Hackedtale AU Guide

Complex Q&A

(Art by me)

Warning: Spoilers Ahead! Turn back if you want anything in the story to be surprising.

I can already tell that book three is going to cause some even bigger questions, like why Sans needs to enter the files, why he needs to enter multiple files, what's up with Gaster, How do all these timelines match up, how does this multiverse theory inside a singular universe thing work, etc.

So, here we are, reading to answer the more complicated, weird questions.

Frisk vs Chara

Ok, I didn't really explain this well in book one, so let me elaborate. At the beginning of Diving into the Code , Sans states that they'll be able to see what kind of day it's going to be. That's because Frisk's (Or Chara's) appearance depends on which route they are doing. In this story, Frisk is a young child of around 6 years old, and Chara is a teenager of around 15 years old. If the player does a true pacifist, the avatar takes on the appearance of Frisk. If they do a true genocide, the avatar takes on the appearance of Chara.

You might be asking what happens when the player does a Neutral route. Basically, if neither the true pacifist nor true genocide requirements are met or are possible, the avatar takes on aspects of both characters for the duration of the neutral route. A constant appearance is Frisk's sweater and Chara's open eyes. The age of this hybrid appearance is reliant on how many monsters they've killed, each age based on one of the nine main neutral endings. The hybrid looks around 7 years old if everyone has been spared, and around 14 if a no mercy neutral route has been completed.

Realities, Barriers, and Time flow

So, as I was writing all this stuff, I realized something. I needed to figure out how there was an actual world on the other side of the Barrier for the monsters to come into. No world was coded in the game beyond a few images and the sunrise scene, but one will be necessary for the beginning of Book 3. Also, a world will be needed on the other side of the screen, for a player to exist, and the underground will have to basically exist simultaneously with these two separate worlds, henceforth referred to as realities.

These realities are extremely similar, following the same flow of time. The biggest difference is the barrier between them and the underground. Our reality, which we'll call Reality 1, is divided from the underground by the screen. We view it as a game. There is no way to travel between the two places. The barrier between the other reality, Reality 2, and the underground the the actual Barrier, as it exists in the game. That barrier can be broken, allowing the monsters to pass into Reality 2. The monsters and Frisk can pass between the underground and Reality 2 whenever they want, but the people of Reality 2 cannot enter the underground, because they aren't connected to the code. Mount Ebott exists in Reality 2, but not in Reality 1. The city outside of Mount Ebott doesn't have a name, so the readers are welcome to name it whatever they want.

Another important fact is that the underground's timeflow doesn't parallel Realities 1 and 2. It has its own flow, based on the events that happen in the game, using the save files and main timeline as references. It's kind of like a bubble, with the barrier creating the bubble itself.

Timelines, Routes, and Save files

Ok, a major part of book three is Sans traveling through the code to reach the save files to retrieve pieces of Frisk's code. You may be wondering how this works. Let me explain it!

First I'm going to explain the first four routes done in this story, mostly because they are the most important ones. They go in this exact order:

True Neutral - The first time the game is run. Frisk doesn't kill anyone, but a Neutral run has to be completed before a Pacifist run can be completed.