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Papyrus realizes he will likely never be anyone’s best friend, but that’s okay! As long as he’s the best friend he can be, it’s enough!
Papyrus has always had a lot of trouble making friends. He just always seems to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, or mess up, or confuse people, or be too quiet, or be too loud, or too childish, too strange, too desperate, too opinionated, too wishy washy, too this, too that, and the one time he thought he had perfected the formula, the perfect pitch, the perfect blend of traits, the perfect Papyrus for friendship, he found he was too forgettable. Too boring. It was fine! It had just been an experiment, that time! He just didn’t quite figure it out!
He would think the whole process impossible, were it not for the fact that Sans manages just fine… and he doesn’t even try! Sans had said that was the trick, not trying, so Papyrus didn’t try and he still found little success. Sans had also said “just be yourself,” which didn’t make any sense, because he’d tried that the first few times and it hadn’t worked at all!
But he’d also explained that if Papyrus made a friend while he wasn’t being himself, he would risk losing the friend if he ever became himself again. And that made some strange kind of sense. He did like being himself a plurality of the time. It would be a shame to give that up.
So he decided to simply be himself, and try less… and join the Royal Guard, because they were popular, and he would be popular, and then he would have friends almost instantly! Sans had not seemed to have much faith in the plan when he told him it, but it was completely logical.
If you’re feeling lonely or down, or blue… join the armed forces! He thinks he read that in a poster in the dump, once. It’s something different, at least.
Still, Papyrus knows very well how difficult becoming friends is. Who knows how much worse the competition and bloodsport(?) would be to become best friends!? He can’t imagine. He would be happy even being worst friends as long as he could be A friend! Though he would hope his friends would be kind enough to only call him that behind his back. Out of hearing range entirely, if he was lucky!
(And of course, any friends he makes are automatically his best friend. It would always be a tie because simply being his friend would make them the very best!)