Mettaton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ratingspoint) wrote2015-12-16 11:31 pm
ratingspoint) wrote2015-12-16 11:31 pm
Entry tags:
Application for Route 29
Player
Name: Dal
Personal Journal:dalicious
E-mail: redlotus.alchemy[at]gmail.com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.: AIM: AsylumBred; Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
InstantEternity
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route:
Nonon Jakuzure | Kill la Kill |fatalissimo
Shuu Tsukiyama | Tokyo Ghoul |preybeforemeals
Ginti | Death Parade |nullorvoid
Character
Name: Mettaton
Series: Undertale
Timeline: Immediately after his Pacifist Route battle with the protagonist
Canon Resource Links: Mettaton at the Undertale wiki!
Personality: First and foremost, Mettaton is a performer; his primary stated desire is to entertain others, and he seems to care very little about what that "entertainment" entails. That is to say, as long as he's getting rewarded with an audience reaction and/or a ratings boost, he'll do it, and he's very much of the mindset that there's no such thing as bad publicity – people feeling or saying negative things toward you are still thinking and talking about you, after all. He's almost senselessly optimistic about things at times, and when things are bad this can get into straight-up willful ignorance territory, but for the most part he's a very confident and overall alarmingly positive person, in terms of both his own self-worth and his feelings about other people and their potential.
Not that all of his self-confidence is entirely unwarranted - 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 and celebrity. He basks in the fame and the glory without being at all intimidated by it, and if anything, he thrives off of attention; 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...and apparently nobody questions this (or the fact that he had a damn chainsaw behind the counter to begin with), implying that this is probably not the first time he's pulled a stunt like that.
...His idea of "sensationalism" is a little extreme, even by sensationalists' normal standards. Bluntly put, Mettaton really likes violence; he proudly refers to himself directly as a "killer robot" and he makes no secret of the fact that he has at least one mechanical body that was originally 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. But even when the eradication protocols and weapons are switched off and he's just doing his job as an entertainer, he's got an undeniable violent streak – 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 that kind of weird.) 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 he "can't let anyone hold him back." 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 isn't necessarily because he doesn't like them or genuinely feel anything toward them; it's because...well, Mettaton is kind of stupid in a lot of ways and has a tendency to not think things through. He's not a total idiot, because he can't afford to be in his line of work, but he tends to have a very poor grasp on cause and effect and the concept that just because he understands things a certain way, that doesn't mean that everyone else will. Adding the parts where he's incredibly self-centered and narcissistic into the mix tends to cause a fair amount of accidental social disaster that he doesn't always understand until well after the fact; surprisingly, though, he manages to not be a complete trainwreck with regards to resolving those problems. For example, he realizes in one of the Neutral endings that 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. He's still incredibly self-centered in that particular ending, but he does acknowledge that he's done wrong by someone and expresses an explicit desire to fix it – and he actually goes out and acts on that desire to the best of his ability, proving that he's not just paying lip service to the concept until people leave him alone about it.
So he's entirely capable of caring, even if it's sometimes hard to get him to sit down and acknowledge that other people exist in the world outside of himself; 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.
That said, his actual motivation for wanting to leave the Underground is...not exactly the best example of deep logic, to put it gently. While that's something that every monster seems to want, most of them seem to want to do so for the sake of making humans pay for sealing them away down there in the first place. Mettaton, on the other hand, actually wants to save humanity; he's always been something of an oddball among the others, choosing to love humans and find them interesting instead of hating them (that's actually how he met Alphys, through their mutual fascination with humanity), and as such he wants to take Frisk's soul for himself and merge it with his own so he can pass through the barrier and foil the other monsters' plan to kill them all.
...Which is all well and good until one considers that the reason he's doing this is because he wants to entertain them. He literally wants to be the savior and protector of humanity because he wants to sing for them and be on TV. This is his driving ambition, because of course it is.
Well, at least it can't be said that he was exaggerating when he told Frisk that "[his] only desire is to entertain"...
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ * THE STAGE LIGHTS ARE BLARING
One of the most striking things about Mettaton, regardless of what form he's in, is his ridiculous amounts of confidence and charisma. Despite his obvious narcissism and the fact that he's pretty shamelessly in love with himself, he's good at talking people up and making them feel good about themselves as well; his dialogue is often very flamboyant and flirtatious and he likes calling people beautiful, and when he approves of people or what they're doing he's very vocal about it and makes sure everyone knows it. He's very confident in himself, and he gives off the impression that he can help you be confident in yourself, too; a lot of it is admittedly shameless advertising, but even when it's not, he's an aggressively positive person in terms of the energy he gives off. And he is very energetic in general - it's rare that he remains still for any given period of time, and even when he doesn't have anything to do, he's pretty much constantly bouncing a little and waving at everyone in his line of sight and posing for no real reason other than "because he can." Being a good idol, in other words. (With regards to his actual performing abilities, because I realize those have been mentioned a lot without too much elaboration, he's a proper Old Hollywood Triple Threat - he can sing, dance, and act, though how well he does the latter depends on how invested he is in the performance.)
✔DETERMINATION RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF AMBITION AND EFFICIENCY
Once he sees something he wants, he'll actually move to get it – and he doesn't go halfway, either. He's got the benefit of being both ambitious and efficient; in his solo ending (where he's the only end-level-boss monster left alive), he apparently looked at the massive power vacuum caused by the deaths of several important people, including their resident royalty, and...proceeded to take over and remake the Underground in his image in a ridiculously short period of time. He multitasks like no one's business and when he sees opportunities, he takes them. If he doesn't see one, he creates one. And this ties into the next point...
✔ THIS IS AN MTT-BRAND STRENGTHS SECTION
Mettaton's more or less built an entertainment empire out of nothing; on top of performing for people on a regular basis, he's the successful entrepreneur behind MTT-Brand, which specializes in creating merchandise, taking common things and redesigning/reworking them into high-end products, and generally making everyone's life a little more fabulous. He also owns restaurants and a luxury resort back in Hotland. Basically, he's got a good mind for business and a pretty solid creative streak, even if sometimes that creativity goes toward a vision that no one else...quite shares.
✔ * METTATON REMEMBERS WHAT HE'S FIGHTING FOR
As self-centered as he is, Mettaton is incredibly adamant about not wanting harm to befall people he cares about. He's very protective of people he has reason to want to protect - among these people are Napstablook, people he considers his friends, and humanity as a whole - and he's entirely willing to die in the name of doing so. He's not senseless about it, in that as a general practice he prefers to back off from fights that he knows for sure he's going to lose, but as soon as something he cares about is threatened he'll stay and fight for the sake of buying time instead of ensuring safety for himself, even if the fight itself is probably hopeless and he doesn't have the means to fight well or properly.
✔ A LOT OF FEELINGS ON HUMANITY
The humanizing is probably going to cause a lot of weird conflict for a while, until he can figure out exactly what he thinks about it. It helps, though, that he loves humanity a lot; he finds them interesting and he wants to save them all - he's very adamant on this point regardless of what route is being played. Pacifist/Neutral routes see him wanting to perform for them, which he can't do if they're all dead; No Mercy has him wanting to defend humans from both the monsters and the protagonist, saying that he wants to use his weapons and eradication protocols to eliminate the threat the protagonist poses to humanity. He very definitely doesn't have the usual hatred that most monsters display for humans, despite what they did in sealing all of the monsters underground, and it's heavily implied that he wants to be more like them in general - the body that he asked Alphys to create for him is very obviously humanoid, he insists that his television shows and performances are done "like they do on the surface," and his soul is on active display in a position that's different to the other monsters'. (Monsters' souls are depicted as an upside-down heart; Mettaton's is displayed as being proper side up, which is a trait generally reserved for humans.) So in theory, the humanizing will be fine. In practice, it will...either likewise be fine or an existential shitshow, because monster souls and human souls are decidedly nowhere near being the same and humanizing is going to screw with his head with regards to that. But there are IC ways to work out how the hell he's going to resolve that for himself if and when it comes up, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue overall; just something that's going to present some weird conflict for a while.
✔/✘ TODAY, ON "NICE PEOPLE DOING WONDERFUL THINGS"
Normally, obviously villainous skillsets aren't a good thing; given that he's being apped in as a member of Team Rocket, though, he has a pair of skills that can be used to benefit the organization, and he's entirely unopposed to using them that way if it'll also benefit him somehow.
-- Inducing brainwashing by way of media: as shown in the specific Neutral endings where he takes over the Underground as king - he's explicitly stated to have achieved his position by using his television shows to brainwash people into worshiping him.
-- Creation of bombs/explosives, without the usage of magic: as shown during the news segment of the battle leadup - he knows how to make several types of bombs that can be armed/detonated/disabled from a remote location.
✔/✘ PHYSICAL ABILITY
Given that his usual physical body is this impressively unwieldy thing (and even in his more humanoid form he's doing all his battles in three-to-five-inch heels), it's safe to say that Mettaton's sense of balance won't suffer upon being humanized; if anything it's probably better than that of the average human given that he's used to correcting himself on the fly and actively compensating for gravity almost constantly. Furthermore, he's shown to be ridiculously flexible in ways that most people are not - on a scale of one to ten, his ability to physically contort himself into weird positions and hold them is somewhere around "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure."
...On the other side of things, he's used to having a metal body of some sort and a defense stat high enough to prevent anything from actually being able to properly hurt him. Bluntly put, he's not used to being this breakable; basic concepts like "if you jump on top of things in five-inch heels you might actually break your ankle" or "if you walk into the edge of this table hard enough you are going to bleed somehow" are completely foreign to him, so that's going to need to be something that he figures out eventually, even if it is the hard way.
✘ LIVE FOR THE WAY THAT YOU CHEER AND SCREAM FOR ME
Mettaton's primary fixation is on making sure that people pay attention to him; he wants to be a superstar, he wants high ratings, he wants people to talk about him, and...somewhere in there he wants people to care about him as well, but that's generally secondary to them paying attention, fullstop. This sort of desire isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but he's completely and utterly amoral in the way he goes about achieving what he wants. He's willing to use violence and brainwashing to ensure that people adore him, because he doesn't particularly care if people do so through love or fear so long as they're doing it; he treats people like toys, a means to an end, or fun dispensers a lot of the time, and he's just far more invested in what he wants than he is in how it affects people.
✘ SET THEM UP TO KNOCK THEM DOWN
Tying into the above point regarding how people have apparently been put on this earth to worship him and be his toys, once they stop providing their given service for him or he finds something he likes better, he'll often discard them entirely without thinking about how he's treating them. He was very close to Napstablook...until the opportunity to be a star (and loved by everyone, not just his introverted cousin that works on a snail farm) came around, at which point he abandoned them immediately, claiming that they were "holding him back"; he became friends with Alphys, bonding with her over their mutual fascination with humans...only to start belittling her and being insanely rude to her once she created a robotic body for him to inhabit and constantly pushing her hard to make a better one that felt "more like him", doing all of this to such an extent that she was concerned that the body she was creating for him was the only reason he talked to her at all. It's notable, though, that he doesn't do this through a desire to be cruel to his friends, and he does genuinely care about the people he's close to; at the same time, he just doesn't think about other people like they're...well, people. You know, with feelings and stuff. ...He's sort of stupid on the interpersonal front, in other words. Whatever the rationalization is behind it (and whether he means to or not), though, he's definitely got a tendency to treat his friends like utter shit; at his current canon point he's sort of gotten a few wake-up slaps with regards to that, but this is a pattern he's been in for a good amount of his life, so...
✘ EVERYTHING'S COVERED IN GOLDEN GLITTER! THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS, BABY!
Mettaton has a tendency to strongly emphasize the potential positives of a situation, as opposed to wanting to see any of the negatives. The strongest example of this is during an attempted No Mercy run – if he isn't killed immediately, he expresses hope for the protagonist and says that because they "held back" when fighting him, they must still be a good person somewhere inside. This happens after the protagonist has murdered literally everyone they encountered before him. All of his friends are dead. All of his employees are dead. He's about to be dead, because he loses that battle no matter what you do. But because the protagonist didn't immediately one-shot him, they must still be a good person somewhere deep inside. ...Yeah. Furthermore, in one of the Neutral endings, he's willing to ignore things up to and including economic collapse for the sake of pretending that everything is going to work out just fine, because...he said so? Because he said so.
✘ REAL DRAMA!! REAL ACTION!! REAL BLOODSHED!!
Even with all of his positivity, however, it's undeniable that Mettaton loves violence and doesn't seem to have any boundaries whatsoever with regards to what he's willing to do to people he doesn't have cause to care about. He'll go out of his way to harm or threaten people on his shows, obviously reveling in it the entire time, but he likes explosives best - a lot of his personal magic is centered around bomb creation, and at one point he holds an entire section of the Core under a bomb threat pretty much because that's what he decided his life was going to look like that day. He's easily enlisted to torment or threaten others if it's made to sound sufficiently fun for him (and entertaining for his viewers); he's a little more lenient when it comes to people he cares about, but that doesn't stop him from doing things like sabotaging their plans once he decides that he's had enough of them or they're "getting predictable."
✘ ..."EXP" MEANS WHAT, NOW
With regards to specific canon-based hang-ups providing difficulty in the setting, Mettaton is probably going to have more difficulty with the mechanics of Pokémon itself than he will with the humanizing. The monsters in Undertale were all forced underground by humans and sealed off there, so the fact that Pokémon is pretty much based around humans owning monsters (for all intents and purposes) and making them fight for the sake of gaining more power for themselves is going to be...awkward. Undertale as a canon also strongly discourages leveling up – LV is something referred to in that canon as an abbreviation for LOVE, which itself is an abbreviation for Level Of ViolencE; EXP is likewise something that's not a good thing to have, as they're referred to in-universe as Execution Points. They're both things that are gained through killing monsters, and they're...pretty deeply frowned upon. The latter part of that won't be something that Mettaton is exactly opposed to, given that he kills people on such a regular basis, but it's going to take a lot of getting used to in terms of humans just doing this like it's not even a thing.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Team Rocket
Starter: Slugma / Grimer
Password: Pumpkin Seeds
Samples
First Person Sample:
Good morning, beauties and gentlebeauties!
[Well, seems like someone is feeling entirely too awake for this early in the morning; normally he wouldn't bother broadcasting this early (it's far from peak viewing hours, after all) but the fact of the matter is that he couldn't stay asleep worth a damn last night and so here he is. At least this morning Mettaton's still lying down rather than bouncing off the walls, if not technically in bed – rather, he's lying on top of a made one, the camera angle showing off just enough to give the indication that while he's lying on his back, his legs and body are twisted over to the side, the position ending up somewhere between "sensual" and "oh my god, why are you doing that to your back, doesn't that hurt - "
The shot is nicely-framed, though; whoever the cameramon is, they're doing a good job, not as though he'd accept anything less. The...random bursts of rose petals flitting into view and landing on the bed once in a while could stand to be a bit more coordinated, though, and he'll likely Have A Talk with her later – hopefully he won't be too hard on her, the Roselia is a new hire.
...Anyway.]
So. Recent development. One of my particularly prized viewers – yes, you, you know who you are! – called in with a tip the other day, regarding the studios in Fuchsia City. And as much as I've enjoyed the small screen, I admit I'm just dying to make a proper debut.
But...an idol can only do so much on their own, you know. The rest is up to you, my lovely viewers – and the ratings are nice, but they can only carry so much. So, you see...
[He pushes himself up, the motion quick and dramatic, sitting on the edge of the bed and crossing his legs at the knee; he sweeps his fingertips through his fringe lightly as he speaks, just because he can.]
Ohhh yes!! I'm offering you the chance of a lifetime - one of you will be selected to accompany me to the Fuchsia City studios, serving as both travel companion and entourage! It's a chance to witness a star being born, with all the glitz and glamour that the industry has to offer!
But wait, there's more – if even all of that isn't enough to satisfy you, it's not a proper prize without a paid vacation to somewhere, is it? Your passage into Kanto will be entirely covered, a package worth twenty thousand...
[...]
...Things. Twenty thousand things. Whatever passes for money around here. You get the idea.
[Mettaton, for fuck's sake.]
...Either way, it's worth a lot, if only for the opportunity alone! So call now, darlings, because this offer isn't going to last forever!
[...Aaaaand the feed cuts off. That was a lot of pointless jargon to express the basic notion of "I really don't want to travel alone, also I want someone to carry my stuff," but there you have it.]
Third Person Sample:
The obligatory two weeks of training really weren't something that held Mettaton's interest very well; oh, there were a few parts of it that were useful, of course, but for the most part it was boring and repetitive, and honestly the things he found most useful were the files he was able to get at after the fact.
It wasn't anything top-secret. Not confidential in the least. Just things that everybody already knew.
He's only mildly interested in that entire business years ago where magic was apparently accidentally passed out to the population, though that raises more questions than it answers (and almost all of the questions are some variant of HOW?? and WHY??); rather, it's the destruction of the lighthouse that first really gets his attention. The blowing-up of a national landmark like that...and all of it done over the devices, no less. Doing it is one thing, and something he can certainly approve of, but the notion that it was broadcast live, to an entire region full of people...
Well, that's admirable, actually! The sort of daring content people in Hotland always craved – and apparently this was done by one of the surface-dwellers? Clearly, the humans had more potential than he'd realized, despite what the others here had been telling him about keeping things like that quiet.
And then there was the Seth individual; certainly prolific, if a bit repetitive. Clearly no one had told him that a true performer doesn't do repeat performances, they do encores –
I can do better. The thought is sudden, and it's obvious, and he's smiling a bit as he continues. I can definitely do better.
After all, it's not as though he'd be interested in killing everyone. If a few people had to suffer, so what? One of the first questions out of his mouth in this place (thankfully, to someone in the organization) had been wondering what the point is in entirely scripted entertainment – there's no dramatic tension without a bit of danger, a bit of bloodshed, and everyone knows that. And besides, there's a sort of irony to the self-proclaimed "humanity's star" causing trouble like this, isn't there?
No good story is complete without a plot twist.
Next up.
Cobra Commander's files are odd and cartoonish but they're fascinating; he was certainly a busy man, one who left his mark on the world. One that people wouldn't soon forget...
The thought this time isn't I can do better but rather I have to do better – after all, he's certainly not going to be outdone by someone who isn't even present anymore. Admittedly, he's not entirely sure where he's supposed to start with all of this; it's true enough that Rome wasn't built in a day, but at the same time, it's not exactly something he can accomplish with a flaming snail, his cosmetic disaster of a sludgeball, and a can-do attitude.
But then again, there is the Radio Tower; perhaps he'll put his broadcasting skills to use one day. He's used to television, admittedly, but he's never been one to turn down an opportunity when he sees one.
Name: Dal
Personal Journal:
daliciousE-mail: redlotus.alchemy[at]gmail.com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.: AIM: AsylumBred; Plurk:
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route:
Nonon Jakuzure | Kill la Kill |
fatalissimoShuu Tsukiyama | Tokyo Ghoul |
preybeforemealsGinti | Death Parade |
nullorvoidCharacter
Name: Mettaton
Series: Undertale
Timeline: Immediately after his Pacifist Route battle with the protagonist
Canon Resource Links: Mettaton at the Undertale wiki!
Personality: First and foremost, Mettaton is a performer; his primary stated desire is to entertain others, and he seems to care very little about what that "entertainment" entails. That is to say, as long as he's getting rewarded with an audience reaction and/or a ratings boost, he'll do it, and he's very much of the mindset that there's no such thing as bad publicity – people feeling or saying negative things toward you are still thinking and talking about you, after all. He's almost senselessly optimistic about things at times, and when things are bad this can get into straight-up willful ignorance territory, but for the most part he's a very confident and overall alarmingly positive person, in terms of both his own self-worth and his feelings about other people and their potential.
Not that all of his self-confidence is entirely unwarranted - 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 and celebrity. He basks in the fame and the glory without being at all intimidated by it, and if anything, he thrives off of attention; 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...and apparently nobody questions this (or the fact that he had a damn chainsaw behind the counter to begin with), implying that this is probably not the first time he's pulled a stunt like that.
...His idea of "sensationalism" is a little extreme, even by sensationalists' normal standards. Bluntly put, Mettaton really likes violence; he proudly refers to himself directly as a "killer robot" and he makes no secret of the fact that he has at least one mechanical body that was originally 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. But even when the eradication protocols and weapons are switched off and he's just doing his job as an entertainer, he's got an undeniable violent streak – 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 that kind of weird.) 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 he "can't let anyone hold him back." 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 isn't necessarily because he doesn't like them or genuinely feel anything toward them; it's because...well, Mettaton is kind of stupid in a lot of ways and has a tendency to not think things through. He's not a total idiot, because he can't afford to be in his line of work, but he tends to have a very poor grasp on cause and effect and the concept that just because he understands things a certain way, that doesn't mean that everyone else will. Adding the parts where he's incredibly self-centered and narcissistic into the mix tends to cause a fair amount of accidental social disaster that he doesn't always understand until well after the fact; surprisingly, though, he manages to not be a complete trainwreck with regards to resolving those problems. For example, he realizes in one of the Neutral endings that 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. He's still incredibly self-centered in that particular ending, but he does acknowledge that he's done wrong by someone and expresses an explicit desire to fix it – and he actually goes out and acts on that desire to the best of his ability, proving that he's not just paying lip service to the concept until people leave him alone about it.
So he's entirely capable of caring, even if it's sometimes hard to get him to sit down and acknowledge that other people exist in the world outside of himself; 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.
That said, his actual motivation for wanting to leave the Underground is...not exactly the best example of deep logic, to put it gently. While that's something that every monster seems to want, most of them seem to want to do so for the sake of making humans pay for sealing them away down there in the first place. Mettaton, on the other hand, actually wants to save humanity; he's always been something of an oddball among the others, choosing to love humans and find them interesting instead of hating them (that's actually how he met Alphys, through their mutual fascination with humanity), and as such he wants to take Frisk's soul for himself and merge it with his own so he can pass through the barrier and foil the other monsters' plan to kill them all.
...Which is all well and good until one considers that the reason he's doing this is because he wants to entertain them. He literally wants to be the savior and protector of humanity because he wants to sing for them and be on TV. This is his driving ambition, because of course it is.
Well, at least it can't be said that he was exaggerating when he told Frisk that "[his] only desire is to entertain"...
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ * THE STAGE LIGHTS ARE BLARING
One of the most striking things about Mettaton, regardless of what form he's in, is his ridiculous amounts of confidence and charisma. Despite his obvious narcissism and the fact that he's pretty shamelessly in love with himself, he's good at talking people up and making them feel good about themselves as well; his dialogue is often very flamboyant and flirtatious and he likes calling people beautiful, and when he approves of people or what they're doing he's very vocal about it and makes sure everyone knows it. He's very confident in himself, and he gives off the impression that he can help you be confident in yourself, too; a lot of it is admittedly shameless advertising, but even when it's not, he's an aggressively positive person in terms of the energy he gives off. And he is very energetic in general - it's rare that he remains still for any given period of time, and even when he doesn't have anything to do, he's pretty much constantly bouncing a little and waving at everyone in his line of sight and posing for no real reason other than "because he can." Being a good idol, in other words. (With regards to his actual performing abilities, because I realize those have been mentioned a lot without too much elaboration, he's a proper Old Hollywood Triple Threat - he can sing, dance, and act, though how well he does the latter depends on how invested he is in the performance.)
✔
Once he sees something he wants, he'll actually move to get it – and he doesn't go halfway, either. He's got the benefit of being both ambitious and efficient; in his solo ending (where he's the only end-level-boss monster left alive), he apparently looked at the massive power vacuum caused by the deaths of several important people, including their resident royalty, and...proceeded to take over and remake the Underground in his image in a ridiculously short period of time. He multitasks like no one's business and when he sees opportunities, he takes them. If he doesn't see one, he creates one. And this ties into the next point...
✔ THIS IS AN MTT-BRAND STRENGTHS SECTION
Mettaton's more or less built an entertainment empire out of nothing; on top of performing for people on a regular basis, he's the successful entrepreneur behind MTT-Brand, which specializes in creating merchandise, taking common things and redesigning/reworking them into high-end products, and generally making everyone's life a little more fabulous. He also owns restaurants and a luxury resort back in Hotland. Basically, he's got a good mind for business and a pretty solid creative streak, even if sometimes that creativity goes toward a vision that no one else...quite shares.
✔ * METTATON REMEMBERS WHAT HE'S FIGHTING FOR
As self-centered as he is, Mettaton is incredibly adamant about not wanting harm to befall people he cares about. He's very protective of people he has reason to want to protect - among these people are Napstablook, people he considers his friends, and humanity as a whole - and he's entirely willing to die in the name of doing so. He's not senseless about it, in that as a general practice he prefers to back off from fights that he knows for sure he's going to lose, but as soon as something he cares about is threatened he'll stay and fight for the sake of buying time instead of ensuring safety for himself, even if the fight itself is probably hopeless and he doesn't have the means to fight well or properly.
✔ A LOT OF FEELINGS ON HUMANITY
The humanizing is probably going to cause a lot of weird conflict for a while, until he can figure out exactly what he thinks about it. It helps, though, that he loves humanity a lot; he finds them interesting and he wants to save them all - he's very adamant on this point regardless of what route is being played. Pacifist/Neutral routes see him wanting to perform for them, which he can't do if they're all dead; No Mercy has him wanting to defend humans from both the monsters and the protagonist, saying that he wants to use his weapons and eradication protocols to eliminate the threat the protagonist poses to humanity. He very definitely doesn't have the usual hatred that most monsters display for humans, despite what they did in sealing all of the monsters underground, and it's heavily implied that he wants to be more like them in general - the body that he asked Alphys to create for him is very obviously humanoid, he insists that his television shows and performances are done "like they do on the surface," and his soul is on active display in a position that's different to the other monsters'. (Monsters' souls are depicted as an upside-down heart; Mettaton's is displayed as being proper side up, which is a trait generally reserved for humans.) So in theory, the humanizing will be fine. In practice, it will...either likewise be fine or an existential shitshow, because monster souls and human souls are decidedly nowhere near being the same and humanizing is going to screw with his head with regards to that. But there are IC ways to work out how the hell he's going to resolve that for himself if and when it comes up, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue overall; just something that's going to present some weird conflict for a while.
✔/✘ TODAY, ON "NICE PEOPLE DOING WONDERFUL THINGS"
Normally, obviously villainous skillsets aren't a good thing; given that he's being apped in as a member of Team Rocket, though, he has a pair of skills that can be used to benefit the organization, and he's entirely unopposed to using them that way if it'll also benefit him somehow.
-- Inducing brainwashing by way of media: as shown in the specific Neutral endings where he takes over the Underground as king - he's explicitly stated to have achieved his position by using his television shows to brainwash people into worshiping him.
-- Creation of bombs/explosives, without the usage of magic: as shown during the news segment of the battle leadup - he knows how to make several types of bombs that can be armed/detonated/disabled from a remote location.
✔/✘ PHYSICAL ABILITY
Given that his usual physical body is this impressively unwieldy thing (and even in his more humanoid form he's doing all his battles in three-to-five-inch heels), it's safe to say that Mettaton's sense of balance won't suffer upon being humanized; if anything it's probably better than that of the average human given that he's used to correcting himself on the fly and actively compensating for gravity almost constantly. Furthermore, he's shown to be ridiculously flexible in ways that most people are not - on a scale of one to ten, his ability to physically contort himself into weird positions and hold them is somewhere around "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure."
...On the other side of things, he's used to having a metal body of some sort and a defense stat high enough to prevent anything from actually being able to properly hurt him. Bluntly put, he's not used to being this breakable; basic concepts like "if you jump on top of things in five-inch heels you might actually break your ankle" or "if you walk into the edge of this table hard enough you are going to bleed somehow" are completely foreign to him, so that's going to need to be something that he figures out eventually, even if it is the hard way.
✘ LIVE FOR THE WAY THAT YOU CHEER AND SCREAM FOR ME
Mettaton's primary fixation is on making sure that people pay attention to him; he wants to be a superstar, he wants high ratings, he wants people to talk about him, and...somewhere in there he wants people to care about him as well, but that's generally secondary to them paying attention, fullstop. This sort of desire isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but he's completely and utterly amoral in the way he goes about achieving what he wants. He's willing to use violence and brainwashing to ensure that people adore him, because he doesn't particularly care if people do so through love or fear so long as they're doing it; he treats people like toys, a means to an end, or fun dispensers a lot of the time, and he's just far more invested in what he wants than he is in how it affects people.
✘ SET THEM UP TO KNOCK THEM DOWN
Tying into the above point regarding how people have apparently been put on this earth to worship him and be his toys, once they stop providing their given service for him or he finds something he likes better, he'll often discard them entirely without thinking about how he's treating them. He was very close to Napstablook...until the opportunity to be a star (and loved by everyone, not just his introverted cousin that works on a snail farm) came around, at which point he abandoned them immediately, claiming that they were "holding him back"; he became friends with Alphys, bonding with her over their mutual fascination with humans...only to start belittling her and being insanely rude to her once she created a robotic body for him to inhabit and constantly pushing her hard to make a better one that felt "more like him", doing all of this to such an extent that she was concerned that the body she was creating for him was the only reason he talked to her at all. It's notable, though, that he doesn't do this through a desire to be cruel to his friends, and he does genuinely care about the people he's close to; at the same time, he just doesn't think about other people like they're...well, people. You know, with feelings and stuff. ...He's sort of stupid on the interpersonal front, in other words. Whatever the rationalization is behind it (and whether he means to or not), though, he's definitely got a tendency to treat his friends like utter shit; at his current canon point he's sort of gotten a few wake-up slaps with regards to that, but this is a pattern he's been in for a good amount of his life, so...
✘ EVERYTHING'S COVERED IN GOLDEN GLITTER! THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS, BABY!
Mettaton has a tendency to strongly emphasize the potential positives of a situation, as opposed to wanting to see any of the negatives. The strongest example of this is during an attempted No Mercy run – if he isn't killed immediately, he expresses hope for the protagonist and says that because they "held back" when fighting him, they must still be a good person somewhere inside. This happens after the protagonist has murdered literally everyone they encountered before him. All of his friends are dead. All of his employees are dead. He's about to be dead, because he loses that battle no matter what you do. But because the protagonist didn't immediately one-shot him, they must still be a good person somewhere deep inside. ...Yeah. Furthermore, in one of the Neutral endings, he's willing to ignore things up to and including economic collapse for the sake of pretending that everything is going to work out just fine, because...he said so? Because he said so.
✘ REAL DRAMA!! REAL ACTION!! REAL BLOODSHED!!
Even with all of his positivity, however, it's undeniable that Mettaton loves violence and doesn't seem to have any boundaries whatsoever with regards to what he's willing to do to people he doesn't have cause to care about. He'll go out of his way to harm or threaten people on his shows, obviously reveling in it the entire time, but he likes explosives best - a lot of his personal magic is centered around bomb creation, and at one point he holds an entire section of the Core under a bomb threat pretty much because that's what he decided his life was going to look like that day. He's easily enlisted to torment or threaten others if it's made to sound sufficiently fun for him (and entertaining for his viewers); he's a little more lenient when it comes to people he cares about, but that doesn't stop him from doing things like sabotaging their plans once he decides that he's had enough of them or they're "getting predictable."
✘ ..."EXP" MEANS WHAT, NOW
With regards to specific canon-based hang-ups providing difficulty in the setting, Mettaton is probably going to have more difficulty with the mechanics of Pokémon itself than he will with the humanizing. The monsters in Undertale were all forced underground by humans and sealed off there, so the fact that Pokémon is pretty much based around humans owning monsters (for all intents and purposes) and making them fight for the sake of gaining more power for themselves is going to be...awkward. Undertale as a canon also strongly discourages leveling up – LV is something referred to in that canon as an abbreviation for LOVE, which itself is an abbreviation for Level Of ViolencE; EXP is likewise something that's not a good thing to have, as they're referred to in-universe as Execution Points. They're both things that are gained through killing monsters, and they're...pretty deeply frowned upon. The latter part of that won't be something that Mettaton is exactly opposed to, given that he kills people on such a regular basis, but it's going to take a lot of getting used to in terms of humans just doing this like it's not even a thing.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Team Rocket
Starter: Slugma / Grimer
Password: Pumpkin Seeds
Samples
First Person Sample:
Good morning, beauties and gentlebeauties!
[Well, seems like someone is feeling entirely too awake for this early in the morning; normally he wouldn't bother broadcasting this early (it's far from peak viewing hours, after all) but the fact of the matter is that he couldn't stay asleep worth a damn last night and so here he is. At least this morning Mettaton's still lying down rather than bouncing off the walls, if not technically in bed – rather, he's lying on top of a made one, the camera angle showing off just enough to give the indication that while he's lying on his back, his legs and body are twisted over to the side, the position ending up somewhere between "sensual" and "oh my god, why are you doing that to your back, doesn't that hurt - "
The shot is nicely-framed, though; whoever the cameramon is, they're doing a good job, not as though he'd accept anything less. The...random bursts of rose petals flitting into view and landing on the bed once in a while could stand to be a bit more coordinated, though, and he'll likely Have A Talk with her later – hopefully he won't be too hard on her, the Roselia is a new hire.
...Anyway.]
So. Recent development. One of my particularly prized viewers – yes, you, you know who you are! – called in with a tip the other day, regarding the studios in Fuchsia City. And as much as I've enjoyed the small screen, I admit I'm just dying to make a proper debut.
But...an idol can only do so much on their own, you know. The rest is up to you, my lovely viewers – and the ratings are nice, but they can only carry so much. So, you see...
[He pushes himself up, the motion quick and dramatic, sitting on the edge of the bed and crossing his legs at the knee; he sweeps his fingertips through his fringe lightly as he speaks, just because he can.]
Ohhh yes!! I'm offering you the chance of a lifetime - one of you will be selected to accompany me to the Fuchsia City studios, serving as both travel companion and entourage! It's a chance to witness a star being born, with all the glitz and glamour that the industry has to offer!
But wait, there's more – if even all of that isn't enough to satisfy you, it's not a proper prize without a paid vacation to somewhere, is it? Your passage into Kanto will be entirely covered, a package worth twenty thousand...
[...]
...Things. Twenty thousand things. Whatever passes for money around here. You get the idea.
[Mettaton, for fuck's sake.]
...Either way, it's worth a lot, if only for the opportunity alone! So call now, darlings, because this offer isn't going to last forever!
[...Aaaaand the feed cuts off. That was a lot of pointless jargon to express the basic notion of "I really don't want to travel alone, also I want someone to carry my stuff," but there you have it.]
Third Person Sample:
The obligatory two weeks of training really weren't something that held Mettaton's interest very well; oh, there were a few parts of it that were useful, of course, but for the most part it was boring and repetitive, and honestly the things he found most useful were the files he was able to get at after the fact.
It wasn't anything top-secret. Not confidential in the least. Just things that everybody already knew.
He's only mildly interested in that entire business years ago where magic was apparently accidentally passed out to the population, though that raises more questions than it answers (and almost all of the questions are some variant of HOW?? and WHY??); rather, it's the destruction of the lighthouse that first really gets his attention. The blowing-up of a national landmark like that...and all of it done over the devices, no less. Doing it is one thing, and something he can certainly approve of, but the notion that it was broadcast live, to an entire region full of people...
Well, that's admirable, actually! The sort of daring content people in Hotland always craved – and apparently this was done by one of the surface-dwellers? Clearly, the humans had more potential than he'd realized, despite what the others here had been telling him about keeping things like that quiet.
And then there was the Seth individual; certainly prolific, if a bit repetitive. Clearly no one had told him that a true performer doesn't do repeat performances, they do encores –
I can do better. The thought is sudden, and it's obvious, and he's smiling a bit as he continues. I can definitely do better.
After all, it's not as though he'd be interested in killing everyone. If a few people had to suffer, so what? One of the first questions out of his mouth in this place (thankfully, to someone in the organization) had been wondering what the point is in entirely scripted entertainment – there's no dramatic tension without a bit of danger, a bit of bloodshed, and everyone knows that. And besides, there's a sort of irony to the self-proclaimed "humanity's star" causing trouble like this, isn't there?
No good story is complete without a plot twist.
Next up.
Cobra Commander's files are odd and cartoonish but they're fascinating; he was certainly a busy man, one who left his mark on the world. One that people wouldn't soon forget...
The thought this time isn't I can do better but rather I have to do better – after all, he's certainly not going to be outdone by someone who isn't even present anymore. Admittedly, he's not entirely sure where he's supposed to start with all of this; it's true enough that Rome wasn't built in a day, but at the same time, it's not exactly something he can accomplish with a flaming snail, his cosmetic disaster of a sludgeball, and a can-do attitude.
But then again, there is the Radio Tower; perhaps he'll put his broadcasting skills to use one day. He's used to television, admittedly, but he's never been one to turn down an opportunity when he sees one.