Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28501958-20170216213142

I've noticed a few battles involving Undertale combatants where the Undertale combatant gets trounced, and the reasoning given is something like this:

"Character X has no soul.

Undertale Monsters attack the soul.

Since Character X doesn't have a soul, Undertale Monsters can't posssibly hurt Character X."

This is starting to irritate me, so I feel the need to clear up something about the nature of Undertale attacks; while attacks from Papyrus, Sans, Undyne and the rest of the monster damage the soul, they are obviously physically tangible as well. Examples by the numbers...

1. Papyrus had to raise the sink in his kitchen in order to make room for the bones he uses to attack with. We also see a box of bones in his bedroom which he explicitly states are the same bones he used to attack you with during the fight. Clearly, the bones must be solid in order to take up space, meaning his bone attacks must be physically tangible. The same should go for Sans.

2. Undyne uses her spears to shatter a bridge, and later a table. Unless you're claiming that the bridge and the table also have souls, it's pretty obvious that her attacks can do physical damage as well as damage to the soul.

3. Mettaton at once point attempts to extract your soul via chainsaw. Not a special, intangible, soul-harming chainsaw. An ordinary chainsaw. He later attacks you with jets of flame that he explicitly says will incinerate your body. Yes, both of these things are parts of a ruse, but it's still pretty clear that Mettaton is capable of harming you physically with either of these things.

4. Toriel clearly harms Flowey and sends him flying with a blast of fire magic. Flowey is explicitly stated in Dr. Alphys' logs to have no soul, and says the same himself near the beginning of the Photoshop Flowey fight. Pretty obvious that having no soul didn't stop him from being harmed by Toriel.

It's kind of baffling to see people claim that Sans or Undyne would be unable to harm someone without a soul when there is SO much canon evidence on the contrary. I really hope we can lay this misconception to rest. 