At least someone's excited. When he went pushing his brother to be a little more enthusiastic about science and a little less mired in guilt, he'd wanted his brother to be focusing and happier, not... this.
And it's nothing like a speech he's ever heard Sans give, but it sounds vaguely familiar, all the same. Pontification about how reality is, mixed with tangents of pushing at its walls to test whether it really, truly is. Somehow it reminds him of the barrier, of the core, of nights overhearing rambling that he didn't really understand about how to generate enough power to find some othersolution. This threat-promise of experiencing Invention like a sudden winter storm, your own fault for being in the way, it's different enough to startle him out of the odd nostalgia.
"You sound very sure, but... do you have to be? That big, that... stuck being one way?"
He remembers some time when the Ringmaster basically invited everyone to kill her, if they'd wanted to, when she'd given up her power in a bet. If she was some kind of force of nature - The Beast, some fae said, but what did bestiality have to do with a traveling carnival? - then had she been someone else that time, or herself?
"I wouldn't want to be like that. I'm very cool, and kind, and helpful, and all around very great," he says with a somewhat subdued imitation of his old braggery.
"...But, mostly because I try to be! And, and when I notice I'm not being all that great... I work to do better. It's not easy, or fast, and some of it might really be impossible... But if I told myself, I'm stuck being someone I don't like, then. I just would be?"
Papyrus squints at the visor, trying not to talk like he's talking to his brother, and fails a bit as he falls into a more scolding tone. "Are you sure you're not doing that, in some very powerful, living for eons and eons way? Telling yourself 'oh, I can't, so I won't even try,' and making yourself be a bigger storm than you could be?"
have an essay of papyrus' general opinion here because I gotta get workbound
And it's nothing like a speech he's ever heard Sans give, but it sounds vaguely familiar, all the same. Pontification about how reality is, mixed with tangents of pushing at its walls to test whether it really, truly is. Somehow it reminds him of the barrier, of the core, of nights overhearing rambling that he didn't really understand about how to generate enough power to find some othersolution. This threat-promise of experiencing Invention like a sudden winter storm, your own fault for being in the way, it's different enough to startle him out of the odd nostalgia.
"You sound very sure, but... do you have to be? That big, that... stuck being one way?"
He remembers some time when the Ringmaster basically invited everyone to kill her, if they'd wanted to, when she'd given up her power in a bet. If she was some kind of force of nature - The Beast, some fae said, but what did bestiality have to do with a traveling carnival? - then had she been someone else that time, or herself?
"I wouldn't want to be like that. I'm very cool, and kind, and helpful, and all around very great," he says with a somewhat subdued imitation of his old braggery.
"...But, mostly because I try to be! And, and when I notice I'm not being all that great... I work to do better. It's not easy, or fast, and some of it might really be impossible... But if I told myself, I'm stuck being someone I don't like, then. I just would be?"
Papyrus squints at the visor, trying not to talk like he's talking to his brother, and fails a bit as he falls into a more scolding tone. "Are you sure you're not doing that, in some very powerful, living for eons and eons way? Telling yourself 'oh, I can't, so I won't even try,' and making yourself be a bigger storm than you could be?"