#NarraChara says

[coffinsister]

trick or treat! *holds up a pillowcase*

This is us coming out to greet you and give u lotsa candy !!! =)

[abandoned-quiche]

i just learned RG01 and RG02 have unique check dialogue in the genocide route. what the fuck was that?

[random-autie-fangirl]

*slave to the whims of these tiny numbers."

*that are questioning their desire to fight you will give up."

***technically not from the handbook but I included a note from your friend, and it is an interesting line from the demo

Screenshots of said lines/moments under the cut

[the-n3w3st-g1rl-g1rl]

everyone talks about "despite everything, it's still you" but tbh I really love "still just you, frisk"

idk something about it. I like it a lot.

[ciderjacks]

most fucked up chara moment in pacifist is when you’re looking through their old house and they see their bed and are like “wow comfy imagine dying on this thing hahahahahahahahahahahaha”

[lanternlightss]

i miss chara and frisk so !! much !! wanna go back and replay undertale but i already beat it and i don’t want to take the happy ending away from themmmmmm

[holoska]

with twitter being such a Functioning Hospitable Website nowadays I kinda want to try being more social and rambly here like I used to be, which is something I miss anyway but boy if the bird site finding fun new ways to get worse isn't a good incentive

whether I can actually fight through the anxiety and post here more often is another matter but the idea is nice at least

[gonermaker-goner]

my internal monologue sounds like literally/poorly translated wordplay whenever chara’s name comes into the picture due to my refusal to pronounce it in the intended fashion like “yes i do love chahruh the character”

[under-lore]

The effects of LOVE are quite overstated.

It has been quite frequent to see the concept of LOVE mentioned by Sans in his judgments being interpreted as a force progressively depriving the person possessing it of all empathy or judgement until they are rendered into practical killing machines whilst approaching the cap of 20.

Whilst there are some truths to part of these concepts, interestingly, extrapolating implicit data from the game suggests that the effects LOVE have on a character's personality, whilst existing, are not as significant as they are generally believed to be.

Let's do a proper analysis of what we can say of LOVE's effects based only on the in-game content :

First, aside from Sans' words about it, do we dispose of any clear cut examples of changes relating to LV to analyse ?

That might seem like a silly question, but some of the lines that are often attributed to LV-induced personality changes turn out to not actually be LV-dependent once you check the game's code.

For instance, the narration of the bag of dog food is decided through kill count, not LV, meaning that it possible for instance to get the 'pessimistic line' despite not gaining any LOVE, and thus, this line cannot be attributed to changes related strictly to LV gain and isn't very useful to us here.

Actually, the amount of direct evidence we see of it having any effect at all which we can be certain off is quite small. But such a thing does exist via interactions relating to this dummy :

LV1 :

LV2+ :

LV5+ :

LV 8+ :

The only factor involved in deciding which of these lines will appear after deciding to punch the dummy is LOVE, it is notably distinct from other similar interactions like those mentioned above which tend to be governed by some variation of a kill count or a check regarding wether particular characters were killed.

As similar LV can be reached through killing various amount of monsters or varieties of monsters, unique or not, no equivalence can be built between the required LV for each of those interactions and particular character(s) or amount of monsters required to be killed to reach said LV.

We can thus only take the code of the game at face value and conclude that those changes are strictly caused by changes dependent on the influence of the LV we've gathered in our route so far.

The first pattern that can be established is that the narration in the left column reports Frisk punching the dummy with increasing levels of strength following our command as LV increases.

In the right column, there is a split between the four lines in the middle regarding the way the narration reports it.

The first two lines are narrated in the more common style, notably, explicitly reminding us that the actions or thoughts presented are Frisk's by refering to them as "you" as the subject of the sentence.

Those first two lines describe Frisk going from regret to a form of hesitant apathy regarding the fact that they've just punched a dummy as LV grows.

The latter two lines, however, mark a change in the narration type.

The "you" is dropped, and the thoughts presented are instead presented in a declarative form. This form is often used for first person affirmations, but can also be used outside of it in order to showcase a strong emotionally-driven reaction.

This ambiguity is particularly relevant here, as it blurs the line between wether those thoughts are Frisk's, the narrator's, or both. A detail that gains much importance under the NarraChara theory.

That being said, this nuance leads to a similar conclusion regarding LOVE in either case :

If the thoughts are fully Frisk's, then the last lines have Frisk moving from a hesitant apathy to a confident one before ultimately "feeling good". This would stay in line with the previous pattern.

(Although it is worth nothing that the "feel good" part may be at least partially due to a kind of natural endorphin release in Frisk's body from the physical exercise of "punching at full force", and thus could be only indirectly due to LV.)

If NarraChara is taken into account, then this would mean that this transformation in the tone of the narration in the last lines is due to LV related changes on Chara. And that this ambiguity in the phrasing of who those feelings belong to may indicate that the same observations we've just made on Frisk previously would apply to them similarly.

(Note : Given that the game code and files suggests that Chara and Frisk share their statistics, them both being affected by this same LV count would be coherent.)

In the official japanese version of the game, those lines for the dummy are mostly similar. However, the first two lines of the left column are a bit less distinct from each other, and the narration phrasing ambiguity seems to begin on the 2nd line of the right column rather than the 3rd.

Okay, so, what's wrong about the common perception, then ?

So far, it seems that LV does have some kind of trend that leads to growing apathy regarding the suffering of others and more aggressive actions being taken as a result of identical stimuli as it increases. That doesn't sound too far off ?

Well, sort of, but careless extrapolation made from those basic ideas have led to the emergence of theories and interpretations that treat those effects as being more consistent, generalised, and effective than can hold up to the scrutiny of our known cases through aggressive neutral routes.

Here is what i mean :

In some of the more aggressive variants of the neutral route, it is possible to attain a really high LOVE that comes close to what we see in the genocide route. Comparison between those routes and the genocide one, or sometimes content from these neutral routes themselves, can help show us incoherencies in some of those popular interpretations regarding how much difference LV really makes.

The first one that comes to mind is a popular one among 'Chara Defenders', suggesting that Chara's openly aggressive actions & narration which are specific to the genocide route in particular would really be a result of "corruption" induced by the LV-related changes which we would have forced onto them.

How well does this theory hold up through the aggressive neutral routes ?

Well...

Not very well.

To make a 'short' list :

Chara's "corruption" in genocide would generally begin to show as soon as LV3 at the end of the Ruins, however, they show no particular signs of this "corruption" in any neutral routes despite being able to reach much higher LV's of say, 14 near the end of the game.

It is possible to arrive at the end of the Ruins (or other areas) whilst having the same LV as in genocide during a neutral route, yet Chara shows none of those "corruption" lines in those cases either.

It is possible to finish many areas in the genocide route whilst having a lower/higher LV than usual by only fighting particular monsters who give you more/less EXP than average, yet none of Chara's genocide lines are changed to account for this lower of higher LV.

It is possible to abort the genocide route at many points by sparing a particular monster or failing to reach a kill count. When this happens, Chara's "corruption" lines suddenly disappear although the LV doesn't.

This still happens even if Chara's LV would have remained the same wether the monster was killed or not. Thus the lack of extra LV from the spared monter cannot explain this difference.

The aggressiveness shown by Chara does not seem to correlate with their growth in LV. For instance, they treat Toriel more harshly than Papyrus despite a past connection between Chara and Toriel and a lower LV at the time of that encounter.

Regarding some interpretations of the final genocide scene : Why would Chara oppose us for what we did at this point in time ? Shouldn't they still be "corrupted" ? The files at this stage still continue to list our LV as 20 indicating that they should.

Similarly, regarding some interpretations of the soulless pacifist route : If their previous behavior came from corruption, why would Chara kill at this stage or follow up on their previous plan ? By now our LV has long been reset to 1 and said corruption should no longer be in effect.

For all these reasons, it would not be coherent for the peculiarly aggressive behavior shown by Chara during the genocide route to be strictly caused by LV-induced changes.

To be fair, this time some minimum amount of LV is required to progress through the route and access many of those lines, meaning that a minor impact of said required LV cannot be ruled out, but this does mean nevertheless that the primary reason as to why Chara behaves this way in genocide is not related to their LV.

Actually, once you remove from consideration all those things, what you are left with in the rest of the genocide route is a Chara that hardly seems all that impacted by LV at all despite having a very high one.

In New Home, they still display some hints of emotional reactions in spite of a LV of 19.

And throughout the whole genocide route, NarraChara continues going through the regular encounters with the same jokes or sarcasm-filled comments as they would in any other route (If you take the time to ACT a bit or read the narration before killing that monster.) Once again, even with a LV of say, 15.

That doesn't make the very high LV's seem like they turn one into that much of a mind-numbed killing machine does it ?

Okay... Well, what about Frisk, then ? Our other example ?

There are some more narrations out there who can bring us a bit more information about Frisk :

The Sans fight can only be triggered if all previous checks of the genocide route have all been properly met up to this point. This means that it is not possible to start this fight at any other LV than 19, as the NEO fight is scripted to send you to that LV if the criteria for Sans are met.

Therefore, the narration of the Sans fight talks about a Frisk that necessarily has a very high LV of 19.

And yet...

Even at this point, Frisk does not seem to be immune to thoughts regarding the morality of the actions their body has undertaken. It quite literally appears to weigh on them.

This isn't a one-off case either :

If the genocide route is aborted in Hotland, Mettaton NEO has some special dialogue that goes in the same direction :

he says it quite clearly :

And, the same thing also applies regarding the regular encounters too. The ACTs Frisk can take and their behavior whilst executing them remain unchanged compared to a pacifist route, even during the end-stages of genocide in Hotland.

Of course, it isn't like we could have expected Toby to adapt the ACTs and narration of all encounters to vary depending on LV either, that would have been very tedious to code, but such a pronounced absense of any change is definitely noteworthy.

This all leads us to a few conclusions.

It is correct that LV can affect one's personality to some extent, but :

The effects of LV are not consistent through time & situations, they show up quite sporadically. Most of the time, you could hardly tell the difference between someone with high LV or merely LV1 during an average interaction.

Even having an extremely high LV does not dehumanise you. One can still feel emotions and conserve proper judgment or capacity for self-reflection.

The growth in LV magnifies the impact of its effects when they do manifest, but it does not seem to alter the frequency of such events.

It is not possible for LV to be the determining factor in Chara's behavior during the genocide route.

As Sans originally said : LV is above all a capacity to hurt, not a permanent necessary degradation of perception.

[utdrmv-confession-box]

Transcript: i really have no problem with fanon, except that for alot of people what they think is canon is actually fanon and then its spread as misinformation.

like...its totally a-ok to headcanon sans as remembering resets or hc asriel and flowey as being separate people (not commenting on either of these), even narrachara is just a theory & popular hc, but you shouldn't go telling people they are canon and should clarify their just hc/theories when asked. that and i think most fans SHOULD try to interact with the source material to remind themselves of whats canon & not.

Debating the 'canon' of aus is a bit silly when most exist TO go against canon and explore headcanons and theories/ do their own thing with pre-existing characters but even then i think people should be allowed to complain when popular fanon misrepresents the actual canon of aus. (ex, horror sans eating humans. its fine to hc that but its wrong to lie and claim he does if someone who is unaware asks if thats true. Horrortale itself is founded on headcanons and the fanon idea of a queen undyne being a bad leader, saying its what 'would' happen is untrue as its fanmade. the same idea goes for clover of uty, their A justice soul but they arent the 'canon' justice soul and claiming they are is misinformation.)

Basically a good rule of thumb, is that its fine to prefer certain fanon over canon and its also fine to complain about fanon, you should just be up front about what your headcanoning and whats actually true in canon. not everything HAS to be canon, UTY works the way it does because its NOT canon, and it doesnt NEED to be.

we need to reclaim headcanons as an idea and stop with the whole fanon v canon stuff, just say you headcanon 'this' as 'that' and let people be annoyed when popular headcanons & theories break containment and are treated as canon. (sorry for the long post mod, this isint fanon negative, i just dont like how defensive some people get and how the term fanon is now being used to mean headcanon when they are two different things)

[carlyraejepsans]

Ok genuine question, and if this comes off as rude I’m sorry, but I’ve heard you dislike No chocos interpretation of Chara I I wanted to ask why.

I allways thought there take on Chara’s aid of the player during the genocide run was pretty good.

well from my vague understanding of that blog it was actually run by multiple people (?) so my beef might be with someone specific and I'm just lumping all the mods together under the url.

i think the essay where they try to argue that asriel is being abused by chara is just about the most idiotic, self referential piece of "analysis" I've ever read. like, nearing jaru levels of "you cannot seriously believe what you're saying there HAS to be a catch right". chara... forced asriel to pick the buttercups for them because they would've blistered his hands which is a sign they're physically abusing him? seriously?

anyway, sure, i might even agree with some of their analysis of how NM chara plays out. yknow... if they didn't completely disregard every other run in the game and how it plays into their metanarrative as the pseudo-player character. they've gone on record multiple times saying they don't believe in narrachara unless it's in NM.

now I'm not the strictest narrachara believer myself—in the sense that I don't believe most flavor text is supposed to read as direct quotes from them, more as a nebulous representation of our/their feelings on what's going on. which is fitting! i think direct quotes would be detrimental in a run where our identification with chara isn't questioned (or is even affirmed, like in flowey's plea after the pacifist ending) because it would be needlessly driving a wedge between Us and Them. that... doesn't make it discardable though???

it feels like they got obsessed with their own idea of chara as a vicious "narcissistic" manipulator and cherry picked information from the canon that would make chara look bad while disregarding everything else. which, inevitably, means disregarding the metanarrative. and that's undertale analysis crime numero uno to me baby. tomato tomato etc

[coffinsister]

i ♡ soleil and the gang! i'm super happy to have met y'all!

This is us arriving to your life

We are super happy to have met you too! You said Gang so I decided to reply to this ask myself, Nice to meetcha! - Shift

[undertalethingems]

Hey, what exactly would happen if a Human Soul was shattered like W.D.? Obviously we saw what happened with a monster, Ala Gaster, sans, and Papyrus, but how would that process change for a human going through the same process?

I mean, i can't say 'exactly' because I'm not Toby fox, I can only offer my thoughts XD

But, tbh, I'm not sure if it'd be too different... a force strong enough to rip time and space apart so completely might be even stronger than a human's determination.

Though, I just had the thought that a human might be able to persist more directly despite being shattered, basically haunting the world--and then I realized that's basically the narrachara theory. So uh. Maybe we do know what happens to a human soul shattered across space and time o_o

[boredomincarnate16]

So like, can Chara just read minds in the NarraChara theory? Like, how would they know what Monsters are thinking? Or are they just THAT good at reading people? Then again, Sans can tell how many times you died to him based on your expression, who says others, like Chara, couldn't do something similar?

[lilybug-02]

This is a really oit there concept, but imagine if The Mad King was the narrator for Frisk instead of Chara (assuming NarraChara)? How would they act, what would they say, maybe even the mirror dialogue and the end of Genocide when we come face to face with them.

I think it would be similar...ish? More dark and dry humor. Monster translations would not be provided. All routes would be mainly the same. idk how I would even begin to fit him into that.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

wild how i've seen people say narrachara is a crazy out there theory and then when it’s pointed out the white text narration explicitly states “it's me chara” go “well OBVIOUSLY there are TWO NARRATORS and chara only speaks the lines i think fit them” like. you can dislike the theory that’s fine but “the white text narrator says explicitly that they are chara so they are chara” is objectively a less out there take than “there’s two white text narrators despite there not being a noticeable distinction in the text nor a different speaking style” like i don’t think that means narrachara is objectively canon i think undertale is ambiguous on a lot of things on purpose and that’s good and fine. but like. that doesn’t mean other interpretations are wrong. i don’t think chara not being the narrator is an incorrect opinion to have! i disagree but it’s okay to do that. as long as no one’s being downright disrespectful either to each other or like. saying bigoted shit y’know.