HOME | DD
Skelligiri β Mercyplates: Going Home
#gaster #handplates #undertale #skelebros #snowdin #skellydoodle #mercyplates
Published: 2017-05-13 17:49:52 +0000 UTC; Views: 6881; Favourites: 226; Downloads: 9
Redirect to original
Description
First time out of the lab.Based on the Handplates series by zarla.
Used my tablet for the shading this time. Please let me know what you think~
For claification: The lens flare was supposed to represent the lights of Snowdin appearing in front of them, I wasn't sure whether to keep them or not but I thought it looked quite nice.
Also, as for Gaster's expression: He is not unsure about his choice, he's made it and that's that. However, he is supposed to look a bit down; after all, Gaster did the experiments for Asgore's sake, as misguided as that notion was. He'd definitely feel like he let him down in a scenario like this. : [
Art (c) me
Handplates AU (c)
Undertale (c) Toby Fox
Related content
Comments: 48
I *really* love how you did Gaster in this, his expression is perfect
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks! It's surprisingly hard to get his 
π: 0 β©: 0
Ohmygoodness!!!! (Fangirl squealing intensifies)
π: 0 β©: 0
Awww SO AMAZED BY ALL THESE NEW SIGHTS
there's no good way out of all this is there Gaster, you dope
π: 0 β©: 0
Aww, I like the idea! I secretly hope the skelebros get some mercy from Gaster, but well... I suspect bad things coming in Handplates. But hey, this Mercyplates-AU settle this a little
I like the expression of Gaster, he looks not very happy. He seems unsure about his decision. Papy and Sans looks great!
Oh, maybe for the next time: draw the arms not so long (especilly of Gaster). Otherwise I like this picture!
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeah, I dread what is gonna happen. Gaster's fall can't be far off now.
I'm sure Gaster would be wrecked by guilt in this situation. He'd feel like he chose his own desires over Asgore. Can't accept things being out of his control, can he? : (
Also, made the arms shorter~
π: 0 β©: 1
I dread that, too. I know, that I will be very sad about that .__.
Heh, as zarla wrote: Gaster would never be happy. And that is very sad, the background for that is clear. And I think you captured this scene very good!
Oh, good~
π: 0 β©: 0
Haha, we all wish. But in all seriousness, Gaster is a jerk, who deserves to be punished. What would Asgore do if he found out Gaster abused his children for science? Don't take this seriously though, just speculation. I really admire your art!
π: 0 β©: 2
Considering that Asgore slaughtered six (tried for seven) children, I don't think he has a leg to stand on...
π: 0 β©: 1
Funny thing being a merciful guy shouldering the responsibilities of his people.
There's not much Asgore can do to go back on his statement, it's like betraying the people who trust you for personal gain.
He's more emotionally broken/damaged than he appears to be, the killings are going against personal morals.
By the neutral run event, Asgore would either commit suicide or be spared and killed by flowey.
π: 0 β©: 2
And yet, while he is shown as a sad woobie, a person like Chara (who actually did kill themself for the one they cared about most) is portrayed as the villain. Even poor Frisk who only defended themself from the hordes of monsters trying to slay them and steal their soul is shown as the bad guy, even though they don't kill a single monster who didn't attack first.Β
Honestly, Asgore is a full grown adult monster who knew exactly what he was doing. And did absolutely nothing to stop it. The monsters were pretty accepting; if Asgore had said something along the lines of "hey, we live for hundreds of years, instead of killing humans lets try and get along, wait for them to die naturally, thenΒ take their souls" he chose to kill six innocent children and keep their souls trapped for his own uses.
π: 0 β©: 1
Try to persuade 5-12 year olds to abandon their goal is pretty hard.
(Trust me, I tried to drag numerous kids off their goals. It's impossible.)
But then if Asgore killed all previous 6, why are their inventory items scattered across the underground?
π: 0 β©: 1
I am an elementary school teacher. I have worked with kids with all sorts of hang ups, and still managed to teach math. It takes time, sure, but it is possible. If I were Asgore I'd let them try to break the barrier themselves until they realized they were trapped, expressed my condolences, and offered each little kid a home somewhere.
Even if Asgore didn't directly kill them, he declared open season on humans, children or no. And ordered whoever did kill them to bring him the soul. It is also possible that the children dropped their stuff (really little kids are especially bad about this) or sold/gave the "weapons" and "defenses" back to the people who then dropped them.
π: 0 β©: 1
I suppose that's the grey area within the realms of Undertale's plot.
π: 0 β©: 0
I sympathize with Asgore's position and it has always annoyed me when people seem to think he's a monster for what he did. He's being true to his word and doing what is necessary to free his people... but I still can't see him being too rough on Gaster in a situation like this. Partly because of his mercyful nature, partly because he knows a thing or two about regret.
π: 0 β©: 2
Do you think that geno!Frisk or Chara are good guys too then? I think there's a stronger case for them then Asgore.
π: 0 β©: 1
Elaborate? Honestly, I never really thought about that. For some reason, Frisk and Chara have always seemed less intriguing to me than Asgore.
π: 0 β©: 1
Frisk, no matter what route they choose, is a small child trying to survive against a seemingly endless horde of monsters trying to kill them and steal their soul. Even the supposedly maternal TorielΒ burns them with fire, and most players, no matter what the route, die at least once. That means Frisk experiences their own death and through only their own pure determination they come back. Even characters who don't directly attack them, like Alphys, support and build traps intended to kill them. Then they learn that six other children fell down too, but since they didn't have Frisk's determination, were slayed. Honestly, when Asgore offers to take care of them, that's kind of evil. He's an abusive parent at best; the kindest thing would be to find a home for Frisk with a family that never laid a hand on them. Also, Frisk is a modern child; Asriel says that he's been Flowey for hundreds of years, meaning that monsters haven't been above ground since then. Frisk was warned to keep away from Mt. Ebbot for fear of monsters trying to steal their soul...which is exactly what happens. Imagine their terror when they find themself all alone in a terrifying monster land where everyone is trying to kill them. No wonder they choose to fight back.
Chara, meanwhile, was a child who was implied to have been trying to die when they fell into the Underground. They have no loyalty at all to humanity, implying that things weren't exactly great for them above. Then, they are accepted as a member of the Dreemur family and find happiness. The trauma is still with them from what happened above ground, but that's natural. They live among monsters happily...but then they die so that their brother can go above ground like he's always wanted. They aren't slayed; they commit slow, agonizing suicide. When above ground, humans (justifiably) assume that the super monster killed Chara based on the dead body and the God of Hyperdeath form, and while the sheltered, innocent Asriel wants to run, Chara chooses to defend him. They both fail to work together and die. For me, there are two options for Chara's rage in the genocide route: 1.) they, like Flowey, lost their soul and aren't capable of feeling, but unlike Flowey aren't tied to a body and they are a much stronger, more determined child than even Frisk (see how they can override them if the player chooses pacifist again) or 2.) their faith in monsterkind was shattered as they watched their supposedly loving father slay six human children who just wanted to get home again.
Meanwhile, Asgore has no such excuses. First and foremost, he's an adult. Automatically, his actions are played on his shoulders more solidly. Second, he is a monster who knows what humans are. Frisk prolly didn't know anything about monsters before falling; they're far too young. Asgore not only lived above with the humans, but raised one as his own. He knew exactly what he was doing and he chose to do it anyway. To children. Children who, unlike Frisk, weren't hunting him down with the intention of stealing his soul. Asgore is also in power, unlike the human children he hunts. Imagine if world leaders stuck with every terrible mistake they ever made; imagine if Hitler had never been overrun and was alive for centuries and was never challenged. I may, may be able to say that if Asgore killed one human and then stopped, it was forgivable. However, six?? Imagine their cries, their pleas. Anyone who fought Asgore knows that he doesn't stop even when Frisk begs and tries to appeal to his more humane (monstane? um) side. Asgore and his people live for hundreds of years. This is important to note: killing the six children was the dumbest thing to do if he quickly wanted 7 human souls. The smart thing to do would be to allow the humans to live in harmony with the monsters in the Underground; this would lead to fallen children seeking out the king rather than running away, and if he gathered enough, they could breed and make more human souls. Then, rather than slay them and gain the LOVE, he could simply wait eighty years or so for them to die naturally. Even at the end of the pacifist route, there's no way the monsters are in for a good time. Why? Their king has six child corpses in his basement, their "ambassador" is a traumatized human child who's been killed countless times, and their people know nothing about humanity and how to get along. Letting those innocents live and die naturally would have given the monsters key knowledge about the modern surface world as well as made the transition less...rocky.
...This is a long post. Sorry!Β
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeah, Frisk and Chara's actions are understandable. But don't forget that Chara was not protecting Asriel. They were perfectly willing to sacrifice his innocence and drag him into murdering 6 humans. I'm willing to go as far as to say that Chara hunted down Asriel in the genocide route to get revenge. Chara was very disturbed, 'laughing it off' when they 'accidentally' poisoned their father with golden flowers.
(Now, before I get to Asgore, here's a little disclaimer. I am German. Do NOT go down the Hitler road when talking about a fictional scenario. Just don't. Also, generally speaking, escalating your arguments to this point will most likely result in you being taken less seriously.)
Now, for Asgore, I completely disagree with you. Asgore made a mistake out of grief by declaring war again. Could he go back on his words once the fog had cleared? No. Because as shown during the 'Undertale' sequence in the game, his promise on getting the human souls and freeing them all gave his people hope. They were agreeing with his actions. Asgore was just the one doing the dirty work (and mind you, he probably wasn't even the one killing every human. There's the royal guard too.)
He couldn't wait until the humans died of natural causes because the monsters were suffering underground and 'overcrowding' had been mentioned at least once. And again... they were at war. The whole 'Asriel breaking the barrier' thing was completely unexpected. No monster was expecting a peaceful end to this. And, in a realistic scenario like this, there probably wouldn't be.
Toriel made the point in the game that Asgore could've absorbed one soul and gone to the surface. One problem: That was Asriel and Chara's thinking. Look at what happened to them, clearly they were far from invincible. Asgore most likely would've met the same fate. The only way he could go to the surface, survive and actually defeat the humans in the war he had declared was by absorbing 7 souls, turning into an actual 'monster' and breaking the barrier.
Asgore offering to adopt Frisk in a Neutral run wasn't logical, it was him giving up. The responsibility was too much and he was ready to die. When Frisk refused to kill him, what else was he supposed to do. There was going to be no happy ending one way or another.
Asgore can be easily scapegoated in this situation, when there's blame all around. From monsters being put into this position in the first place by the humans, to Chara's suicide resulting in both Asriel and their own death, to Toriel's inaction when Asgore could've needed the support (and letting those children walk to their deaths), to other monsters cheering on Asgore and being his driving force.
π: 0 β©: 2
I don't think that what Asgore did was excusable. Not only because he killed CHILDREN but also because the game directly states that he shouldn't been excused for what he's done (which is not not the same as forgiveness) because he faces consequences for his actions (Toriel leaving him, guilt etc..). Yes he wanted to give his people hope but he could have chose do so by any other means such as telling them that another peaceful human would fall or telling them that the angel from the prophecy would free them all. There were so many things he could do but he didn't and chose the most violent way to deal with this because he saw violence as the only answer, because he let his emotions to control his actions.
Doens't matter that he feels bad about it, doens't matter if he had good motives, doens't matter if he's a complex character. He's an fully grown adult capable of consciously make his choices and that all that matter.Β
Does that makes him a pure evil? No. Does that mean we can't love him? No. Does that mean we can't forgive him? No. Just that we shouldn't try to justify what he did.
π: 0 β©: 0
Chara was trying to save the Underground; how would being dead benefit them and not Asriel? They didn't really ask for his consent the whole way through, but they died for him. They clearly saw monsterkind as more worthy of life than humankind (what the heck happened to poor Chara to make them think this way?), and they were hunting everyoneΒ down in genocide, Asriel included. In the same way that it's unfair to blame Asriel for Flowey, it is unfair to assume that Chara had control at all.
When I about eleven, I was playing catch with my little brother and knocked one of his teeth out. It was an accident; he turned away when I threw the ball, and I tried to warn him. When he was bleeding and crying, I started laughing, not because I was glad he was hurt or because I had planned to hit him, but because I was worried and anxious and stunned and my only response was to laugh. Chara could easily have been doing the same, laughing anxiously. Or maybe the stress of having accidentally nearly dusted their own father was causing denial; they were a small child, after all, and as someone who professionally works with children and has dealt with abused children in real life, I know that many times the way they respond to bad things happening is often not what was expected.
Grief is no excuse. He led to if not directly killed six children. World leaders have made mistakes, big ones, but they aren't in control as long as Asgore nor do we worship them the way the monsters of the Underground do. Plus, he didn't stop at just killing them. He is holding their souls hostage, souls that still produce magic associated with the murdered child, and souls that still respond when one of their own calls out for help.
The timeline is what makes me feel that waiting was the correct response. Humans die fast compared to monsters, and they can create more humans. There are rules even in a war, one of which is "no women or children." Nowadays, with women soldiers, that rule is bending more and more, but the "don't kill children" rule is still very much alive and important. And Asgore actively has his people hunt and kill them. Asriel appeared to be an adult who had broken said rule when he rose from the Underground with Chara's body; the humans, you could argue, didn't knowingly break it. If the monsters wanted any hope of rejoining the surface and the provably much stronger humans, they needed to notΒ be the villains they had been made out to be. Even God of Hyperdeath Asriel fell to one small child's determination; imagine what the grown determined adults could do. And there are billions of adults, so even if Frisk is rare in their abilities, odds are, there are enough others to do something. And they wouldn't be going for a no mercy run. And the seven souls would side with the humans like they did Frisk.
There are other monsters (though only a handful) who didn't try and hurt Frisk, the kind thing to do would be send them to one of them. Or let Frisk choose what they wanted. It wasn't the most generous offer he could make, though I do concede that it was done without much thought.
Sure, there were a lot of factors that led to Asgore's genocide route. However, at the end of the day, it was Asgore who pulled the trigger, Asgore who let his emotions rule his people, Asgore who murdered six children (children he knew were like his own, mind) and tried for seven, and Asgore who has to answer for their bodies he left rotting in his basement when the humans inevitably find them.
I also think that Toriel is pretty bad, since she could have escorted the children through the Underground and let them see that they were trapped rather than just wish them well on their way, but she didn't kill anyone. If I were her, I would have fought Asgore much sooner, like, at the first dead child. However, she cannot be blamed for the crimes of her ex-spouse anymore than a mother cannot be blamed for an abusive father. Sure, she loses the child too, but she isn't jailed.
π: 0 β©: 0
Asgore probably be an awkward uncle during the events of mercyplate.
But the consequences of Gaster's action might just result him being fired from the royal scientist position.
(Parallel to Toriel firing Alphys for the true lab event.)
π: 0 β©: 1
He'd probably dad them all, like a mix between an uncle and grandfather. I really wanna draw a scene like that now!
Yeah, that would make sense, especially if core is complete (although I still am a little miffed about the Alphys thing, I mean, wasn't the determination experiment on fallen monsters an order from the King? Eh, I digress). There'd certainly be consequences, but I can see Asgore handling it personally more than anything.
π: 0 β©: 0
That depends on when exactly Gaster came to his senses, I'd like to believe he should get a chance to redeem himself. Glad you like the art!
EDIT: Also, I don't believe that punishment would be a good idea (or useful) in the case of someone like Gaster anyway. Therapy sounds like a much better idea considering the guy's reason for spiralling out of control like that. That's how I feel about the situation anyway~
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeah, years and years of GOOD therapy! God only knows what will happen if he gets out of control again.
π: 0 β©: 1
Well, Asgore certainly might wanna keep an eye on him until they find some way to get out. Gaster's LOVE would be pretty high, although it honestly doesn't seem to me like he would pose any danger to other monsters other than himself (after finally realizing that the brothers are mosters too, not 'things'). He'd definitely pose a threat to humans though. And I'm sure he'd try absolutely anything to try and prevent Asgore's fate.
I'm trying to imagine doing a Pacifist run with this Gaster in it. I think that'd be pretty interesting!
π: 0 β©: 1
Yea, it would be cool. I wonder if Sans and Paps would call him dad or Gaster. Probably even if Papyrus did Sans wouldn't. Unless it was like that super cute new comic by zarla. My heart melted.
π: 0 β©: 1
Nah, can't see Sans calling him dad under any circumstances (well, except if Gaster had raised them from infancy like in that comic. Too adorable for words~). I could see him getting creative with names to call him though. Anything to rile him up or at least try to lol.
π: 0 β©: 1
Here are some ideas: Wing Dingus, Dingbat, Badster, Doctor Gassy. And many many, more.
π: 0 β©: 1
With a name like that, Sans would have the time of his life!
π: 0 β©: 0
I love this :3 Would u mind if I used this as a scene in my fic? O.o
π: 0 β©: 1
I wouldn't mind at all!
π: 0 β©: 1
yahoo~! I use it when they move to Snowdin, since they live in New Home still
π: 0 β©: 1
Oh right, they still live in New Home! So they're moving to Snowdin? Can't wait to read that!
π: 0 β©: 1
They will soon lol Once I go back to it. Working on Souls and Shadows right now. hopefully I can update that tonight and work more on StarDust before going back to Sin and Mercy. I do have a writing plan!.....sorta. That oneshot threw me for a loop and sumone is thinking of drawing my LostSans :3 We're talking about it nows hee hee!
π: 0 β©: 1
I should really get around to reading your other fics! Well, after the exams that is~
π: 0 β©: 1
take ur time :3 if u want, u can join my little contest for Death To Justice. lol I can't remember if I've brought it up D: I would really appreciate it :3
π: 0 β©: 0
So pretty love the Mercyplates side of the story.
π: 0 β©: 1
My only regret here is that I can't slam the fave button on this more than once.
Haha, in all seriousness though--I like the gray-white gradient of the background, the snow effect in general, and the front view angle of the characters. And you know I always welcome a good piece of Handplates fan art. X 3
I'm a little confused about the colored spots, though. I presume they're supposed to suggest the "lens flare" effect you sometimes see in images of snowy scenes (correct me if I'm wrong).Β But it's snowing in this scene, and even if there was some equivalent of sunlight in the Underground, I'm guessing it would be blocked out at this time, and there would be no lens flare effect. I understand I could be misinterpreting this though.
π: 0 β©: 1
Thank you! And that's a good point. I actually added something about the colored spots on the description now! They're supposed to hint at the lights of Snowdin.
π: 0 β©: 2
Ah, I see. Thanks for explaining.
π: 0 β©: 0
Aaah I see. I interpreted the sparkles as the way snowflakes or other particles appear when they get close to a camera lens. That makes more sense though.
π: 0 β©: 0
AWWWW. Of course Sans would get tuckered out, that's the farthest he's ever had to walk! And Gaster looks like he's already regretting every moment of this, lol. The gray scarf is a great touch, and so are the extra lens flare sparkles. I can imagine the boys being both fascinated by the snow, but also frustrated that it keeps them from seeing much around them. This is just so wonderful <3 Oh and the shading is lovely, matches the softness of everything else going on.
π: 0 β©: 1
Haha, yeah! I also figured he'd have difficulty walking through the snow since he's so tiny! Papyrus would much rather carry him than let him struggle.
And, well, Gaster would feel quite badly in a situation like this. He'd feel like he just chose his own happiness over Asgore. : (
π: 0 β©: 0
