thinking about papyrus and sans in undertale and how they’re a really fun and interesting take on a sibling pair.
sans is the lazy one who pesters the other with behavior that reads like an annoying grade schooler with the wit and yes-and ability of a professional stand-up comic, while papyrus is the driven and focused one who pushes his brother to work harder…
but papyrus is also incredibly naive and ignorant and doesn’t really understand what his aspirations mean, and everyone around him kind of treats him like a child they have to entertain.
meanwhile, sans ultimately has still that deep-rooted older brother protective instinct driven into him like a nail, and cares deeply about fulfilling it. sans mostly takes on the approach of looking out for papyrus from the sidelines and trying to make things work out for him, in ways papyrus probably doesn’t even properly understand. and if something does happen to papyrus, he does NOT take it well.
ultimately they do map onto “the mature one and the childish one” but it’s not as simple as just that. sans is childish with his attitude, but papyrus is childish with his beliefs. and it’s not just the older sibling protecting the other—they’re both protective and caring of each other in their own ways and they’re both on equal footing somewhat, and the only thing stopping that is nobody really taking papyrus seriously (which is not for lack of effort, he does everything he knows to do to be as respectable as he can possibly be)
