I still keep a save right before the Undyne the Undying fight. I like to imagine it as her and the kid, in a little hollowed out stone arena somewhere in the middle of a forest on the surface, somewhere they keep secret.

And then the fireworks fly.

Not really to get better, even. Just to have the joy of sparring, and to become better friends by spending an evening throwing lasers at each other.

Because hoooooly fuck, that fight is the good shit and I will always love replaying it. The music, the patterns, the way the patterns sync to the way the music evolves... It's incredible.

@Dauntless sort of you imagine Dax duking it out with her Klingon friends perhaps? XD I'm not a fighter, but someone like Undyne makes me see the nobility in it that gets smothered by so much goddamn machismo.

@kara_dreamer I see it almost like knitting. It's just something she likes doing, throwing spears everywhere, suplexing boulders just because she can. Having a moving target to practice against just makes it pleasantly challenging.

Am I fully out of "reading the original material" and into "self-indulgent projection?" ...Yeah, probably. And I don't regret a damn thing.

@Dauntless hah! I see it as building a personal mythology rather. Of course these figures have become much larger than their originals, for they are _that_ powerful--almost archetypal in their force, they accumulate meaning with time rather than fading. Undyne is as real and vital a figure to me as Artemis or Inanna--more vital, even, for she is real to me in a way that those distant entities are not.