Yet Darker.

Yet darker.

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(version without red highlights under the cut)

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[ID: A drawing of Sans Undertale laying on his back, eyes closed and hand over the stomach area, labeled "full of pilk". Beside him is a photo of the "pilk" in question – an unholy concoction of milk and pepsi. End ID.]

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Ruminations on boss monster SOUL power transfer and aging

So, uh. That one bit of Gerson dialogue. What did he mean by this???

Taken from Hushbugger's Undertale Dialogue Dump page on Github.

There are a few different headcanons/theories about how exactly this piece of lore should be interpreted – and, specifically, what its implications are regarding the children's growth rates in different scenarios. So, let's discuss it.

Personally, I'm REALLY not a big fan of the one that implies a boss monster whose parents die would be stuck as a child forever??? For instance, how would this theory of power transfer work with boss monster families that have 3+ children? Because like. Some couples having at least 3 children would be the only way for the population to to ever grow in size (unless we also headcanon that new boss monsters just spontaneously appear sometimes or something, which has absolutely no basis in canon lore). And by that logic, generations of this happening would eventually yield boss monsters who stop aging stupidly young. Not to mention, what about boss monster kids like Asriel, with no biological siblings? Would them getting both of their parents' SOUL power mean they go through super-puberty that turns them into double-mature adults??? So, yeah, not only would this all have pretty horrific implications regarding boss monster dating, but it'd also just be... really cursed worldbuilding that falls apart when you give it in any amount of serious thought. That's why I think it's a lot more likely that SOUL power transfer is simply that: a transfer of power.

I think Gerson's word choice is key here: "causing the child to grow" – rather than "mature", "age", or " develop" – "as the parents age" – as in, "into old age", becoming physically weaker due to giving up SOUL power.

I believe it's FAR more likely that, if a boss monster was orphaned, their growth would be stunted and their power would never reach its full potential – something more akin to malnutrition, rather than them literally being frozen in time; this would also happen, but to a lesser extent, to a boss monster who has to share their parents' SOUL power with more than one other sibling – and, inversely, a boss monster who's an only child would inherit both of their parents' power, growing far stronger than either of them separately by the time they become an adult.

This would also explain Asgore's absurdly high stats compared to Toriel's – like. ok. he has 8 times her total HP??? If we are to assume Asgore started out with similar stats to Toriel, plugging the numbers into the LV-based HP calculation formula the game uses for Frisk – 3/4 base HP + (1/4 base HP * LV) – gives us this equation: 330 + 110*LV = 3500. Solving for Asgore's hypothetical LV, then, gives us LV of roughly 29. Which might not sound that bad... until you realize the EXP required for getting to LV 19 is more than than all of the EXP it takes to get to LV 18 combined. Even assuming the EXP you get from killing just one human is equivalent to killing every monster in the Underground, while also assuming that the amount of EXP you need to level up no longer increases after you've reached LV 20 for some reason... it still wouldn't be enough to explain Asgore's dummy thicc HP bar after killing only 6 humans, if we are to assume his base HP is at all similar to that of Toriel. (Accounting for the possibility that monster history books lied, or at the very least didn't tell the full truth when stating that "not a single human SOUL was taken" during the war just leaves us with another problem: Toriel's also a veteran, and in fact seems a lot more comfortable with the idea of actively going to war as opposed to Asgore's approach of stalling for as long as possible, so if monsters actually were getting insane amounts of EXP by killing humans during the war, how come her stats are still so low? Killing even just a few humans would beef her up quite a bit; again, it's only once the numbers get higher that you see the sharp increase in EXP required to level up.)

I think Asgore was born into royalty, and Toriel married into it. Again: if a pair of boss monsters had only one child, that child would have the combined power of their 2 parents – now, let's suppose a family decided to do that for many generations.... with each new kid in such a family, the base power of the resulting offspring would grow more and more and more, wouldn't it? Perhaps one such family also has the means and prestige that allows them to easily find suitably strong partners for their kids, further increasing the rate at which the family's power would grow. (Also, the idea of Toriel originally being a commoner is further reinforced by the fact that the surname "Dreemurr" is confirmed to come from Asgore's side and, at least as far as we know, Toriel just... doesn't have her her own surname, as she switches to just going by "Toriel" after the two break up. Given that we only have about 3 examples of surnames within the Entirety Of The Underground, it appears that family names just aren't really a thing used within monster society, unless said family is really notable in some way).

...I may or may not be overthinking boss monster biology.