it. The (surviving) dogs - those previously of the Royal Guard - slunk out of sight when Papyrus started asking around. He followed to check on them, and got lost in the woods thanks to how much time he's been spending in Hotland at the MTT Resort. When he distantly heard barks and howls as he tried to move his way through the surprisingly tangled vines and thorns, he followed the sounds in hopes that it was the dogs he knew (it wasn't).
Skillsets:
- Artistic: impressive snowman crafting, realistic painting of a rock overhang to look like a wooden bridge, and his handwriting is in the papyrus font
- Carpenter, plumber, electrician, and general handyman skills: installing puzzles in the frozen ground, adjusting his sink to be tall
- Housework: does all the vacuuming and cleaning of a house
- Dramatic monologues: he practices little speeches for all his puzzles, but he's less good at improv when the other person doesn't play along
- Optimism: works hard to believe things will work out, and to instill that belief in others
- Mental and emotional compartmentalization: he believes that his new boss might have killed his old boss and friend, and that's just part of life now. this is fine.
- Precise magical control: skill enough to spell words with his attacks, and could do just just enough damage to knock someone out
- Astonishingly terrible chef: the taste is indescribable
Inventory:
- Cool glasses
- Suit
- Phone
- Spare bones
Sample: TDM thread