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Description
Someone on tumblr requested a picture of Papyrus as a flower. It lead to this AU...
[Who is Echo ][What About Sans ][What About Flowey ][FAQ ]

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Is Echo A Good Life Coach?

Echo Is A Great Life Coach!!!
Hahaha. I’m kidding. He’s awful.
If you had to pick a flower for a life coach… your best bet would be to get a completely inanimate flower that does not speak and is not determined in any capacity. But if you need that, Echo is probably the safer bet.
He’s not really like Flowey, especially not FINAGLC Flowey. Their circumstances and experiences and core personalities are different enough, and Echo does not, at least to his knowledge, have reset abilities, so that even if he doesn’t recognize love or compassion or hope anymore, he still recognizes consequences, and while he can be a bit impulsive, he can plan things out quite a bit if he needs to. Not being able to reset has stopped him from going down a lot of dangerous paths that he might have otherwise taken, knowing there would be no consequences. As a result, the foundations of his old morality are all still there, just warped and unsteady and occasionally buried.
He still doesn’t believe in kill or be killed, or that killing is ever necessary. He’s also not generally malicious. After all, he wants to be your friend! And if you have a goal, he’ll try to help you with it, whatever it is! He strives to be comforting and pleasant!
That doesn’t mean he’s a good sidekick, though.
His primary goal is to be liked and admired by lots of people. If it seems like that goal could be better fulfilled by betraying you, he’ll do it. He wants to be your friend, genuinely, but he doesn’t have much concept of that anymore. He can’t tell if someone truly loves and cares about him, and he himself can’t feel true friendship and love in return. As a result, his view of friendship has warped significantly. He behaves as if most people are just faking it like he is. If he can trade in one friend and get more friends, that’s just basic math; of course he’s going to do that. Everyone he meets is a tool for acquiring friendship.
Loyalty is something he remembers, he just doesn’t really get itanymore. You could probably convince him with promises and reassurances, but he’s generally going to be a liability in that department.
He’s also not against advising you to do dangerous or harmful activities if it furthers his goals or yours. Jump in that spike pit! Just walk through the lasers, it’s quicker. Conveyor belts are the dumbest thing he’s ever witnessed, there has to be a shortcut through that door that says “DANGEROUS: KEEP OUT.” Are you cold? Why? You have skin. That’s like an extra set of clothing underneath your clothing. You shouldn’t need even more clothes.
The transition from skeleton to flower has not done good things for his already-shaky understanding or respect for safety, and he’s a little pushier and less respectful of your choices or agency. The speech barrier also has not helped his bluntness at all. Still, he doesn’t really use threats or violence to get his way. Manipulation is another story, but his language skills aren’t really developed enough for that particular skill to be dangerous. Yet. He’s pretty clever, and you can get pretty far repeating someone else’s words back to them.
Additionally, Echo has some FINAGLC-esque tendencies in his desire to shape you into a cool, popular hero that will be admired by all, if he ends up liking you enough. In this aspect, though, it’s mostly completely benign and him trying to have fun with you, and maybe even connect with you for real (however effective that will actually be). He’ll show you how to pose and monologue and catch a breeze in your cape (He’ll find you a cape! Don’t worry!), and do cool flips and things that people will really like and be impressed by! Can you do magic? Maybe he can talk you through some neat tricks! Okay maybe he doesn’t know the words for that, but that’s okay. He can come up with something else. You’re going to look so cool!!!
So basically, Echo is not a good life coach, and probably not a great friend, either, but he really does want to be! He wants to be a good person!
He’s just kind of… forgotten how…

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FAQ (kinda):
Q - [referring to this ficlet ]“This wasn’t a very popular part of Waterfall. A shame, really. There had been a cave-in nearby. Someone died. Now no one wanted to go there. It was probably the dead guy’s fault.” IS THE DEAD GUY REFERRING TO PAPYRUS????
A -

Q- What if Sans goes back to the spot Papyrus died on the anniversary of his death? Would he meet Echo?
A - Probably not.

Q - Wait does this picture mean Pap goes back to living with Sans?
A - eh, it was more like he finally figured out how to burrow places and could finally go check on the house

Q - So he remembers who he used to be sorta?
A - Yeah, he’s got some dissociation going on, but he knows he used to be Papyrus and he knows Sans is his brother and Undyne was his friend, but he’s in serious denial about the lack of soul and he’d rather pretend he has one instead of facing the facts that he cant love them anymore. He’s also extremely suggestible, if you tell him something about his old self that isn’t true, he’ll probably believe you and act like it is. He still remembers being himself and certain aspects of himself, though, like wanting to be popular, or refusing to kill, but smaller things like his opinions on hobbies or music or food are a lot less solid. Words aren’t the only things he’ll parrot back.

Q - If someone repeated papyrus’ name back to the echo flower, would he start calling himself papyrus again?
A - Probably! It depends on how much time has passed and how confused he’s gotten about himself. Early on definitely, but later he might just stick with echo because it’s less confusing for him. He only picked “Echo” because he couldn’t say “Papyrus.” He’s not intentionally distancing himself from who he was, just incidentally. He liked being papyrus overall, and he’s in denial abut being different. It’s not a Flowey/Asriel situation. He sees himself as the same person.

Q - Save this flower.
A - I want him to have a happy ending too!

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Could Echo become the next Flowey and go on genocide runs etc after realizing he's unable to love?

The short answer, it doesn’t really fit into any of the ideas I have/had for Echo very well, so I don’t have any plans for that. But it’s not really out of the question.
The long answer is that the setting I’ve pretty much settled on doesn’t really rule it out. There is, when Echo first wakes up, no known anomaly, and as Asriel is alive, it’s not going to be Flowey. Hemay be determined enough to be the anomaly, but as far as the “canon” backstory of that idea goes, he’s never triggered anything and it’s never occurred to him to try, because he has no basis to believe that it’s possible.
Echo is deep into denial about the lack of feeling love and compassion, unlike Flowey who was desperately and wildly experimenting to try to feel something genuine and real again, which lead him to far greater extremes than Echo’s strategy of hide away and pretend everything is okay and business as usual. As a result, Echo’s playing it safe when it comes to himself and what he sees and does. He’s not going to let himself die, or help it along. He’s already died once! No thanks! Not again!!
I really did consider making him Flowey2.0, but I liked some other ideas for him instead, so instead the setting is, at least at the start, reset free, and with Echo’s morality warped but still present, and Sans unaware that any version of his brother lives on.

Description
Someone on tumblr requested a picture of Papyrus as a flower. It lead to this AU...
[Who is Echo ][What About Sans ][What About Flowey ][FAQ ]

------------
Is Echo A Good Life Coach?

Echo Is A Great Life Coach!!!
Hahaha. I’m kidding. He’s awful.
If you had to pick a flower for a life coach… your best bet would be to get a completely inanimate flower that does not speak and is not determined in any capacity. But if you need that, Echo is probably the safer bet.
He’s not really like Flowey, especially not FINAGLC Flowey. Their circumstances and experiences and core personalities are different enough, and Echo does not, at least to his knowledge, have reset abilities, so that even if he doesn’t recognize love or compassion or hope anymore, he still recognizes consequences, and while he can be a bit impulsive, he can plan things out quite a bit if he needs to. Not being able to reset has stopped him from going down a lot of dangerous paths that he might have otherwise taken, knowing there would be no consequences. As a result, the foundations of his old morality are all still there, just warped and unsteady and occasionally buried.
He still doesn’t believe in kill or be killed, or that killing is ever necessary. He’s also not generally malicious. After all, he wants to be your friend! And if you have a goal, he’ll try to help you with it, whatever it is! He strives to be comforting and pleasant!
That doesn’t mean he’s a good sidekick, though.
His primary goal is to be liked and admired by lots of people. If it seems like that goal could be better fulfilled by betraying you, he’ll do it. He wants to be your friend, genuinely, but he doesn’t have much concept of that anymore. He can’t tell if someone truly loves and cares about him, and he himself can’t feel true friendship and love in return. As a result, his view of friendship has warped significantly. He behaves as if most people are just faking it like he is. If he can trade in one friend and get more friends, that’s just basic math; of course he’s going to do that. Everyone he meets is a tool for acquiring friendship.
Loyalty is something he remembers, he just doesn’t really get itanymore. You could probably convince him with promises and reassurances, but he’s generally going to be a liability in that department.
He’s also not against advising you to do dangerous or harmful activities if it furthers his goals or yours. Jump in that spike pit! Just walk through the lasers, it’s quicker. Conveyor belts are the dumbest thing he’s ever witnessed, there has to be a shortcut through that door that says “DANGEROUS: KEEP OUT.” Are you cold? Why? You have skin. That’s like an extra set of clothing underneath your clothing. You shouldn’t need even more clothes.
The transition from skeleton to flower has not done good things for his already-shaky understanding or respect for safety, and he’s a little pushier and less respectful of your choices or agency. The speech barrier also has not helped his bluntness at all. Still, he doesn’t really use threats or violence to get his way. Manipulation is another story, but his language skills aren’t really developed enough for that particular skill to be dangerous. Yet. He’s pretty clever, and you can get pretty far repeating someone else’s words back to them.
Additionally, Echo has some FINAGLC-esque tendencies in his desire to shape you into a cool, popular hero that will be admired by all, if he ends up liking you enough. In this aspect, though, it’s mostly completely benign and him trying to have fun with you, and maybe even connect with you for real (however effective that will actually be). He’ll show you how to pose and monologue and catch a breeze in your cape (He’ll find you a cape! Don’t worry!), and do cool flips and things that people will really like and be impressed by! Can you do magic? Maybe he can talk you through some neat tricks! Okay maybe he doesn’t know the words for that, but that’s okay. He can come up with something else. You’re going to look so cool!!!
So basically, Echo is not a good life coach, and probably not a great friend, either, but he really does want to be! He wants to be a good person!
He’s just kind of… forgotten how…

-------------

FAQ (kinda):
Q - [referring to this ficlet ]“This wasn’t a very popular part of Waterfall. A shame, really. There had been a cave-in nearby. Someone died. Now no one wanted to go there. It was probably the dead guy’s fault.” IS THE DEAD GUY REFERRING TO PAPYRUS????
A -

Q- What if Sans goes back to the spot Papyrus died on the anniversary of his death? Would he meet Echo?
A - Probably not.

Q - Wait does this picture mean Pap goes back to living with Sans?
A - eh, it was more like he finally figured out how to burrow places and could finally go check on the house

Q - So he remembers who he used to be sorta?
A - Yeah, he’s got some dissociation going on, but he knows he used to be Papyrus and he knows Sans is his brother and Undyne was his friend, but he’s in serious denial about the lack of soul and he’d rather pretend he has one instead of facing the facts that he cant love them anymore. He’s also extremely suggestible, if you tell him something about his old self that isn’t true, he’ll probably believe you and act like it is. He still remembers being himself and certain aspects of himself, though, like wanting to be popular, or refusing to kill, but smaller things like his opinions on hobbies or music or food are a lot less solid. Words aren’t the only things he’ll parrot back.

Q - If someone repeated papyrus’ name back to the echo flower, would he start calling himself papyrus again?
A - Probably! It depends on how much time has passed and how confused he’s gotten about himself. Early on definitely, but later he might just stick with echo because it’s less confusing for him. He only picked “Echo” because he couldn’t say “Papyrus.” He’s not intentionally distancing himself from who he was, just incidentally. He liked being papyrus overall, and he’s in denial abut being different. It’s not a Flowey/Asriel situation. He sees himself as the same person.

Q - Save this flower.
A - I want him to have a happy ending too!

-------------------------------------------------

Could Echo become the next Flowey and go on genocide runs etc after realizing he's unable to love?

The short answer, it doesn’t really fit into any of the ideas I have/had for Echo very well, so I don’t have any plans for that. But it’s not really out of the question.
The long answer is that the setting I’ve pretty much settled on doesn’t really rule it out. There is, when Echo first wakes up, no known anomaly, and as Asriel is alive, it’s not going to be Flowey. Hemay be determined enough to be the anomaly, but as far as the “canon” backstory of that idea goes, he’s never triggered anything and it’s never occurred to him to try, because he has no basis to believe that it’s possible.
Echo is deep into denial about the lack of feeling love and compassion, unlike Flowey who was desperately and wildly experimenting to try to feel something genuine and real again, which lead him to far greater extremes than Echo’s strategy of hide away and pretend everything is okay and business as usual. As a result, Echo’s playing it safe when it comes to himself and what he sees and does. He’s not going to let himself die, or help it along. He’s already died once! No thanks! Not again!!
I really did consider making him Flowey2.0, but I liked some other ideas for him instead, so instead the setting is, at least at the start, reset free, and with Echo’s morality warped but still present, and Sans unaware that any version of his brother lives on.