undertale thing i’ve seen a sadly low amount of people mention/analyze when basically everything’s been analyzed to hell and back
chara, as narrator, to frisk: “Despite everything, it’s still you.”
chara, given the chance to talk about themself for once, during snowdin’s ball game: “Try as you might, you continue to be yourself.”
I love how these two statements say so much about who Chara is. They have similar base meanings, but there are so many implications.
This child sees themself as a person who has never been able to do a single thing right in their life. They failed the monsters and their family, every attempt of theirs to be “good” failed, and they weren’t even able to make a pie for their dad without hurting him. This child has an incredible amount of self-loathing and that quote reflects on it. “It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I’ll always be a bad person.”
And then they met Frisk, a fellow human child who managed to push through everything no matter how hard it got. A child who held onto their hope and ideals. "Despite everything, it’s still you.“ Those words hold an admiration that Chara never once directed toward themself, but they are said with sincerity and warmth toward Frisk.
(oh Chara honey, you are so much better than you think you are)
“i’ve seen people have chara saving asriel at the end and that bugs me because it should be the player”
i mean… why not both
weirdly i’ve started seeing a semi-backlash to soft chara (not saying this post is an example of that but it reminded me of it) which is like “don’t forget that chara made mistakes” or “let’s not make chara too soft” or “chara didn’t save everyone alone either”
and it’s like… yeah? people know that. nobody who knows the game well enough to defend chara would somehow miss that, to put it lightly, they messed up pretty bad with their plan to break the barrier. that they were. again putting it lightly, unhappy
but people creating content that puts chara in a different light know that. they’re doing it directly in response to people who portray them as evil, as cruel, as unredeemable. people doing things like, for example, having chara being responsible for saving frisk and reaching out to asriel’s soul… they’re doing it in response to people who scapegoat chara as the mastermind of the no mercy route, as the character who kills and kills and kills everyone in the underground
yeah, in both routes, it’s ultimately your responsibility, because you’re playing a video game and the choices you make are yours. but, if we can say that the player’s actions in no mercy are filtered through chara, we can just as easily say that the player’s actions in the pacifist route are also filtered through chara.
i’ve got… a few thoughts… about a thing… that i’ve been seeing a lot recently. i’ll try to keep this as low-sodium as i can lmao
undertale fandom as a whole is a lot more accepting of the idea of chara as a nuanced character with flaws and virtues like the rest of the game’s cast than it used to be. it helps that over the past six months a lot of evidence has been found supporting chara-as-the-game’s-narrator as a real thing. there are still plenty of folks who disagree, but there’s a lot more breathing room for folks who are into that reading.
(if you hadn’t played undertale or interacted much with the fanbase yet back in september/october, for the record back then us team chara folks legit needed our own term for chara-as-not-innately-evil because the evil chara reading was so overwhelmingly popular and the content we wanted to engage with was so difficult to find. we needed our own term so badly that people took my silly soft grunge/a softer world jokes and made them a thing – that’s where the phrase “soft chara” originated. some fun trivia for the day.)
so, before i get too sidetracked recounting Ye Olde Fandom History – my point is, there are a lot more people willing to believe in chara’s potential for goodness now, and thus willing to believe that the no mercy route isn’t chara’s doing.
this growing acceptance generally makes me very happy, but it also leads to the discussion of “so whose fault IS no mercy then?” and, uh.
spoilers: the correct answer to this question is not and will never be “it’s frisk’s fault.”
“Chara is awake and present in neutral/pacifist as well as NM“ is, from what I can tell at this point, 99% likely to be canon, judging from all the hints and clues people have dug up thus far. It’s hard to think of an alternate explanation for the combined factors of Flowey’s message at the end of True Pacifist about resetting being addressed to the first fallen human (and explicitly NOT to Frisk, who Flowey now recognizes as a separate individual – “Let Frisk live their life”), the SAVE file being in the name of the first fallen human, the “but nobody came“ music on the load/reset screen for a True Reset, and the flashbacks to the first fallen child’s fall and death (sneakily introduced long before the player has the context to know what they’re actually seeing and reading) littered throughout the game.
The remaining 1% in that guesstimate represents “the creator has not explicitly confirmed this, in what TVTropes would call ‘Word of God,’ in totally unambiguous language.” And, welI… I don’t think Toby will ever explicitly confirm it, since it’s clear he was really intent on obfuscating the full extent of the first fallen child’s presence in the game.
“Chara is the narrator“ is more technically arguable, I admit, but it makes sense in light of “Chara is awake and present in all routes“ as an explanation for odd aspects of the narration that can’t just be brushed off as “It’s a quirky rpg with a quirky sense of humor.“
i always see either soft chara who likes knitting and gardening and loves their family or hardcore chara with violent outbursts and manipulation and death. it’s always EITHER OR like why can’t you get both
chara who finds solace in caring for a garden that thrives under their touch, who uses it as proof that they can nurture and not just kill, who has awful compulsive issues and violent meltdowns that often end in broken furniture and tears, who struggles with empathy and cheating and lying but would do anything for the people close to them. that’s the chara i wanna see
There’s an interesting clue to the narrator and their state of mind when you check the bag of dog food in the lab.
You see, unlike the dummy and tree, it’s affected by kill count, not LOVE.
If you kill no one…
The narrator becomes optimistic. They don’t want you to kill. The bag is “half-full”.
If you kill even one person (even a tiny whimsun, who won’t increase your love to even two)
…the narrator becomes pessimistic. The bag is now “half empty”. Their state of mind is directly changed by you killing even one person.
But if you kill Doggo, and your kill count is 21+….
The dog bag becomes funny. This is directly affected by killing Doggo and killing more than 20 people. The narrator doesn’t find his death funny before 20 kills. Something has changed in them.
Now, why is that? What kind of narrator becomes affected by you killing things, to the point where they become pessimistic if you even kill once? What kind of narrator becomes sadistic if you kill so many people?
One that is with you. One that shares your EXP and LOVE. One who becomes distanced as you distance yourself, and violent as you become violent yourself.
One who is looking to you for guidance.
One who only ever refers to themselves as Chara. One who only ever refers to “you” as Frisk.
Chara is the narrator, and their view on the world is directly changed by how much you kill.
If you kill no one, they’re optimistic. They don’t want you to kill.
If you kill even once, they become pessimistic.
If you kill over 20 people then they can be sadistic, even on a non-genocide route.
But they do not find Doggo’s death funny unless you kill more than 20 people (which is more than the equivalent of an entire area’s worth of monsters). They did not find it funny before the kills corrupted them, or they would always find his death funny, even without the kills.
Chara’s Level of Violence and Execution Points start at 1 and 0.
Chara does not find the Amalgamates existence to be “humorous"
Despite what people may interpret this bit of narration when you select “Laugh” to mean.
If you ignore the “it’s not funny” callback to Snowdrake’s dad that the flavor text makes when you select laugh twice: (link) (link) Or if you think that the "laughing to hide your sorrow” explanation is something that has no in game context to support it: look at the truth mimic bug for evidence that it does (link)
Then yes, you would probably read this at face value and walk away thinking Chara legitimately thinks that the Amalgamate’s condition is something hilarious.
But the thing is…they don’t.
The above is what comes up after you Check Reaper Bird when you are able to Spare it. What was once an indecipherable message now is an observation full of hope for the future.
All the Amalgamate encounters start off terrifying and are handled with an uncertain caution by the narration (and rightfully so, these battles are dangerous and ramp up the difficulty in this final segment of the game) and in the case of Lemon Bread maybe even with fear? (Call, Scream, and Cry are all actions that do nor relate to any of the monsters in the amalgam but are made available.)
Snowy’s mom may have the “Laugh” and “Heckle" option but why wouldn’t she, when the previous monster encounter that relates with her monster type (snowdrake, her son) also had those options? Except this time the way to spare her is with the “Joke” action.
You could try to argue that it’s the state of her body that is making Chara laugh but there is another monster who can be seen in a similar state to the Amalgam that Chara shows no signs of enjoyment in.
In Undyne’s neutral death scene she starts to "loose itself" in a near similar fashion to Snowy’s mom, and here is how the narration reacts to it:
It’s a solemn incomplete observation that trails off into one of the few examples of the narration going completely silent. (link)
If Chara is the narrator we can not just cherry pick bits of narration/flavor text and develop their entire psychological profile from there. We have to look at all the narration, cross examining the differences and the context of the situation, in order to form a solid idea as to what kind of person Chara was like, is like, and can be like.
These lines seemed out of place to me ever since I first saw them. They feel like such a non-sequitur compared to what Flowey and Chara’s motives had been up to that point (as I understood them at the time).
Before I really analyzed these characters, I assumed that Flowey and Chara were both relentless killers (based on how Flowey acts when he isn’t Asriel in the pacifist/neutral routes and what we see of Chara on the route leading up to this moment). Why on earth would either of these people want to free the monsters at this point? Wouldn’t they just try to wipe out humanity instead? Undyne and Mettaton say as much themselves when their powered-up forms are fought.
For a while I forgot about this scene, but after reading through a whole bunch of UT analysis posts (and making a few of my own) I now realize its significance: Chara only wanted Asriel to kill six humans and come back home.
Keep in mind what Flowey has already been through by the time he says this: he already knew Chara hated humanity. He’s already tried to help Chara carry out their plan. He already went to the human village. He already heard Chara’s voice tell him to use his full power on the humans. He’s already lost his soul and become jaded by resetting hundreds of times. He’s had years to think things over. He’s already aware of the fact that the Chara standing in front of him has become every bit the power-hungry killer that he has. And yet he still says that their plan from the beginning was to free monsters.
I hear a lot of “Chara was always evil” theories that’ll say something to the effect that Chara was lying to Asriel about collecting six souls to free the monsters and that they really just wanted to kill as many humans as possible, but if that were true then I can’t see how Flowey wouldn’t have figured this out by now. He was there. He may have been naive at the time, but he wasn’t stupid then and he certainly isn’t now.
This isn’t polite little Asriel we’re talking about–Flowey always speaks his mind without a filter and he revels in the atrocities that the player can commit. I can’t see any reason why Flowey would want to assume that Chara had the best of intentions back then when he clearly doesn’t care about any moral concerns now. The only explanation I can think of is that what Flowey is saying is true, or at least he has every reason to think it’s the truth, and he would know better than anyone except Chara themself.
Those who are critical of Chara could argue that Chara’s longterm plan was to free the monsters so that they would wage war with humanity again. I’d say this is technically possible, though the game does say that monsters no longer feared humans during Chara’s lifetime so this plan would only work if humans struck first (which could happen). However, I’d say this theory is mutually exclusive with the more-common theory that Chara knew in advance that they’d share control over Asriel’s body, and here’s why:
If Chara planned from the beginning to wield Asriel’s power and their goal was to wipe out humanity then I couldn’t see them wanting to share the “glory” with anyone else unless if they absolutely had to, especially if they were acting to satisfy their own hatred and violent impulses. A bunch of reluctant and no-longer-fearful monsters wouldn’t be of much use to a Chara who was that powerful and ruthless.
I’m not trying to sweep Chara’s sins under the rug, but rather I’m trying to put them into perspective. In life, Chara was not Flowey in human form. I’d say their offenses were more comparable to Asgore’s: on the one hand Chara’s plan to kill six humans didn’t succeed, but on the other hand they were less reluctant about it than Asgore was. One could also speculate about whether Chara only tried to kill adults and/or people who wronged them vs. Asgore killing predominantly children, but that’s a whole other topic.
Still, I don’t think hatred or revenge were the primary motivators for Chara in that situation, just a bonus, if that. Maybe Chara thought they were being pragmatic. It’s possible that Chara may have even had some reluctance to go through with the plan, but figured “If it’s seven human lives versus the future of monsterkind, then I choose monsters.” It’s still wrong, but it’s not Flowey-levels of wrong.
Another really well thought out analysis, you really make some great points here.
Flowey would definitely be the one who could provide the uncensored truth of those past events since, in the narrative, they are the one who acts as our foil for ever action we take (they share the “it’s only a game” mindset with the player.) Every use and abuse of the Save File and Reset ability is commented on by Flowey who will question our motivations, and makes every decision we make have some form of consequence.
Flowey also seems to be more in tuned with the “truth” than when he is Asriel, not in the “it’s kill or be killed” sense, but in how the meta of his world works.
After all it is Flowey not Asriel who delivers the final speech, addressed to Chara/Named Human, requesting that they “let Frisk go” and to not Reset everything again. (Whereas Asriel talked to Frisk like Chara wasn’t still present in some abstract way, he believed them to be “long gone”)
honestly just really like undertale 