Application for Empatheias

[ratingspoint]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Dal
Contact: InstantEternity
Age: 29
Current Characters:
Zolf J Kimbley | Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) | alchemicals
Shuu Tsukiyama | Tokyo Ghoul | preybeforemeals


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Mettaton
Age: His actual age is never stated, monster aging is kind of a weird and nebulous thing that is best conveyed with a shrug and a handwave, and Mettaton is also an actual robot that presumably doesn't age anyway. In terms of general maturity and temperament, though, he's pretty consistent with being a very young adult. Around 19-20, if I had to put an age to it.
Canon: Undertale
Canon Point: Neutral route; specifically, the King Mettaton ending.

Background: Mettaton on the Undertale wiki; information about the specific route he has been taken from can be found here!

Personality:

The most important thing to know about Mettaton is that he is, first and foremost, a performer. He explicitly states that his sole desire is to entertain others, and the way he carries himself implies that he's chosen his role in life and he's going to play it to the hilt. As the Underground's premier entertainer, model, actor, idol, and all-around celebrity, he conducts himself with all the enthusiasm, over-the-top flamboyance, and unrelenting and slightly vapid optimism as is befitting someone with that sort of job description; he's incredibly confident and overall almost alarmingly positive, and overall he's of the general belief that there's no such thing as bad publicity – he can put a positive spin on just about anything that people say or think about him, even if his interpretation ends up coming out along the lines of "They're saying something negative, but at least they have a strong opinion and that has to count for something." What matters, in the end, is that people are talking about him at all; he thrives off of the attention, to an extent where (at least superficially) it tends to seem like the only thing he cares about are high ratings for his television performances.

And, in fairness, he's very good at what his does with regards to garnering that attention in the first place; back in Hotland, Mettaton does...well, pretty much everything in his assigned profession. He's an idol, a stage actor, a movie star and a well-known television personality (he's got a quiz show and a cooking show of all things in his repertoire, along with serving as a news anchor and apparently televising his battles with people who challenge him to fights, among numerous other things); while there are other entertainers – comedians and other actors are shown to exist on the schedule in Mettaton's luxury resort – he's the Underground's sole superstar. He basks in the fame and the glory, and he's willing to do just about anything to attain both; for example, his news stories have been shown to run on pure sensationalism, setting up needlessly dramatic scenes in the name of getting a "story" containing news approximately as reliable as your average clickbait website, and at one point during the cooking show he feels the need to pull a fully functioning chainsaw out from behind the counter and threaten someone with it – which is an action that exactly nobody questions because apparently sometimes Mettaton just does things like that.

...His idea of "sensationalism" is a little extreme, in other words, even by sensationalists' normal standards. Bluntly put, Mettaton really likes violence; he proudly refers to himself directly as a "killer robot" and (whether it's true or not, because the actual truth to the statement is debatable) he sees no problem with publicly claiming that he has at least one mechanical body that was specifically designed to hunt down and eradicate humans. Furthermore, as a monster from the Underground, he has the ability to straight-up rip out humans' souls and merge them with his own to make himself stronger, and he spends a good amount of time during the Neutral and Pacifist routes trying to do...well, exactly that. But even when humans are taken out of the picture and he's just doing his job as an entertainer, he's got an undeniable violent streak – when it comes to his performances themselves, it's entirely true that all that matters to him are ratings and putting on a good show, and a lot of his dialogue (i.e., "So what if a few people have to die? That's show business, baby!") implies that his true idea of "performing" often involves killing the people he's performing with. He sees nothing wrong with doing things like the abovementioned waving around of an active chainsaw, threatening to rip someone's soul out on live television, setting people on fire just because he can, and orchestrating a massive televised bomb threat and otherwise raining down an unholy amount of explosions on people – his magic as a monster involves creating projectiles, and a fair amount of it is specifically centered around creating bombs because of course it is.

However, that definitely isn't to say that he can't function or enjoy himself if he's not doing those things. He's not so much immoral as he is amoral; he'll just as soon hug you as he will set you on fire, and he'll achieve the same amount of satisfaction from both. It just depends on what the audience wants; if they want a fluff piece, then he'll shower you with kittens – just as readily as he will bombs if they want you dead. He'll kill people on live television, and yet he'll also make movies that consist of nothing but four-hour continuous shots of rose petals falling gently onto his reclining body. (Yes, really. He's made twenty-seven of them! ...Undertale is sort of stupid like that.) As long as he gets the impression that people like what he's doing, then he'll do it with very little regard to the morality of it; he really likes his bombs and his flamethrowers, but he can just as easily be persuaded to not be violent if it suits the audience better. For example, when he's shown performing as an idol for a crowd of humans in the True Pacifist ending, the show is utterly nonviolent, if a little bizarre, and he's perfectly happy and fine with that.

Either way, however, it probably goes without saying that Mettaton is used to being an incredibly busy person – a normal individual would probably wear themselves out or flat-out drive themselves to exhaustion with the sort of schedule he keeps. It's fortunate, then, that Mettaton is far from normal; he's believed to be (and, again, openly describes himself as) a robot that was created to have a soul, highly praised as his "inventor"'s greatest creation. However, he isn't true and proper AI; the soul his body possesses belongs to that of a monster that's considered a "ghost" – basically a blob of ectoplasm that's capable of inhabiting and controlling physical objects and using them as a means to become "corporeal." (So perhaps it's more fitting to say that his soul is possessing his body, and not the other way around.) This is never outright stated by anyone – he and Dr. Alphys, the scientist that supposedly created him, both insist repeatedly to Frisk's face that he's a robot – but he's shown in late-game events to be the cousin of another ghost met early on, and there's a lot of talk of Alphys creating a body for him to inhabit. Mettaton seems to have had a lot of problems in the past with regards to becoming corporeal, before meeting the protagonist in the form he's in now; diary entries of his express doubts that he'll ever find a body that he'll truly feel like himself in, and he seems to put a lot of pressure on Alphys to create one – to an extent that Alphys worries that he won't want to talk to her or be friends with her anymore once she's done it and he's finally happy.

While that worry sounds a bit terrible to put into words so bluntly, it's admittedly something of a valid one; Mettaton tends to think first and foremost of his own happiness, with very little regard for anyone around him. After promising that he would never leave them behind, he promptly abandons his cousin, Napstablook, in the name of pursuing fame and stardom as soon as Alphys has created a robotic shell for him to inhabit; it's implied that he used to sing with one of the other monsters in Waterfall, Shyren, only to abandon her similarly. He gets easily agitated with people who don't agree with him or let him have exactly what he wants exactly when he wants it; he's very prone to cutting ties and severing formerly close relationships as though they meant nothing to him, claiming that his dreams "can't wait for anyone." Once someone can provide what he wants – or, at least, once he thinks they can – he tends to put unrelenting pressure on them until he's achieved his goal; if he thinks the person can still be useful to him somehow, he'll keep them around, but otherwise he tends to discard them without thinking about how that's going to affect them at all.

However, this particular behavioral pattern isn't because he doesn't like people or genuinely feel anything toward them; the opposite is actually usually true. Mettaton's friends, family, and employees are genuinely important to him, and a lot of his motivations come down to being able to provide something for the people he cares about – whether it's entertainment or some other sort of positive influence in their lives. He's shown to be very uplifting and positive toward most of his employees (with the notable exception of one, who is also an unreliable narrator that admits to shoplifting from his boss, so his words should probably be taken with a grain of salt), and he's openly kind to his fans – he recognizes several of them by voice alone, he hands one of his nicer costumes to someone just because they expressed a desire to look pretty in something like that, and he expresses gratitude toward them and tries to maintain a positive attitude in front of them even when his own situation is fairly dire. He even goes so far as to try to make Frisk feel better if they choose to kill him on a Neutral route ("Don't worry about me. I might seem like I'm dying now, but... Dr. Alphys can always repair me." – said despite the fact that he's damaged beyond repair and his soul can't be recovered once his body is destroyed). If he's spared by Frisk in a Neutral or Pacifist runthrough, he actually tries to put everyone else before his own desires once it's shown that he needs to do that – he's been trying to kill Frisk so he can leave the Underground himself, but Napstablook and several others call into his show and tell him how much they're going to miss seeing him on television and how much he means to all of them. It makes him realize that leaving would be kind of a jerk thing to do, because humans have so many stars and idols but monsters just have him. He ends up staying, because he doesn't want to harm the others or let them down. He's also incredibly loyal to Alphys; at least for a time he's entirely willing to play along with her ploy to make Frisk like her, even if it means being cast as the villain.

But despite the fact that he does genuinely love and care about people, the fact of the matter is that he's someone who believes in doing whatever is necessary to get what he wants; nothing is too important to be sacrificed in the name of completing a goal, and the extents to which he takes this personal belief can lead to some slightly bizarre and frankly upsetting life choices. For one, he wants to leave the Underground because he loves humanity, and under Asgore's rule the general understanding is that when the monsters are freed from the Underground they're going to wage war on humans and try to kill them all; Mettaton doesn't want that for a lot of reasons (besides the aforementioned general love for humans, saving them all in that way would presumably help with ensuring that he would be warmly received by them and he could become a star for them, too), so he decides to try to kill Frisk and take their soul independently for the sake of foiling that plan and saving humanity. This plan is effectively stabbing all monsters in the back, ensuring that they remain trapped in the Underground to prevent the impending war, and it's also abandoning anyone and everyone he cares about or that cares about him there; at the same time, until the battle with Frisk is over and he's spared, he sees it as something that isn't even worth deliberating over. He knows what he wants, and he's going to do everything he can to ensure that he gets it. It's this sort of logic that led to him turning his back on his cousin in the name of pursuing his career, despite promising that he would never do something like that; to a deeper and more unsettling extent, it's what gets him to sacrifice his life during a Genocide run despite obviously thinking the world of himself and not wanting to die – the "important things" he's willing to sacrifice don't exclude himself, and at that point doing whatever he could to buy time for the still-living population of the Underground and trying to stop the destruction of both humanity and the people he cared about that were still alive meant more to him than trying to save (or at least prolong) his own life.

It's probably easy to see where this sort of self-centered and self-righteous behavior can cause some impressively terrible social relations with people sometimes; after all, everything he does comes down to what he wants – other people's thoughts and feelings really never come under consideration for him, even when he's acting on their behalf – and he has a marked tendency to be willfully ignorant of any problems that he can't fix. A lot of things come down to control, as far as Mettaton is concerned; due to his self-centered nature, he likes having as much control as possible over his situation and dislikes giving that control to anyone else, even when it could be a good idea to do so. He usually believes that he knows best, but even when he obviously doesn't, he doesn't like admitting failure or that he needs assistance from anyone else because that would imply that things are less than perfect.

These traits (the need for control, the lack of ability or willingness to acknowledge that things are going poorly) are both exemplified and magnified at his current canonpoint, in which everyone who could take a leadership position among the monsters of the Underground is dead. As such, Mettaton has taken over, using his television shows to brainwash everyone into loving him, worshiping him, and generally staying in line. Anyone who questions his rule or resists this brainwashing ends up "disappearing," which is...a very polite and thinly-veiled way of saying that Mettaton is killing all dissenters; he's also willfully refusing to acknowledge all problems the Underground may be facing, reassuring everyone that everything is fine and their current situation is some sort of utopia while trying to downplay the fact that there's rampant overcrowding and there's been a recent and complete collapse of economy. Basically, everything has gone completely and impressively to crap in the short time that Mettaton has been King of the Underground; he's trying to make the best of it, but the fact is that he has no idea what he's doing or how to fix it, something that's made plainly and increasingly obvious during the endgame conversation with him.

However, despite all of this, his core traits remain intact; he doesn't know what he's doing but he does still seem to care about the people that are important to him – for example, he realizes he's actually been pretty terrible to Alphys, and he immediately tries to go apologize to her and instate her to a position of power that he believes she deserves, and he seems greatly troubled when he can't find her (the implication being that she's died/committed suicide at some point between the final battle and the endgame conversation with Mettaton). So despite all of his willful ignorance of the situation as a whole, he does admit that he's done wrong by Alphys and expresses an explicit desire to fix it; he's also doing his best to do right by people, even if he obviously has no clue what "doing right by people" should even be in this situation. Don't misunderstand, his current position is also an ego stroke for him as well, and there's no sense in claiming that it isn't – he's remade entire large parts of the Underground in his image by the time that final conversation happens – and again, he's more than slightly a control freak, so a lot of what he's done has been for the sake of ensuring that he gets what he wants and keeping things the way he likes them, as best he can. At the same time, he's called off the war on humanity, and he's clearly trying to be reassuring and keep everyone reasonably placated – he's just created a straight-up dystopia in the process.

Because we probably shouldn't let the celebrity whose primary desires in life are looking pretty, entertaining people on TV, and never feeling bad about anything decide what to do with an entire nation full of people when he can't even manage a resort hotel competently.

Abilities: Mettaton is a literal monster – specifically, he's a magical ghost possessing an equally magical robot, because this canon is exactly the sort of stupid that results in sentences like that. As such, he has several abilities that come from being. Well. Literally himself.

Willpower
Unlike humans, who are made almost entirely of physical matter, monsters in Undertale are made almost entirely of magic. This makes them very in-tune with their souls, which are more or less the thing that's holding them together; this means that their ability to both fight and defend themselves is directly tied to and proportional to their willingness to fight. This can be an advantage if emotions are running high enough; at the same time, they also tend to be very susceptible to the power of others around them – their will can be completely overridden by someone else with a stronger presence or desire, and if they're hit by someone with enough hatred, malice or other ill will toward them, they can be killed with one strike.

So basically, he's literally made of metal and magic, but he can still be OHKO'd by a human child with a stick if the child hates him enough.

Magic
All monsters from the Underground are capable of using magic in some capacity, and most do so just as a part of their daily lives; it's something they utilize for the sake of not only protection, but also for communication, as a social convention, and for making the carrying out of basic tasks simpler and more pleasant all around. Mettaton tends to utilize his in his performances and televised fights; he's capable of generating blasts of electricity and shooting them in bullet-hell-esque patterns, summoning light boxes and small mechanical devices (things that look like miniature versions of himself, basically) and dropping them on people from right the actual hell out of nowhere, creating disco balls that shoot lasers because of fucking course they do, and creating bombs – both traditional and out of things that probably should not be bombs.

He's also retained one of his ghost powers – that being the ability to convey words without speaking directly, instead showing them directly to a person's soul if he's engaged enough to do that with them. This is shown as harmless grey text during battles; functionally speaking, it's an extremely light thought-push – he can't flat-out control minds or anything with it, but he can plant mild suggestions and convey feelings and messages that way if he so chooses.

Physical Attributes and Fixed Transformation Abilities
Mettaton has three forms that are seen in the game; the third of these forms, Mettaton NEO, will not be utilized in Empatheias and seems to only be used in last-ditch situations. It's an unfinished body that literally can't do anything but die, and so using that unless he absolutely has to is suicide; it admittedly looks impressive, given that it comes complete with a cannon in place of his left arm and what looks like an aiming sight in place of his usually-hidden right eye.

The first form he has is the...there's no polite way to say "it looks kind of like a vending machine on a unicycle" but holy crap, look at it and tell me it doesn't. It's what he uses most commonly before his boss battle, and the most notable thing about it is that its defense is ridiculous – he's literally unsusceptible to physical attack when he's like that.

The second is referred to as Mettaton EX, and it's his preferred body overall. The defense is lower, but it's the one he feels most comfortable and like himself in. Unfortunately, the battery power on it is usually atrocious; Alphys most likely dealt with that before everything went straight to hell, as the implication was that she was going to repair him after the boss fight and she certainly seems to have been able to, so everything is likely...a little less crap on the battery front.

Mettaton is apparently able to switch between both his original box form and EX at will and with no difficulty, given that he does it before the boss battle for the sake of talking to someone unrecognized; he's also able to pick and choose whether he wants to do a full transformation or...just be a box with fantastic legs because that's what he feels like that day. Either way, though, he's most comfortable as Mettaton EX, and that's most likely what he'll default to in Empatheias.

...Literal Robot
Due to the fact that he is, in fact, a literal goddamn robot, Mettaton doesn't need to deal with a lot of things that most people would – namely, he doesn't need to eat or sleep.

Alignment: Elios. While he doesn't really show it very often, a lot of what Mettaton does is motivated by love, both for himself and for other people. On the one hand, he's very self-confident and loves the hell out of himself, firmly believing both that he's the most important person in the world and that he deserves everything that he decides he wants; on the other, while he doesn't tend to consider other people's feelings on the matter, he's entirely willing to die to save people if he believes they're important enough.

He doesn't experience hatred very often, if at all – he gets catty toward people he doesn't like, but it's incredibly rare for him to hate people; just the same, the fact that he's so utterly self-centered can lead toward negativity in that sort of direction as well – it isn't hatred that he displays toward others, it's negligence. He's very prone toward a lack of caring about their thoughts and feelings, and he'll often willfully disregard things like that as soon as they become inconvenient or unpleasant to think about.

Other: ...One day. One day, I promise I will play someone that doesn't just blow things up and/or nope out of their feelings. But today is clearly not that day.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample:

Core Character Portrayal
Top-level and threads from Trustfell – Hating the kitchen and taking after his cousin in terms of pastimes.

Emotion-based Sample
Mettaton isn't too far outside of the city when the sun goes down, just far enough to get away from the dulled light pollution of the city streets; there's not much out here, all told, but there is a fence and large, thick wooden slats to climb up (and in heels like those it's a wonder he didn't roll his ankle somehow in the process of getting up there, but what can he say, being made of metal certainly helps) and tonight he can be found just...sitting on top of it, legs crossed at the knee like this isn't even a thing and really, it seems the dropping night temperatures aren't touching him at all.

The surface is different than he'd thought it would be.

There are things that people talked about feeling out here – the weather, the cold sting of the wind on your face, the warmth of sunlight – and while he's experiencing all of that differently than most (no skin, no nerve endings; just metal and magic, baby, nothing more, nothing less) that doesn't mean that he isn't enjoying it. Everything is...nice here, nothing is being torn asunder in various ways and the economy is stable and there's more space than he really could have dreamed of; just the same, he finds himself gravitating more and more towards the darkness that settles over the fields outside the city when the sun goes down – there really isn't much out here, but there's a chill running through the air that he's not accustomed to and it's wonderful, and more importantly there are stars. Real ones, not crystals, not something that you have to project like an IMAX theatre about to make yourself feel better but actual stars...

And before long he's smiling like it's going out of style and he's got his hand out, tracing lines between them and maybe finding some actual constellations but most likely just making up his own, and for the first time in a while he's easy enough to just sit back and name half of them after himself.

The reaction, at first, is subtle – small pink crystal-flickers around his outstretched hand, brief pulses of light that shimmer out before dying almost immediately; once he's noticed, though, they're difficult to ignore and impossible to stop. They have a warmth to them that he's missed, what with all the stress the Underground has brought with it lately; while he still thrives off of the attention and the stage lights, in some ways this is just as good.

When he starts humming a bit the sound is idle but it's pleased, a little tuneless at first before those brief sparkling lights start pulsing gently with the rise and fall of the notes he's offering, and it occurs to him, vaguely, that this would be a great place to start over. No one has to know, of course – as far as he'll tell them, it'll all be golden glitter back home, everything is fine – and what no one knows won't kill them.

Besides, with effects like these, he definitely wants to stay around a little longer; it's not quite his usual magic, but he can just imagine the show that can come of it with a little hard work and perseverance.

Determination, if you will.

Questions: While things are, as mentioned earlier, slightly less terrible on the battery front, I'm going to assume the precedent set for using emotion drops as an indirect recharge still stands?