thisavrou Application

[skelepun]

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Em
Are you 16 or older: Yes!
Contact: safelybeds
Current Characters: Nope!
Tag: sans

IN CHARACTER
Name: Sans
Canon: Undertale
Canon Point: After the end of the no mercy run, when the world has "ended." He's technically been home, but his most recent memories are when he was last in Savrou.
Age: Late thirties. (This is undetermined, but I put him mentally around this age.)

History: wiki link

Personality:

To understand Sans, it's important to understand the culture of his race and the facts of his world. Monsters possess very little physical matter, composed of little more than dust and an innate will to live. Losing this will can quite literally cause them to crumble into their component parts and cease to be. In addition, their "universe" can be likened to a universe inside a snowglobe. The digital code of their game is as important to their continued existence as atomic compounds are to ours. As a result, normal video game actions (such as saving, reloading, and resetting) have real-world implications for the monsters in the Underground. Especially so for a monster with the scientific understanding to see what they're doing.

In Undertale, that someone is Sans.

Sans, at first glance, is a charmingly affable skeleton who loves a good bad joke and will do anything to get out of work. And to be fair, these observations are absolutely true. None of what he purports to be are a lie, but neither is it the whole truth. Mining beyond those few surface characteristics can get a bit dicey -- in the words of his brother, Sans never tells anyone about anything, especially not about himself. A master of talking in intentionally obfuscating circles, Sans's priorities are shrouded in fog to those attempting to figure him out.

A few points are nakedly clear: Sans adores his brother, loves to eat and sleep, and has a real fondness for puns. Beyond that, he has little interest in letting anyone in too close. As the player manipulates the world further in increasingly varied (and destructive) ways, the true nature of Sans's awareness slowly comes to bear.

While his memories are reset along with everyone else's (though the degree to which memories are truly erased is not absolute), Sans is a scientist and intimately attuned to the art of observation and is deeply aware of the constant rewinding and resetting of his universe. Unfortunately, this awareness is not a source of knowledge that Sans relishes. The futility of his actions (and the inevitability of both he and his loved ones' deaths) has put Sans in a deep nihilistic depression. His laziness, overeating, and constant sleep are symptoms of the futility of his actions to save his race rather than innate personality traits. In fact, it is implied that Sans was once happy, motivated, and working as a scientist... but that those days are long gone and Sans has given up all hope of finding a way to manipulate time and return there.

In his own words, Sans has given up.

Despite this, Sans has not fallen down and turned to dust. There are still pieces of Sans's life that give him joy and the motivation to keep going; specifically, his brother and his desire to keep a promise made to a friend. Sans hates making promises, likely due to his understanding of the multiverse of timelines and the incredibly slim chance he'll be able to keep it, but his word is very important to him nonetheless. Even in the face of incredible heartache, he will attempt to keep his promises until he has literally no alternative but to break it.

Sans is a complicated, mysterious figure, disguised as a simple jokester. And while it may take literally the threat of his world's destruction to get him to act, when he does it is with all the rage of someone who does not care if they live or die, but wants desperately to stop you -- delivered with a smile, right to the end.

Abilities/Skills:

As a monster, Sans can perform magic. However, his stats are comically poor -- 1 ATK 1 DEF. He also possesses only 1 HP, making him (in the game's words) the easiest enemy in the game. Of course, this assessment winds up being an ironic one.

What Sans lacks in stats, he makes up for in sheer power. He is capable of launching incredibly complex attacks, hitting for one damage at a rate of 42 times a second -- damage that slowly ticks down until killing the victim. His attacks come in the form of magic bones, like his brother. However also possesses a unique ability to summon giant animal skulls that fire immense beams of magical energy. His left eye glows blue when he uses these and several other gravity-based attacks. How he harnessed these abilities remains a mystery, and he uses them incredibly sparingly, as expending the energy required exhausts him mentally and physically.

In addition, Sans is able to shift "gravity." He's capable of turning souls "blue," a status effect that enables him to float people in the air or slam them into walls with a flick of his hand by literally changing the way gravity and physics interact with them.

Because of Sans's scientific background and his knowledge of time mechanics, alternate realities, and quantum physics, he has developed many "powers" that go beyond using magic. The most dramatic of these abilities is teleportation, or "shortcuts" as Sans calls them. He is able to transport himself and others to new locations with seemingly little effort. Beats walking. (However, this ability is easily nerfed by pure caution. Teleporting into places he has never been will be inherently risky.)

As for non fantastical skills, Sans holds down upwards of four jobs (enough to pay the rent on a very large house for him and his brother without help) while still managing to accomplish very little work at all. He performs the bare minimum at each to not get fired, though still spends a lot of his time on the job. In the words of his brother Papyrus, Sans's skill in slacking off is simply unparalleled.

Strengths/Weaknesses:

Strengths:

• Gregarious - a people person, pretty much everyone likes him
• Bad puns - no seriously, they're the worst and he's exceptionally good/terrible at them. If someone enjoys horrible jokes, Sans is about 100% more likely to trust them as a person.
• Science - specifically the quantum mechanics of time (however, despite being a skilled scientist with a private lab, Sans seems unwilling to let people know about his scientific skills and interests). Of course, that has changed slightly with his previous time in Savrou).
• Sleeping - Sans can nap anywhere. Anywhere.
• Eating - Sans will eat anything. Anything.

Weaknesses:

• Fragility - Sans has 1 HP and, as a result, it takes a remarkably small amount of force to kill him. Sans combats this by being very good at "dodging" (aided by his teleportation ability), but it is still a huge hindrance.
• Apathy - The knowledge that any positive progress in his life will be invariably reset back to zero makes him incredibly apathetic to daily events. He simply doesn't care to put effort in half the time, knowing that his effort will amount to nothing.
• Compelled to keep promises - When Sans makes a promise, he keeps it until he absolutely can't anymore (even if doing only the bare minimum to satisfy it). Considering his belief that time is cyclical and a million versions of himself exist at all times, forced into a million different situations, he also believes promises are inherently impossible to keep. The dissonance of that kinda makes him hate making them.
• Papyrus - Despite his apathy and depression, Sans values Papyrus very highly and puts his happiness at an extremely high premium. Make his brother happy and safe, he'll like you. Make his brother unhappy and unsafe, well... he'll probably still do nothing, but he's got an eye socket on you now, bucko. Watch yourself.

Items:

• Blue, fur lined hoodie/parka
• Fuzzy slippers
• Basketball shorts
• A small key
• A bottle of ketchup, half drunk
• Car magazine
• An assortment of whoopie cushions, varying sizes.
• A few spare bones

SAMPLES
Network Sample: test drive (9/2017)

Prose/Action Sample: (this is the sample from my first app, please ignore all the out of date Savrou references!)

The clang of metal against bone, the dustiness of his palms, the way his vision swam with red and gold as he stumbled towards oblivion -- it was a familiar feeling, in the same way most things were. Deja vu didn't really describe the sensation properly. Resignation, maybe. Sans wasn't really a words guy.

If the anomaly was feeling kind, Sans would be waking up somewhere safe soon enough. His own bed, maybe. Then again, failure begat failure and he was in no place to expect anything else.

Only, for the first time in a very, very long while, neither happened. And even after being swept through the paces of orientation (words like ship, galaxy, and some chick named Moira danced in his head), the tangibility of it all had yet to sink in.

Then Sans found the observation deck.

He always enjoyed space. Stargazing was a pretty limited hobby when you spent your life trapped underground, but the vastness it promised, the sheer limitlessness... well, let's say it appealed.

"Heh..." Sans laid a bony hand against the force field, mind whirring at the technology at work to sustain it. Mumbling, practically to himself, "If a meteorite hits a planet, what do you call the ones that miss?"

No one was there to answer or even groan, but that didn't quell the fixed smile on Sans's face. Chuckling, he answered his own question.

"A meteowrong."

A low rolling chuckle echoed through the observation deck as Sans wiped a nonexistant tear from his eye. Still got it.