Don’t GOAT Breaking my Heart: an Anti-Hate Meta for Toriel AND Asgore
I’ve seen a lot of hate going around regarding the situation these two are in. Sometimes, in defense of one goat someone viciously bashes the other. It doesn’t have to be like that, though.
TORIEL
It seems like a lot of people are condemning her dislike of Asgore in their defense of him. But…I think we should try to understand her point of view too.
Why is she so mad at Asgore?
It is heavily implied the children he killed were her children, in the same way Frisk is. Maybe for years.
It’s safe to say Toriel didn’t just nab these kids’ shoes and send them on their way. Some or most of them stayed long enough to need to new shoes and grow out of their old ones (or they’d still be wearing them when they left the Ruins) - a process that takes months or years depending on their age. Their old ones were put in the bin. They left, and died in their new ones. Rinse and repeat.
Added to this is the photo frame in the children’s room. This frame is empty; if it were meant for her old family in New Home, it would still have them in it or not be there at all. It’s empty because the children, the humans who occupied the room before, in the picture died.
They were not just children that were murdered; they were her children. The same way Frisk is.
This isn’t just two exes disagreeing over policy; from her point of view, he killed six of her children (only one way into the underground, and that’s the hole in the ruins; Chara fell there too) and was starting on a seventh. It’s understandable that she can’t forgive him.
But did he kill the other 6 humans?
It seems the other childrens’ items were lost along the way, and scattered over decades, not markers of the childrens’ graves; it’s mentioned that the “faded ribbon” was dropped down a hole. The other items likely met a similar fate; however, all the humans made it Asgore at the end. They did not make it past him.
Why did she take Chara when she left?
She didn’t do it out of spite, but believed that they deserved a proper burial.
Why didn’t she leave the barrier, and kill six people herself?
Toriel never wanted that plan to go through.
Toriel never wanted humans to be killed to break the barrier, even to free her kingdom. She would never have killed anyone to make it happen.
She didn’t call him out because she thought he should have left the barrier to kill more humans, she called him out because he gave everyone false hope and killed people; if four humans died and no others arrived then monsters would still be trapped forever, but the humans would still be dead.
Even when she’s facing down someone who killed her children, she cannot allow someone to take his life. She didn’t just come here to save Frisk; she came to save Asgore. No lives could be taken to exit the barrier. The value of life was absolute.
ASGORE
…and I think we should try to understand Asgore’s plight as well.
He declared war in a moment of devastation.
When Asgore declared war on humanity, he had just lost two children. He watched his son die from the wounds the humans inflicted on him, when he didn’t raise a finger to harm them. Humans who locked them in a hole to rot for thousands of years.
…and then couldn’t take it back.
The kingdom was in despair too; they had lost their prince, they lost their hope for reconciliation with the humans with Chara. He promised his entire kingdom he’d take the humans’ souls and free them.
He saved his kingdom from despair, and by the time his own grief had settled it was too late to take his promise back. He couldn’t take away their hopes and dreams.
He had a duty far beyond six souls of the humans - who doomed them to their situation and murdered his own son after he cared for one of their children - to the thousands of people in his own kingdom. It would have been justified for him to leave the barrier and kill six more humans after he got the first soul, right?
Even after everything the humans did, he still valued their lives.
This is why he didn’t leave the barrier after getting the first soul.
He couldn’t state outright that he didn’t want to kill them to the kingdom, and plunge them back into the horror of being trapped in the dark forever. But he still hoped to never kill another one, even after they kept coming. Even after the sixth. If he could avoid killing even one, he would. To this end, he even instructed his scientists to find any other way to break the barrier, without a single other person having to die.
For the record, here’s how he looks at Frisk when he sees the very last soul he needs to free his people from millennia of imprisonment that they never deserved:
He takes two steps back and stares at Frisk in utter horror. There’s a long silence. He actually panicked when he saw Frisk.
And how many times does he try to to spare your life?
Translation: Please don’t come into the next room.
“If not, I understand. I am not ready either.”
Translation: Please turn back.
And when he finally does fight you…
He holds himself way, way back. He has the ability to one-shot you. He has the potential to not get a scratch on him from Frisk’s tiny LV 1 self. What’s going on here?
Because they are made of magic, monsters’ bodies are attuned to their SOUL.
If a monster doesn’t want to fight, its defenses will weaken.
And the crueler the intentions of our enemies, the more their attacks will hurt us.
This is how much he doesn’t want to fight you. Along with holding back his last attack, so you can only ever die if you’re already at 1 HP.
So why’d he destroy the mercy button?
He doesn’t really want to win either. And in the event he loses, he doesn’t want mercy. If Flowey doesn’t show up…
He dismisses his idea of living with Frisk peacefully as a fantasy, says Frisk and his other human child “have the same look of hope in your eyes”, thinks Frisk could be the Angel of the delta rune prophecy, and believes they can free everyone from outside the barrier. He then takes his own life.
He was not wrong to want to spare the humans.
Despite their souls being necessary to free everyone, It’s important to understand the stakes here. With each successive soul, he is not just looking down at the possibility of taking another child’s life when they show up. If he gets 7, he will no longer have an excuse to stay below ground. He will have to break it. He will then have to destroy the lives of billions to let his people on the surface.
If a human shows up in his castle, it is because they want to leave. The confrontation is then inevitable, because they have to take his soul to do that. He never hunts them down. But if it comes to fight, he has a duty to fight and try to take their soul, for the entire kingdom. Their hopes are riding on him. So he killed them.
…and the barrier really couldn’t have been be broken without 6 of them, and the souls of every monster underground except Napstablook.
I think it’s possible to appreciate the agonizing position Asgore was put in, as a person so gentle he couldn’t even painlessly take the lives of humans, who killed his son and trapped them underground, with the hopes of the entire kingdom, and the destruction of an entire species, resting on his shoulders to do it.
I think it’s also possible to appreciate the position of Toriel, who has lost several of her children to his hands, and can’t forget it or forgive it, but still believes he deserves mercy.
It’s no competition. Please love both of the goat parents. Neither are bad people and they’ve been through too much.
Bonus: Are they ever ever getting back together?
…but he’s still smiling in the end, isn’t he?
