Sans Isn’t a Hero in Any Sense of the Word (Discussion/Long text)

[Crystalitar]

DISCLAIMER! The following text is taken from a post on tumblr, i just thought it to be an interesting enough view to discuss it and share it here. These are not my words.

TL;DR : Sans is not having an heroistic battle with you as much as people want to believe.

now without further ado. (and some effort in formatting)

-----------------------
"

Sans Isn’t a Hero in Any Sense of the Word

I was willing to be quiet about the amount of Sans♥♥♥♥♥kissing in the fandom, but a certain Youtuber dropped a vocal Megalovania cover and the comments are horrible. It’s not people who ship Fell!Sans and Swap!Sans, or love Bitty!Sans, or replace everyone in Undertale with Sans. It’s not that type of Sans♥♥♥♥♥kissing. It’s people calling Sans “the epitome of good”, “the hero of the No Mercy run”, “striking you down with righteous fury”, etc. etc. etc.

Among the larger group of Undertale fans, even people who liked the game in 2015 and haven’t given it a single thought since then, there exists this insidious idea that Sans is this hero of justice, this calculating genius, this suave man with hidden (sexy?) emotional depths under his lazy front. We see art of Sans crying over a dusty red scarf in the No Mercy run. We get AUs (like Glitchtale) where Sans is the main scientist that everyone respects rather than Alphys (we even see Gaster replacing her in Glitchtale, but that’s another grievance to nail to another church door). We see art of Sans killing that evil, nasty Chara with his eye burning blue flame while the light of God shines down on this chosen, sexy Christ figure who brings nothing but justice and good!

What we have in canon is a fat, lazy skeleton who makes puns and willingly lets you kill everyone he’s ever known and loved because he’s too sad to try and stop you.

How the hell did we all get it so wrong?

I want to deconstruct these ideas one by one. Feel free to add on to this post or correct any mistakes i make. If you don’t want to read any further, just leave this post with this idea: Sans is not a hero or even a great person; he does not protect you, Papyrus, or anyone; he is not the smartest, strongest, or best character in Undertale by any means.

1. “Sans is emotional in his fight with the human!”/”Sans is just in his fight with the human!”

   This is what kills me the most is hearing vocal covers of Megalovania from Sans’s POV where he’s like, screaming and shouting and even on the verge of tears. Did we play the same fight? The one I saw was this: he stood there with the same♥♥♥♥♥♥eating grin he always has, dodging using the least effort possible (moving to the side). You can tell he hates you based on how he mocks you and especially at the end when he finally loses his cool and throws your SOUL all around, but he doesn’t threaten you or curse at you or mourn how he “couldn’t protect them” (like in that cover). He stands there and tells you he hasn’t given a♥♥♥♥♥♥for most of his life and the only reason he’s giving a♥♥♥♥♥♥now is to save his own♥♥♥♥♥– not Asgore, not Flowey, certainly not Papyrus. Because he knows that an ‘anomaly’, who he believes to be you, will ‘end everything’. If that happens, he dies too.
   
   I will reiterate: Sans could have stopped you at any time, but he instead sat back and let you kill everyone. People might say it’s because of his ‘promise’ to Toriel, but let’s be honest: how much of that was sheer apathy?
   
   Let’s look to the Pacifist route for evidence. He promised to protect you and help you, but all he really does is make jokes, stack hot dogs on your head, and tell you- a child- outright that he wanted to murder you in cold blood. He doesn’t defend you from monsters, who spend 99% of the game just whaling on Frisk like it’s their damn job- and he doesn’t guide your path (like Alphys), and he doesn’t give emotional support like Papyrus (on the phone and in person), and he doesn’t even bother to spend any real quality time with you at all besides taking you to Grillby’s and asking if you know about a talking flower. Sans does the minimal amount of work to scrape by in any situation; Undyne says so herself in a call. Considering how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ he is at keeping his promise in Pacifist, why should we assume he has an iron will in No Mercy?
   
   Sans knows about the anomaly and is banking on the fact that you’ll just reset and start over when you kill Papyrus or someone else that Sans cares about. If you killed Papyrus by accident or whatever, it would be a huge waste of energy for Sans to come kick your♥♥♥♥♥instead of just having a smoothie and then seeing you in the next timeline. He doesn’t necessarily stand there and watch you kill Papyrus because of his ‘promise’, it’s because of his apathy. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t love Papyrus, but it means he views life- his own life and others’ lives- as worthless.
   
   Expanding on that point, Sans’s main personality trait is that he’s given up because of his knowledge about the anomaly. Since he views his and other’s lives as pointless, there’s no reason for him to get emotional. All the headcanons where Sans cries over Papyrus’s scarf and wears it during the fight and blah blah blah: just plain wrong. What’s the point in having a crying fit if the anomaly could send him back to having a pun duel with Papyrus any minute?
   
   If you want a hero who smiles in death, Undyne is right there. If you want a hero who does everything to save life despite their depression, Alphys is right there. If you want someone who has so much love in their heart that they spare you despite knowing the consequences of doing it, Papyrus is right there. These are all characters who make a genuine, memorable contribution to the No Mercy route in their own unique way. What these characters do in this time of strife defines them: Undyne shows her selflessness and bravery; Alphys shows her willingness to overcome her fear of her past and others to save life; Papyrus shows his empathy and unwillingness to let anyone feel like they have no chance to be a better person.
   
   So what defines Sans? Laziness and petty anger.
   hell, he says it himself. "or is that just a poor excuse for being lazy?"
   Yes, Megalovania is an epic song, but there’s no reason for Sans to be singing such emotional lyrics to it. In fact, Megalovania may be the most epic part of the fight.
   
   

2. “The Sans fight is meant to be a climactic battle between good and evil!”

   
   Christ, no.
   
   Okay, let’s put it in context. You’re on a power rush. Mettaton NEO had the stats and HP to make him the strongest boss in the game. He confronts you in his form that’s designed to eradicate humanity. You kill him in one hit.
   
   Prior to that, you’ve killed legions of monsters in one hit– you’ve killed anyone who could be a threat to you. You’ve killed the hero of every monster, Undyne, who rightfully became this JRPG Heroine who gathered the power of Everyone’s Hopes to kill you, the Final Boss. Even Flowey, who’s caused the player hell in some past timelines, is terrified of you.
   
   Then here stands this dumb little cartoon skeleton, who you only know as having made dumb jokes in past runs. He only has 1 attack and 1 defense! How hard can it be?
   
   And then, of course, he kicks your♥♥♥♥♥ He taunts you to infuriate you. He does anything he can to trick you. He murders an 8 year old in cold blood over and over, not out of some sense of heroism, but out of petty revenge and schadenfreude.
   
   It’s meant to be an anticlimax. The fight is a long, slow slog that takes hours upon hours of tries to come even close to winning. It’s meant to be unenjoyable.There’s no epic angry Sans trying his hardest to kill you. There’s no Sans crying with rage, his eye burning blue flame (sidenote: it only flashes blue/yellow like once or twice, you cowards). There’s no grand prize waiting for you. There’s none of that. He’s standing there, telling you directly to give up. Only a fool would tax their own mental health to try and win a nigh-unwinnable fight against a boss who doesn’t give a♥♥♥♥♥♥about you. If he makes the fight enjoyable for you, then you’ll be motivated to complete it and kill him, which he doesn’t want. Besides his numbness, that’s why he’s not screaming and crying and singing about righteous fury. Making you reset is the only chance he has.
   
   Yes, there is the ‘karma’ aspect of his fight that makes people think he’s some angelic hero backed by God, but that’s not really explained at all. It’s really just poison damage. I don’t think we can say that using it makes Sans a hero.
   
   

3. Sans protects his brother/Sans is a genius/Papyrus is abusive???/etc

   
   Ah, yes, Sans protects his brother, doodoo the fool, who has never done anything right in his life. Papyrus never got Sans that job to begin with; Papyrus doesn’t maintain the house while Sans lays around; Papyrus doesn’t train his hardest and doesn’t wind up a valued and loved member of the community despite his eccentricities. Papyrus is just a precious little babby who’s innocent uwu
   
   ♥♥♥♥ off. Listen. Sans and Papyrus help each other and they hurt each other, like siblings do. I’ve recently started to see people say that Papyrus is abusive to Sans?? For calling him lazy all the time??? Oooooh, but Sans is sensitive about being lazy because he’s depressed! uwu
   
   You ♥♥♥♥ off too. Sans really, really doesn’t care about that. He knows he’s lazy: he consciously chose to give up. I’ve been so depressed I feel numb, like I want to kill myself but I can’t even make the effort. That type of brotherly negging doesn’t come close to bothering me. If someone called Sans lazy, he would agree with you and go about his day.
   
   He doesn’t protect his brother in any great sense. He threatens you verbally but otherwise lets him die. Papyrus is very eccentric and misses a lot of things, but he is also quite intelligent (here’s a good post I recommend[archiveofourown.org]). What Sans does do is undervalue Papyrus’s efforts, along with Undyne, because they both think he’s too ‘innocent’. In that sense, he hurts Papyrus just as much as Papyrus could possibly hurt him by calling him lazy. That doesn’t make him abusive, in turn. It just means they’re realistically flawed characters. They do a lot to help each other, too, to where I couldn't say one depends on the other more, but that’s a post for another day.
   
   Regarding the ‘dont forget’ picture, which people theorize is a picture of Sans, Papyrus and Gaster: what do you think is stopping him from sharing it with Papyrus? Does he think the information will hurt or scare him? Will telling someone about Gaster physically kill them because he doesn’t exist? It’s emotional vulnerability, and Sans is scared of that, so he keeps the knowledge to himself. It’s another way of viewing Papyrus as somehow more innocent, and if Papyrus had a connection to Gaster too (he and Sans presumably lived and maybe worked side-by-side, during which time at least Sans had to interact with Gaster), it’s selfish in principle not to share it, unless Gaster explicitly didn’t want him to– which isn’t stated at all.
   
   Related to that, I also see people saying Sans is this tragic genius. This fallen assistant of Dr Gaster who carries on his work in secret and is a better scientist than Alphys. I even see people crediting Alphys’s accomplishments to Sans. That makes my blood boil. Alphys is just as quirky as any other UT character, but she’s also just as competent. The reason she doesn’t get doted on like Sans is because she’s female. Look at her: she’s quirky, smart, and depressed. She has a tragic backstory in a horrible accident that resulted in a loss of life (in a sense– the Amalgamates are kind of alive). How is that different from how people portray Sans? It’s because somehow people find Sans more ‘♥♥♥♥able’ because they’ve never looked at his sprite in their life, apparently.
   
   We don’t know how much to the CORE Sans might have contributed or how much he knows. In that light, it doesn’t make sense to credit him so highly. What we do know is that he likes sci-fi, “especially when it’s real,” and he has a lab in the basement. So when people make him out to be this genius who makes Alphys look like booboo the clown, it just… it’s only from headcanon based around making him sexier.
   
   This doesn’t even touch on the fact that Sans doesn’t remember resets but just fills in the blanks by reading your expression and bluffing. I’m cutting this short because I feel like I’m in danger of repeating myself. Again, please feel free to add to or correct this post with actual canon information.

The Bottom Line[78.media.tumblr.com]
(This picture is a joke. I know Sans is a full character with his own flaws like anyone else in UT. My point isn’t that he’s a horrible person or that I just want to bash him- I like Sans, in fact- my point is that he has flaws and very selfish reasons for fighting you and he doesn’t deserve most of the praise he’s given.)
"
-----------------------------------

Imo an interesting read.
Add to that the recent realization that you can play the whole game without actively bonding with him as most quirky stuff from his are from bonus scenes you initiate if you choose to.

Original post on tumblr [officiallilith.tumblr.com]

[Broken Viking]

I couldn’t find where it said this, but I’m pretty sure it said that sans “dodges in the most lazy way possible, just going left” (which would be his right)... I’m pretty sure this reddit post was just to make people angry, cause he’s the only one who DOES dodge

[Mother of Exiles]

Messaggio originale di Lord Koala990:

Messaggio originale di Crystalitar - NYEH - SHINY:

but thats the thing. People do genocide even after they have been friendly. I would think Sans doesnt even have the idea that of you be nice you'll stay nice. Everything can just be reset and he wont ever know.

I did a Pacifist and i'm doing a Genocide now.
But, regardless that, do Sans' Fangirls know there are another good CHARActers ? like Asriel, Flowey, Toriel...ASGORE...
Bad Pun intended.

Though, it comes to taste, Chara's a little ♥♥♥♥, Asriel is... can't find anything bad someone most likely ban, Flowey's a soulless monster, Toriel is a ♥♥♥♥ and very hard headed, Asgore killed kids(though I'd argue for a fair and decent reason, you put your people before others and before your own feelings as he clearly felt extreme sadness and guilt about taking lives, he still did it for his people, a good king - I'm a bit biased towards Asgore)

[a]

Messaggio originale di A Cup with goggles:

Messaggio originale di Lord Koala990:

I did a Pacifist and i'm doing a Genocide now.
But, regardless that, do Sans' Fangirls know there are another good CHARActers ? like Asriel, Flowey, Toriel...ASGORE...
Bad Pun intended.

Though, it comes to taste, Chara's a little ♥♥♥♥, Asriel is... can't find anything bad someone most likely ban, Flowey's a soulless monster, Toriel is a ♥♥♥♥ and very hard headed, Asgore killed kids(though I'd argue for a fair and decent reason, you put your people before others and before your own feelings as he clearly felt extreme sadness and guilt about taking lives, he still did it for his people, a good king - I'm a bit biased towards Asgore)

How about Papyrus, Muffet, Frisk itself, Alphys and even River man ?
I mean, Sans IS a great character, but there's a lot of them. ( I agree with you, Asgore is still mean. )

[Mother of Exiles]

Messaggio originale di Lord Koala990:

Messaggio originale di A Cup with goggles:

Though, it comes to taste, Chara's a little ♥♥♥♥, Asriel is... can't find anything bad someone most likely ban, Flowey's a soulless monster, Toriel is a ♥♥♥♥ and very hard headed, Asgore killed kids(though I'd argue for a fair and decent reason, you put your people before others and before your own feelings as he clearly felt extreme sadness and guilt about taking lives, he still did it for his people, a good king - I'm a bit biased towards Asgore)

How about Papyrus, Muffet, Frisk itself, Alphys and even River man ?
I mean, Sans IS a great character, but there's a lot of them. ( I agree with you, Asgore is still mean. )

Hmm, Papyrus, Muffet, and Frisk are hard for me to play devil's advocate. Papyrus is... Papyrus, Muffet we don't see much of her, and largely Frisk is a character for people to imprint themselves onto, Frisks actions are for you to decide
Though, I talked about Alphys in my previous post here

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

It kinda annoys me that people think of Asriel and Flowey as two separate characters, and judge them as two separate characters even though that's missing the entire point of the character.

[Cosmibun]

Sans exists solely for comedic relief and to be a twist final boss which isn't all that clever in the first place.

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

Messaggio originale di S C R E A M I N G:

Sans exists solely for comedic relief and to be a twist final boss which isn't all that clever in the first place.

He's the character that pushes you towards getting the pacifist ending, and explains your powers from the monsters' perspective. While Flowey encourages you to experiment.

[Broken Viking]

Messaggio originale di (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

It kinda annoys me that people think of Asriel and Flowey as two separate characters, and judge them as two separate characters even though that's missing the entire point of the character.

i personally think of flowey and asriel as two different people, cause he asked me too

[Crystalitar]

Messaggio originale di (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

Messaggio originale di S C R E A M I N G:

Sans exists solely for comedic relief and to be a twist final boss which isn't all that clever in the first place.

He's the character that pushes you towards getting the pacifist ending, and explains your powers from the monsters' perspective. While Flowey encourages you to experiment.

imo not really pushes, but more prevents the bad outcome. Nowhere in any route does he actively try to make you do the good thing.

[Mother of Exiles]

Messaggio originale di (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

It kinda annoys me that people think of Asriel and Flowey as two separate characters, and judge them as two separate characters even though that's missing the entire point of the character.

"In the future, if you uh, see me... don't think of it as me, OK? I just want you to remember me like this."
All in all, I think you should judge them as two different characters, and think of them as so. Acting like they aren't, would in my opinion, be missing the point of how your actions have consequences, and can completely ruin a good human being, for better or worse. Since in the end, Asriel to me is summed up quite nicely by one sentence. You can't save everyone

[Broken Viking]

Messaggio originale di Crystalitar - NYEH - SHINY:

Messaggio originale di (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

He's the character that pushes you towards getting the pacifist ending, and explains your powers from the monsters' perspective. While Flowey encourages you to experiment.

imo not really pushes, but more prevents the bad outcome. Nowhere in any route does he actively try to make you do the good thing.

"if you keep going down this path, you're going to have a bad time" Sans, Snowdin forest

[Crystalitar]

Messaggio originale di MasterRaptor911:

Messaggio originale di Crystalitar - NYEH - SHINY:

imo not really pushes, but more prevents the bad outcome. Nowhere in any route does he actively try to make you do the good thing.

"if you keep going down this path, you're going to have a bad time" Sans, Snowdin forest

its not really positive encouragement. Its theathening. and this only happens when you already are on the bad path.

Only moment he compliments you is when you are already at the end and he can judge you from what he saw from the sidelines.

[Broken Viking]

Messaggio originale di Crystalitar - NYEH - SHINY:

Messaggio originale di MasterRaptor911:

"if you keep going down this path, you're going to have a bad time" Sans, Snowdin forest

its not really positive encouragement. Its theathening. and this only happens when you already are on the bad path.

Only moment he compliments you is when you are already at the end and he can judge you from what he saw from the sidelines.

The point was, he DID try to make u do the right thing, not to mention, u might not have had gotten a chance to kill then (whilst he was watching), which also makes him a good judge of CHARActer (recurring puns time)

[Casual Amateur]

Atless sans did some thing atless. He kinda trying to keep you from doing genocide atless.

[Crystalitar]

Messaggio originale di MasterRaptor911:

Messaggio originale di Crystalitar - NYEH - SHINY:

its not really positive encouragement. Its theathening. and this only happens when you already are on the bad path.

Only moment he compliments you is when you are already at the end and he can judge you from what he saw from the sidelines.

The point was, he DID try to make u do the right thing, not to mention, u might not have had gotten a chance to kill then (whilst he was watching), which also makes him a good judge of CHARActer (recurring puns time)

Im curious wich act you see as him trying to make you do the right thing. As i see it more as preventing the bad then motivating you to do the good thing.

There is a difference in saying "do good" and "don't do bad"

Actually regarding the pacifist run, you can be a complete ass to everyone, attack and then run away instead of befriending, and sans will still judge you the same, he even says that "you're not a good person perse, but you had a certain tenderness". One could even say that if you did get kills, that his many variations of his commentary are almost daring you to go to the extreme "you're not even trying" and "could be worse" etc