W. D. Gaster

W. D. Gaster was the first royal scientist before Alphys, responsible for creating the Core which gave the entire underground of monsters both magical and electrical power.

## Overview

He is an enigmatic figure and is shrouded in mystery, especially his background and his fate. According to his "followers", they say that he "fell into his creation" or that he was "shattered across time and space" due to a fault in an experiment he was working on.

It was later revealed that Gaster had unintentionally awoken an entity within the Void known as the "Shade Lord" as his experimentation with souls created a pulse so powerful it destroyed the machinery and dragged him into the Abyss. Gaster became an unseen but seemingly all-powerful overarching antagonist that overlooks all the timelines running across the streams of the multiverse and, being a scientist, tests his curiosity by meddling with such timelines and observes their branching to create alternate timelines of a particular timeline.

Even though he was operating behind the scenes, his machinations with various timelines and dimensions caught the attention of a few number of individuals, most notably Sans and the Doctor. While unintentional, Gaster's actions were more akin to desperation as he was seeking for a way to put his body together even if it would create many disastrous distortions throughout space and time. However, during the time where he was known, Gaster was widely revered for his impeccable genius. Similar to Sans and Papyrus, his name is attributed to a font, that being Wingdings. This implies that Gaster is somehow related to the brothers, either being their father or third brother.

## Appearance

Whenever Gaster appears, his appearance is always distorted and contorting as if he is struggling to hold his existence to the plane of reality he is set upon, which really is the case.

However, whenever he appears, he is depicted as a black and white figure with a distorted cracked face, a crack running down his left eye and one running up his right eye. He also seems to have large holes punctured through his hands. His right eye appears droopy with the left being wide. Gaster also has an ever-present wide eerie smile. His attire seems to consist of a white turtleneck sweater with a black trench coat.

He was not, however, always like this. Before the accident, Gaster stood several heads taller than Sans, albeit shorter than Papyrus. Like most skeletons, his slender frame stretched thin and lanky, and had a face split with a wide smile. According to Sans, Gaster was the more "good looking" of the three skeletons. It certainly helped that he was a smart dresser. His most striking feature was his grin, for whenever something amused him it twisted like a jester’s.

## Personality

Gaster is an incredibly brilliant scientist with his followers praising his intellect as being "unparalleled". Stanford Pines was highly impressed by W.D. Gaster's intelligence, to the point where he describes him as a mix between Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. His brilliance was even revered by Rick Sanchez himself, remarking that he is "among the smartest beings across time and space".

After he was shattered across the space-time continuum Gaster's mind was also scattered, becoming a shell of his former self. The chaotic separation of his being made him go mad but, in his words, he grew "bored" with it and decided to reassemble himself after which he gained a certain "clarity" over the true function of the multiverse. Gaster started to meddle with several timelines that he takes an interest in and due to his scientific nature and background would treat each event in these timelines as an experiment, always curious and anxious of the results. However, his actions have had adverse and chaotic effects on a few characters with some of these characters becoming overwhelmed with existential dread.

Gaster is someone who would get obsessed over his work causing him to be secluded and slightly anti-social despite his rather vibrant personality, though he prefers to keep to himself when it comes to his work as it provides no distractions. While this may give off the impression that he is cold and distant, Gaster can become friendly and compassionate when one gets to know him better. He is focused, crafty, rather altruistic, along with being strong-minded and has a good heart.

He is also revealed to be rather vibrantly wacky, to the point of borderline madness, similar to Sans and Papyrus, especially when it comes science. His wacky personality added with his insane, yet surprisingly very efficient and useful, inventions led to him being labeled as a mad man. Indeed, while Sans and Papyrus have known him to be loopy at best, his madness was regarded to be deeper than theirs: darker, funnier, and even downright frightening to those who did not know him as well as they did.

Regardless, he speaks in a posh and polite manner, and respects authoritative figures. Gaster is shown to be quite calm and level-headed as well even during battle. According to Sans, Gaster never lets his demeanor nor his composure falter during a fight because he analyzes and solves the outcome of a fight which is why he is not concerned at all. He is also far more serious than Sans when it comes to maintaining the stability of the space-time continuum, so much so that he even lashed out at Sans and Ford for using dangerous methods to bring him back from the Void as it would disrupt the fabric of space and time in the process, although he was eternally grateful to them later on.

## Gallery

* Gaster before the accident by Leaf Art on Tumblr
* Gaster's stable appearance within the Void by Fan-art Emporium on Tumblr
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