gamerteen13:

zarla-s: If you do a murder run and decide to spare Papyrus at the last minute, he says “Wowie!!! You did it!!! You didn’t do a violence!!! To be honest, I was a little afraid…“ so even though Papyrus is actively frightened of you he still tries to get through to you anyway ;_; he’s so brave sob

(alternately, now you can think of how scared Papyrus was when you killed him)

Sans, meanwhile, is just relieved.

You’re given so many chances to not go through with a murder run. Sort of a counterpart to that other more spoilery comic about broken resolve during a run.

I can see it in my head, Frisk falls down a hole and lands in a world of monsters, most of whom, intentionally or not, want to kill him. He fights to defend himself, and by the end of the day, the nice goat lady who took him in tries to kill him, and she forced him to kill her. He had to get home! He had to! He clings to his goal as validation, he reminds himself that the people he’s killing are monsters, and he fights. He doesn’t want to, but he has to. He makes it through Snowdin, and encounters that scrawny skeleton guy. He calls him a weirdo, but… “I, Papyrus, see great potential within you! Everyone can be a great person if they try!” “Human! I think you are in need of guidance! Someone needs to keep you on the straight and narrow! But worry not. I, Papyrus… Will gladly be your friend and tutor!” In the darkness that was becoming Frisk’s life, light came in the form of a hammy skeleton, longing to become a hero. And by this one act of kindness, Papyrus became one to young Frisk.

I’ve seen this kind of story come up a few times in relation to this comic, and (no offense or anything!) I think it mischaracterizes an aspect of the murder run that makes it so effective, in my opinion.

The difference between a neutral run and a murder run is that, in a murder run, you need to kill everything in an area. Not just everything you encounter, but everything. EVERYTHING. Which means that you have to sit there grinding, walking back and forth in the same rooms, looking for monsters to kill. This isn’t self-defense, or kill-or-be-killed. You are seeking out these monsters to kill them.

You are making a conscious choice to kill them all. At all times, the murder run is a choice you make.



And believe me, it takes time to do it. I’d say it’s nearly impossible to do accidentally or innocently. Clearing the ruins can take you anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, and Snowdin even longer than that because the encounter rate is so low (and drops lower the more you kill). Plus, the odds of botching the run in Snowdin are high because if you cross the bridge and trigger Papyrus’s trap, enemies stop spawning and if you’re doing this blindly, you won’t know that. If you haven’t killed them all before the bridge, you get put back on a neutral path and you’ll fight Papyrus normally.



A murder run is not self-defense. You can one-shot most enemies easily after going up a level or two (except Jerry GDYOU JERRY). They aren’t a threat to you. And by the time you reach Snowdin, the save points count how many monsters are left for you to kill - your intentions are clear. And you have to put in time and effort to make sure you kill them ALL to trigger this particular encounter with Papyrus. What you describe would fit for a neutral run, but that’s not what’s happening here.



The real point of the murder run and what makes it so haunting, at least to me, is that there’s no justification or excuse you can make for doing it. It’s not self-defense, it’s not an accident. It’s systematic. It’s cold. It’s deliberate. It’s a choice you make. No one and nothing ever forces you to do it, and you have to live with that.



SORRY I JUST HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS RUN

