An old animation centered around Flowey and Alphys.

I don't usually animate to audios that have been chosen for "animation memes" (which I don't consider this as one lol), but this audio was absolutely too perfect for them. I have a lot of feelings about these two characters, their similarities and their differences, and I feel like not enough people give spotlight to the two of them together. Now that I have my own website, I can finally talk in detail about my thoughts while I was making this, because I thought about it a lot despite the short length of the animation.

This specific video, as hinted at with it's ending (if you can see it), was specifically meant to focus on the theme of guilt that runs between the two of them - not just Alphys and the amalgamates, even though that's the most obvious interpretation.

Both Alphys and Flowey are chronically suicidal, guilt-ridden, heavily traumatized characters. I find it interesting that these two are so similar emotionally, but it manifests in clearly opposite ways. We know very well that Flowey, rather than dealing with his emotions directly (since he "can't feel them") tends to project them onto others very heavily. He doesn't deal with the trauma he has buried deep beneath his surface, but he still sees it in everything, and it colors his world view and perception of others. Specifically, he often sees his own failures in everyone else, and is very harsh towards those that he deems to be acting "incorrectly". Alphys deals with a similar set of emotions, specifically the soul-crushing guilt of failure, but all of her lashing out is almost exclusively self-directed. Unlike Flowey, who is in such denial that he refuses to directly confront anything, resetting and experimenting instead - Alphys is constantly drowning in the self-hatred and guilt of her failed actions. She literally can't run away from the reality of the Amalgamates, and she can't escape the fact that her time is constantly ticking. She keeps all of it inside of her, not letting any of it be known to any of those around her, to the point where it almost kills her.

In fact, one of the most substantial differences in the manifestation of these emotions for both characters, is that Alphys didn't go through with enacting her suicide plans (in most endings, anyway). Flowey, on the other hand, has to kill himself every time he has a reset. Following Chara's example, who he admired so much, Flowey is constantly killing himself. He views suicide as a necessary means to an end. I think that he would consider Alphys a spineless coward for not "having the nerve" to actually "go through with it", and I think he would find her still living despite the massive failures he sees in her to be absolutely perplexing and infuriating. All of this is without even getting into the fact that Alphys is the one who caused Asriel to be reborn as Flowey in the first place...

Both Flowey/Asriel and Alphys have created horrific beasts, and caused plenty of death, all out of a plan that they assumed would be for the good of monsterkind. When Asriel and Chara fused their souls together, it's said that they formed a "horrible beast with unfathomable power." Asriel specifically says that the reason he "ended up a flower" is directly because of his refusal to enact Chara's wish to attack the humans, at the cost of their lives. Of course, that's his internal rationalization; waking up as Flowey after failing their plan is his karmic punishment for failure. However, we know that there's also a more literal reading of how Flowey was created, and that's because of Alphys. Which of these is really the "true" answer?

Basically - to go back to the video - Flowey asks Alphys if she blames herself for what she did, knowing fully well that she does - because he wants her to. He sees her trying to keep the Amalgamates alive, telling their families that they'll come back soon, becoming friends with Undyne and trying to live instead of killing herself, while knowing that she feels like shit the entire time, and it makes absolutely no sense to him why she would never just crack unless he made it happen himself. In his black and white worldview, the world can't make any sense if she doesn't feel absolutely horrible for it, so how could she possibly act like she doesn't? He wants her to feel terrible for what she did, because he thinks that she should - because deep down, he feels terrible for his own "accident", too. If Alphys is able to live despite what she did, then there's a chance he could too - and that's too much for him. He feels like she should feel terrible for everything - the Amalgamates, backing out of all of her suicide plans, and of course, for damning him to a second life of immortal soullessness, without Chara.

I always felt like the first person Flowey would have ended up killing would either be Toriel or Alphys. What do you think?