Why Alphys is My Favorite Character in Undertale
Note: This post contains spoilers of a heavily story-driven game. If you have not played this game and want to go into it without any knowledge of the story, it is recommended you stop reading now.
Towards the end of last year, I wrote and published a review of Undertale and why it was my favorite game. In that review, I went over a lot of things I respected about the game - how the story was so well intertwined with the gameplay, the overall morality system that the game is themed after, the mini-bullet hell battle system, and just how well it provided somewhat of a commentary of RPG and video game tropes in general.
But one thing I mentioned when talking about the story was that my favorite character in the game… was Dr. Alphys. And while talking about that I mentioned that, out of any of the major characters in the game, she was possibly the most divisive within the community - not necessarily a character that the majority of the fandom really “hates” or anything, but from my experiences of the Undertale fanbase, there’s definitely some people who dislike her, more so than any other characters in Undertale’s main cast.
And I’ve always found this to be fairly disappointing since, again, she was my favorite character in the game, and to be honest, I’ve wanted to do a write-up describing particularly why Alphys’ character always stood out to me, particularly enough to be my favorite. I even mentioned in my “Top 10 Favorite Video Games” post from June 2020, partially joking that Alphys was the best character and that I would write an essay defending her.
Well, here’s that. My essay simping for- er, describing why Alphys is my favorite character in Undertale.
First of all, let’s examine Alphys from her surface character. We first meet her in her lab in the Hotlands, and between the dialogue within the first cutscene, her social media posts that we get, and just the setting of her lab, we get the impression that she’s a socially awkward, nerdy girl who does come off as a bit self-deprecating but the lines that do hint towards that element of her personality are treated largely as jokes at first. I know some did get annoyed at the messages early on, but admittedly I did find it to be pretty charming and one thing that initially appealed to me about her character. I am someone who does tend to post a lot on social media and send messages to my friends, potentially to their annoyance, so I did find humor in the constant messages from Alphys.
Regardless, going on from what I said about those lines representing Alphys being pretty self-deprecating, as you progress through the story, it does go deeper and provides somewhat of a foreshadow of Alphys’ overall character and personality. I guess to praise Undertale itself a bit more, I do think that the game does a good job of foreshadowing events in the story and helping the player learn about the character through the environment.
With Alphys, that’s no exception. Those moments of self-deprecation do play into the more “deep” side of her character as you progress through the story, but in addition to that, we do get the impression she’s somewhat of an escapist with her obsession with anime - someone who looks into anime in this case to escape the “real” world. You find out that she was recording Frisk’s adventure up to that point, and from there helps Frisk progress, wanting to play a part in the player’s story. Course, things from there go wrong, and Mettaton reveals that the whole part of the story was pretty much just a ruse in order to make Alphys feel like a bigger part of the story. I’ve seen people bring this up as her putting Frisk in danger, but this was never really her intention - with the way she set everything up, she figured Frisk would be just fine, but didn’t consider anything going wrong.
Thing is, this isn’t really done with any malicious intent. Alphys’ goal is to make Frisk like her by putting up a mask of sorts - showing herself to be more heroic than she actually is. Another speculation I’ve also heard is that ultimately she was trying to distract Frisk from meeting up with Asgore. But either way, I get the impression that she’s desperate for someone to look up to her, but is so desperate that she fails to consider possibilities that may hinder her plan, inadvertently causing more trouble down the road.
Let’s go back to her self-deprecation. It’s pretty clear that Alphys doesn’t exactly think highly of herself - we get this impression from her social media posts, and she also outright mentions this at one point in the Hotlands - that prior to meeting the human she didn’t like who she was. In addition, in the “Dating” scene in the True Pacifist run, where she admits she doesn’t want to be her “true self” in front of Undyne as she’s just not proud of who she is. Her low self-esteem and amount of self-hatred definitely go beyond those seemingly comedic posts mentioned earlier, and is potentially even worse than what the player might have expected when just meeting her character.
And the situation with the “True Lab” is where this really comes into play. It’s revealed that Alphys has some skeletons in her closet - and I don’t mean Sans or Papyrus. Sorry, I had to. But anyway, we learn as the player that Alphys was involved with an experiment with dying monster souls where she had intended to make them last longer by injecting them with “Determination” - something that according to her gave humans a greater desire to persist after death. This seemed to work at first - she had initially saved the lives of monsters after injecting them with Determination… or so she thought.
Turns out, high amounts of determination ended up causing the monsters to melt into each other, creating “Amalgamates” from these dying monsters. She expected that, once the truth was revealed, everyone would hate her for what she had done, and felt that she would only manage to hurt people. So, she kept it to herself, with immense regret and guilt.
Thing is, it could be interpreted that keeping all this bottled up… only made her feel worse about herself. I feel it is pretty common knowledge that “bottling up” emotions in any way psychologically leads to higher amounts of stress and a worsened ability to handle challenging situations in the future - overall, only making those initial feelings worse as time goes on.
One could argue that keeping it to herself just made things worse and that she should have just told someone, and you know what? They’d be right. Thing is, I feel a lot of people are guilty of keeping things to themselves - frankly when we do bad things, it can be hard to bring yourself to own up to them. And I feel in Alphys’ case, it does make a lot of sense.
After everything that happened, Alphys felt she had two choices - either tell others what happened and risk becoming hated and potentially hurting others, or keep everything to herself. She already felt like she hurt others, and she didn’t want to risk what could’ve happened if she told others, so she chose the latter option, looking to use forms of escapism and pushing her anxiety onto herself… only, it made her feel worse as a result. It is commonly speculated that she killed herself following most of the neutral endings, especially based on some of the implications within the game. It’s safe to say that she didn’t want to confront her “true self,” and without the support of others, she ultimately resorted to a way out.
But in the True Pacifist run, where she is shown support from Frisk, Papyrus, Undyne and… well, pretty much everyone around her, she strives to improve herself and own up to her mistakes, even if she may find it difficult. I think it actually provides a really good message - we all make mistakes, and it’s okay to feel bad for them, but it’s better to let it out rather than continue to wallow in self-pity.
I remember seeing someone argue that Alphys felt underdeveloped, and well… I couldn’t disagree more. I think out of all the character arcs within the game, Alphys probably has the most deep and interesting story to go along with her character. Her character in some ways is pretty major focal in the events just leading up to Asriel being revealed. It’s an overall story of redemption, and with Undertale’s overall theme of morality, it really surprises me that people really seem to misunderstand what Alphys’ character arc is going for.
Alphys is flawed. Very much so. She’s done bad things in the past, including unintentionally creating the game’s main antagonist. And in general, she doesn’t exactly make the best decisions or really think things through very well. But she’s not necessarily an outright villain either - she’s just someone who desires appreciation and support from others when she can’t provide it to herself. And in that process, she’s made plenty of mistakes, but she’s not someone with malicious intent. She’s pretty much the quintessential example of someone who lives in a gray area of morality - having good intentions, wanting to help, but in doing so, only causing more harm to herself and potentially others.
And I think one of the biggest foundations of Undertale’s overall themes is the good and evil of individuals - that our thought process of morality may not be correct when put into context, and we’ve all made mistakes to some degree. And Alphys really feels like a good portrayal of that in a character - someone who doesn’t make great decisions and often makes mistakes yet doesn’t exactly have malicious intentions either. But sometimes we need to address those mistakes instead of letting them consume us. This is honestly one case where I feel like the people who dislike Alphys failed to understand the game’s messages and themes.
I touched upon in my review of Undertale was that Alphys always felt the most “real” of any character in Undertale for me, and in general, this is really one of the biggest things I’ve built up to throughout this entire review. When we first meet Alphys, all we really know about her is that she’s a quirky, socially-awkward scientist, who makes self-deprecating comments about herself usually played for laughs. But the more we play, we realize there’s a much deeper side to her that we don’t realize at a first glance.
It may seem screwed up to some that she played a con in order to come off as more of a hero to Frisk, and there’s no doubt that she’s made some major mistakes in the past, but this is all just a result of someone who… just wanted love and support. It’s not that she doesn’t regret the things she had done - quite the contrary, she dwells on it, which only makes her feel worse as a result. This piles up, and in the end, she only continues to hurt herself and others around her, worsening her guilt as events take place. There’s a disconnect between Alphys herself and the person (monster?) she wants to be, and she actively seeks to run away from reality using comics to distract herself while refusing to acknowledge her previous failures.
And without a doubt, it’s safe to say that... there are people just like Alphys in real life. People who have done things in the past they regret, but don’t have the courage to seek help or talk to others. People who need support, but actively avoid confronting their failures and talking about them in fear or being chastised by society and/or the people just around them. I can’t really say I’m an expert in mental illness or anything, but after what I have gone through myself, I definitely get the impression that Alphys’ character is more or less based around the whole idea of mental illness and how it affects people in their everyday lives - arguably a tribute to that. And I feel like her character arc is one that really leaves us with the message that it’s okay to make mistakes, and we are not defined by our previous failures - only by how we learn from them, and how important it is to not bottle them up. There are people who support us in this world, even if it may not seem like it, and seeking support from them by being open about how we feel, and being willing to confront the consequences of our actions, makes us feel about ourselves in the long run.
And I know for a fact that there are people like Alphys in the real world - people who dwell on their previous mistakes but feeling like those mistakes define them and make them feel like a worse person as a result. Not doing anything to get better, and actively avoiding any acknowledgement of those previous failures, only to have them feel worse in the long run.
And I should know because… honestly, I’m one of those people.
That’s the main thing that’s always made Alphys a character that I’ve loved - she’s a character I can relate heavily to. In a lot of ways, I’m pretty much just like her - between being a fangirl of things and being shy and socially awkward… down to my history of just having low self-esteem and having the feeling that I’m a bad person and everyone hates me. I’ve made mistakes before, some of them I feel are pretty major, and to this day I constantly have this feeling that others are mad at me or outright hate me, even when that feeling is completely unwarranted. I get the feeling that bad things that happen to the people around me are my fault, and that I’m to blame for everything. Or that I deserve everything bad that’s happened to me.
But sometimes… I can’t really bring myself to talk about those mistakes or acknowledge my feelings. I feel scared that if I were to disclose those feelings, everyone would dislike me, and I would lose friends as a result. I’ve had a history of actively avoiding conflict so as to not hurt anyone, but in retrospect, I get the impression that avoiding talking to people about how I’m feeling… has actually made me feel worse now as a result. I’ve gotten better about seeking help in recent times, but even that has been somewhat of a hard task for me.
In a lot of ways, I felt… represented by Alphys and her story in Undertale. She was just like me - someone who presented herself as a shy, socially-awkward and quirky fangirl to others, but deep down, felt regret for things she’s done in the past that she’s completely unwilling to face. In a lot of ways, Alphys was the first character in any piece of media I consumed growing up that I felt I could relate to. The only other characters I found any relatability towards in the past were Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but even with those characters, I never really felt like it went much deeper than core personality traits - I’m shy and love animals like Fluttershy, I enjoy having my friends around and making others laugh like Pinkie Pie - but that was really the extent to it.
With Alphys, my “relation” to her went a lot deeper - I do also share core personality traits with her, but the more her character was developed within the game, and the more time I’ve spent retrospecting on Undertale, I really just found myself finding a connection with Alphys moreso than any other character - not just in Undertale, but in really any piece of media ever. I actually loved her so much that I pretty much built my online identity around her for a year after Undertale came out, for a lot of the same reasons I’ve gone over here, and stopped when I wanted to build my own identity for myself when I created my fursona in late 2016.
...and also partially because I got shit for enjoying Undertale at all.
But regardless, I did see a lot of value in Alphys’ character when I first played Undertale, and it honestly meant a lot to me personally. She’s still a character I really love, potentially my favorite character in… really, any video game. She was actually somewhat of an inspiration to me, and is still a character I find enjoyment in. A comfort character, if you will.
Now, I know I’m not going to automatically change everyone’s minds by writing an essay simping for a fictional character. But I did, at the very least, want to explain why I really loved Alphys’ character in Undertale, and why she means a lot to me. And to the people who dislike her, I encourage them to look back on Alphys with a more open mind. You probably know someone like Alphys, maybe a friend or family member, or just know that people like that exist. And if that’s the case, just think about how you can help and support them in any way possible.
..also she’s cute as fuck and her relationship with undyne is my OTP. also she stutters a lot like i do, another thing i can relate to about her.
Towards the end of last year, I wrote and published a review of Undertale and why it was my favorite game. In that review, I went over a lot of things I respected about the game - how the story was so well intertwined with the gameplay, the overall morality system that the game is themed after, the mini-bullet hell battle system, and just how well it provided somewhat of a commentary of RPG and video game tropes in general.
But one thing I mentioned when talking about the story was that my favorite character in the game… was Dr. Alphys. And while talking about that I mentioned that, out of any of the major characters in the game, she was possibly the most divisive within the community - not necessarily a character that the majority of the fandom really “hates” or anything, but from my experiences of the Undertale fanbase, there’s definitely some people who dislike her, more so than any other characters in Undertale’s main cast.
And I’ve always found this to be fairly disappointing since, again, she was my favorite character in the game, and to be honest, I’ve wanted to do a write-up describing particularly why Alphys’ character always stood out to me, particularly enough to be my favorite. I even mentioned in my “Top 10 Favorite Video Games” post from June 2020, partially joking that Alphys was the best character and that I would write an essay defending her.
Well, here’s that. My essay simping for- er, describing why Alphys is my favorite character in Undertale.
art by: https://www.deviantart.com/wi-fu/art/Alphys-611591778
First of all, let’s examine Alphys from her surface character. We first meet her in her lab in the Hotlands, and between the dialogue within the first cutscene, her social media posts that we get, and just the setting of her lab, we get the impression that she’s a socially awkward, nerdy girl who does come off as a bit self-deprecating but the lines that do hint towards that element of her personality are treated largely as jokes at first. I know some did get annoyed at the messages early on, but admittedly I did find it to be pretty charming and one thing that initially appealed to me about her character. I am someone who does tend to post a lot on social media and send messages to my friends, potentially to their annoyance, so I did find humor in the constant messages from Alphys.
Regardless, going on from what I said about those lines representing Alphys being pretty self-deprecating, as you progress through the story, it does go deeper and provides somewhat of a foreshadow of Alphys’ overall character and personality. I guess to praise Undertale itself a bit more, I do think that the game does a good job of foreshadowing events in the story and helping the player learn about the character through the environment.
With Alphys, that’s no exception. Those moments of self-deprecation do play into the more “deep” side of her character as you progress through the story, but in addition to that, we do get the impression she’s somewhat of an escapist with her obsession with anime - someone who looks into anime in this case to escape the “real” world. You find out that she was recording Frisk’s adventure up to that point, and from there helps Frisk progress, wanting to play a part in the player’s story. Course, things from there go wrong, and Mettaton reveals that the whole part of the story was pretty much just a ruse in order to make Alphys feel like a bigger part of the story. I’ve seen people bring this up as her putting Frisk in danger, but this was never really her intention - with the way she set everything up, she figured Frisk would be just fine, but didn’t consider anything going wrong.
Thing is, this isn’t really done with any malicious intent. Alphys’ goal is to make Frisk like her by putting up a mask of sorts - showing herself to be more heroic than she actually is. Another speculation I’ve also heard is that ultimately she was trying to distract Frisk from meeting up with Asgore. But either way, I get the impression that she’s desperate for someone to look up to her, but is so desperate that she fails to consider possibilities that may hinder her plan, inadvertently causing more trouble down the road.
Let’s go back to her self-deprecation. It’s pretty clear that Alphys doesn’t exactly think highly of herself - we get this impression from her social media posts, and she also outright mentions this at one point in the Hotlands - that prior to meeting the human she didn’t like who she was. In addition, in the “Dating” scene in the True Pacifist run, where she admits she doesn’t want to be her “true self” in front of Undyne as she’s just not proud of who she is. Her low self-esteem and amount of self-hatred definitely go beyond those seemingly comedic posts mentioned earlier, and is potentially even worse than what the player might have expected when just meeting her character.
And the situation with the “True Lab” is where this really comes into play. It’s revealed that Alphys has some skeletons in her closet - and I don’t mean Sans or Papyrus. Sorry, I had to. But anyway, we learn as the player that Alphys was involved with an experiment with dying monster souls where she had intended to make them last longer by injecting them with “Determination” - something that according to her gave humans a greater desire to persist after death. This seemed to work at first - she had initially saved the lives of monsters after injecting them with Determination… or so she thought.
Turns out, high amounts of determination ended up causing the monsters to melt into each other, creating “Amalgamates” from these dying monsters. She expected that, once the truth was revealed, everyone would hate her for what she had done, and felt that she would only manage to hurt people. So, she kept it to herself, with immense regret and guilt.
Thing is, it could be interpreted that keeping all this bottled up… only made her feel worse about herself. I feel it is pretty common knowledge that “bottling up” emotions in any way psychologically leads to higher amounts of stress and a worsened ability to handle challenging situations in the future - overall, only making those initial feelings worse as time goes on.
One could argue that keeping it to herself just made things worse and that she should have just told someone, and you know what? They’d be right. Thing is, I feel a lot of people are guilty of keeping things to themselves - frankly when we do bad things, it can be hard to bring yourself to own up to them. And I feel in Alphys’ case, it does make a lot of sense.
After everything that happened, Alphys felt she had two choices - either tell others what happened and risk becoming hated and potentially hurting others, or keep everything to herself. She already felt like she hurt others, and she didn’t want to risk what could’ve happened if she told others, so she chose the latter option, looking to use forms of escapism and pushing her anxiety onto herself… only, it made her feel worse as a result. It is commonly speculated that she killed herself following most of the neutral endings, especially based on some of the implications within the game. It’s safe to say that she didn’t want to confront her “true self,” and without the support of others, she ultimately resorted to a way out.
But in the True Pacifist run, where she is shown support from Frisk, Papyrus, Undyne and… well, pretty much everyone around her, she strives to improve herself and own up to her mistakes, even if she may find it difficult. I think it actually provides a really good message - we all make mistakes, and it’s okay to feel bad for them, but it’s better to let it out rather than continue to wallow in self-pity.
I remember seeing someone argue that Alphys felt underdeveloped, and well… I couldn’t disagree more. I think out of all the character arcs within the game, Alphys probably has the most deep and interesting story to go along with her character. Her character in some ways is pretty major focal in the events just leading up to Asriel being revealed. It’s an overall story of redemption, and with Undertale’s overall theme of morality, it really surprises me that people really seem to misunderstand what Alphys’ character arc is going for.
Alphys is flawed. Very much so. She’s done bad things in the past, including unintentionally creating the game’s main antagonist. And in general, she doesn’t exactly make the best decisions or really think things through very well. But she’s not necessarily an outright villain either - she’s just someone who desires appreciation and support from others when she can’t provide it to herself. And in that process, she’s made plenty of mistakes, but she’s not someone with malicious intent. She’s pretty much the quintessential example of someone who lives in a gray area of morality - having good intentions, wanting to help, but in doing so, only causing more harm to herself and potentially others.
And I think one of the biggest foundations of Undertale’s overall themes is the good and evil of individuals - that our thought process of morality may not be correct when put into context, and we’ve all made mistakes to some degree. And Alphys really feels like a good portrayal of that in a character - someone who doesn’t make great decisions and often makes mistakes yet doesn’t exactly have malicious intentions either. But sometimes we need to address those mistakes instead of letting them consume us. This is honestly one case where I feel like the people who dislike Alphys failed to understand the game’s messages and themes.
I touched upon in my review of Undertale was that Alphys always felt the most “real” of any character in Undertale for me, and in general, this is really one of the biggest things I’ve built up to throughout this entire review. When we first meet Alphys, all we really know about her is that she’s a quirky, socially-awkward scientist, who makes self-deprecating comments about herself usually played for laughs. But the more we play, we realize there’s a much deeper side to her that we don’t realize at a first glance.
It may seem screwed up to some that she played a con in order to come off as more of a hero to Frisk, and there’s no doubt that she’s made some major mistakes in the past, but this is all just a result of someone who… just wanted love and support. It’s not that she doesn’t regret the things she had done - quite the contrary, she dwells on it, which only makes her feel worse as a result. This piles up, and in the end, she only continues to hurt herself and others around her, worsening her guilt as events take place. There’s a disconnect between Alphys herself and the person (monster?) she wants to be, and she actively seeks to run away from reality using comics to distract herself while refusing to acknowledge her previous failures.
And without a doubt, it’s safe to say that... there are people just like Alphys in real life. People who have done things in the past they regret, but don’t have the courage to seek help or talk to others. People who need support, but actively avoid confronting their failures and talking about them in fear or being chastised by society and/or the people just around them. I can’t really say I’m an expert in mental illness or anything, but after what I have gone through myself, I definitely get the impression that Alphys’ character is more or less based around the whole idea of mental illness and how it affects people in their everyday lives - arguably a tribute to that. And I feel like her character arc is one that really leaves us with the message that it’s okay to make mistakes, and we are not defined by our previous failures - only by how we learn from them, and how important it is to not bottle them up. There are people who support us in this world, even if it may not seem like it, and seeking support from them by being open about how we feel, and being willing to confront the consequences of our actions, makes us feel about ourselves in the long run.
And I know for a fact that there are people like Alphys in the real world - people who dwell on their previous mistakes but feeling like those mistakes define them and make them feel like a worse person as a result. Not doing anything to get better, and actively avoiding any acknowledgement of those previous failures, only to have them feel worse in the long run.
And I should know because… honestly, I’m one of those people.
That’s the main thing that’s always made Alphys a character that I’ve loved - she’s a character I can relate heavily to. In a lot of ways, I’m pretty much just like her - between being a fangirl of things and being shy and socially awkward… down to my history of just having low self-esteem and having the feeling that I’m a bad person and everyone hates me. I’ve made mistakes before, some of them I feel are pretty major, and to this day I constantly have this feeling that others are mad at me or outright hate me, even when that feeling is completely unwarranted. I get the feeling that bad things that happen to the people around me are my fault, and that I’m to blame for everything. Or that I deserve everything bad that’s happened to me.
But sometimes… I can’t really bring myself to talk about those mistakes or acknowledge my feelings. I feel scared that if I were to disclose those feelings, everyone would dislike me, and I would lose friends as a result. I’ve had a history of actively avoiding conflict so as to not hurt anyone, but in retrospect, I get the impression that avoiding talking to people about how I’m feeling… has actually made me feel worse now as a result. I’ve gotten better about seeking help in recent times, but even that has been somewhat of a hard task for me.
In a lot of ways, I felt… represented by Alphys and her story in Undertale. She was just like me - someone who presented herself as a shy, socially-awkward and quirky fangirl to others, but deep down, felt regret for things she’s done in the past that she’s completely unwilling to face. In a lot of ways, Alphys was the first character in any piece of media I consumed growing up that I felt I could relate to. The only other characters I found any relatability towards in the past were Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but even with those characters, I never really felt like it went much deeper than core personality traits - I’m shy and love animals like Fluttershy, I enjoy having my friends around and making others laugh like Pinkie Pie - but that was really the extent to it.
With Alphys, my “relation” to her went a lot deeper - I do also share core personality traits with her, but the more her character was developed within the game, and the more time I’ve spent retrospecting on Undertale, I really just found myself finding a connection with Alphys moreso than any other character - not just in Undertale, but in really any piece of media ever. I actually loved her so much that I pretty much built my online identity around her for a year after Undertale came out, for a lot of the same reasons I’ve gone over here, and stopped when I wanted to build my own identity for myself when I created my fursona in late 2016.
...and also partially because I got shit for enjoying Undertale at all.
But regardless, I did see a lot of value in Alphys’ character when I first played Undertale, and it honestly meant a lot to me personally. She’s still a character I really love, potentially my favorite character in… really, any video game. She was actually somewhat of an inspiration to me, and is still a character I find enjoyment in. A comfort character, if you will.
Now, I know I’m not going to automatically change everyone’s minds by writing an essay simping for a fictional character. But I did, at the very least, want to explain why I really loved Alphys’ character in Undertale, and why she means a lot to me. And to the people who dislike her, I encourage them to look back on Alphys with a more open mind. You probably know someone like Alphys, maybe a friend or family member, or just know that people like that exist. And if that’s the case, just think about how you can help and support them in any way possible.
..also she’s cute as fuck and her relationship with undyne is my OTP. also she stutters a lot like i do, another thing i can relate to about her.
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