#flavor-text-chara

[staydetermined]

cute lil drawing

fnaf security guard chara because why not shrug

buttons part 2 might take a bit because i have to learn a new character but i hope that's okay!

[for-you-john]

recently rewatched bettina levy's determination dub and i really liked their design and personality

tried capturing it in these drawings

@flavor-text-chara read the aforementioned blog that unfortunately ended too early, its a great read in my opinion - one of the best in the ut fandom which speaks a lot (still my opinion)

[grumpyghostdoodles]

[*You equipped the Faded Ribbon.]

[ask-duotale-b2fc]

THE BIG CAMEO PAGE AHHH

This bad boy took a hot minute. Was fun tho. There's more coming too!

𖤐~~~~~~𖤐~~~~~~𖤐

Prologue Start | Chapter 2 Start | Previous Page | Next Page

𖤐~~~~~~𖤐~~~~~~𖤐

Want to join a discord server for fans of Undertale and Deltarune? Click below now! It is a safe space for all. Come share your AU if you have one. Make friends! Be yourself!

If you enjoy the art, feel free to drop a like, reblog, or follow! I'm glad you enjoy the content enough to consider any of the options! xD If you'd like to support via Kofi or Commissions, all info can be found in the link below, along with all current ways to contact me with a gaurenteed response! It will also link you to all of my other (active) Undertale related profiles, SFW and NSFW.

𖤐~~~~~~𖤐~~~~~~𖤐

✨️Credits✨️

I bet you guys forgot I even wanted to do Cameos, huh?

In order, starting from top left!

(Assorted) Underplayers @underplayercomic (©️OG Url Owner: Yunan)

Glitchtale Asriel @camilaart

Blackberry & Luci @/us lmao

Fry, Bender, Leela ©️Futurama

Chara & Frisk @flavor-text-chara

Slumbertale!Chara & Azzy @rainingskeletons

AFAC Chara and Frisk @askfriskandcompany

Dreamtale(no not the one with the sans, the first one) Frisk @officialdreamtaleau-blog

Guardedtale Frisk and Chara @skeletal-entity (they said this was their blog but it doesn't link :'l)

Blackberry Sans (Swapfell) @interstellar-dweeb

Strawberry Sans @angeutblogo

[carlyraejepsans]

Could you maybe eloberate on the Chara dissociation?

*jazz hands vaguely towards the entirety of the genocide route*

[jaydove-writes]

Just followed everyone who liked a post about the Determination comic, so if you're wondering why a random brony followed you out of nowhere, that's why. I hope someone out there has the determination to bring that comic back from the dead.

@bettinalevyisdetermined thank you for helping me discover that comic

@flavor-text-chara thank you for creating it

I'm no artist and my partner doesn't have Tumblr, so someone else will have to continue this comic. I hope to see the end some day. Reblog to increase this post's reach.

[nulltune]

❛   the alarm on the fire hydrant has a charm that just makes you want to press it.  but doing that would cause an uproar,  so i'll refrain.   ❜

[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

[evilkitten3]

btw i decided to restart my undertale replay bc i wanted to play through in japanese (both the practice and out of curiosity) and. i gotta say the way they handled the fonts for sans and papyrus was not what i was expecting

[snowwdecahedron]

Does Chara Dreemurr is gay?

absolutely next question.

(actual headcanon: they were like eleven when they died and hadn’t totally figured it out yet, but have a strong hatred for romance in media / people kissing on tv / etc. and oh boy did asriel make fun of them for this one. they’d read together and he’d be like AWHHH THEYRE KISSING LOOK and they’d just roll their eyes like “asriel that is disgusting don’t make me look at that ever again.” if they’d grown up they’d have figured out they were aroace for sure. to me. to me)

[staydetermined]

some determination redraws with a style i've been studying.

[katzkinder]

Sensei took some photos from inside the collab cafe and teased fans with advice to keep their eyes peeled for a special kitty Kuro they’d drawn on one of the posters

Luckily for us overseas fans, Animate cafe Ikebukuro was kind enough to share a picture of the poster Strike doodled on when they were allowed to visit the cafe a day early!

The text next to Kuro reads “It’s delicious, meow~~~”

Sensei also uploaded a separate drawing of Kuro enjoying his own Chara Sando from the cafe, remarking that the cream filling had a surprisingly tasty cola flavor.

The text on the right says “Cola flavored whipped cream is delicious meow~~~”

The text on the left says “Kuro Sandwich”

[under-lore]

Toby Fox once made a post saying that he didn't want to sell merch of Chara because it would trivialize what they meant in game and the message they carry, do you have any idea what he could have meant by this?

Well, obviously this topic is inherently speculative so take it with a grain of salt, but there still exists some room to try and analyse it nonetheless.

Here is the post in question :

First, he uses "i" in the first sentence, and then "Because".

This immediately tells us that Toby Fox personally is the one that is opposing merchandise of Chara being made, and that all the things which will come afterwards are about what he was intending to do with them as a character in Undertale and why that makes the idea of Chara merch bothersome to him.

This isn't the only time Toby has shown to be picky about Chara-related content. For example, he has only openly promoted fan content containing Chara once since the game was released (and they were not the main focus of it) whilst the rest of the cast is seen quite often.

In general, Toby is quite dodgy when it comes to the first fallen human as a character. Sometimes even acting as if they didn't exist.

But as the mail also repeats, that isn't because Toby doesn't care about Chara, but rather because he does care about their character. Like how Toby actually went ahead and personally intervened to change Chara's Tarot card (Along with removing the Gaster one entirely), even if those weren't even official merch anyways. He does care about how they're being portrayed at least.

Okay, so next is our main puzzle piece.

The reason why he doesn't want Chara merch is because Toby considers that merchandise of Chara would have to portray them in a way that does not allow to properly represent what Chara stands for in-game, and thus fail to convey the message that they were intended to carry.

To rephrase this, he considers that if he were to make Chara merch, then "merch Chara" would be incapable of portraying correctly what he actually intended "in-game Chara" to be, and thus miss out on a significant portion of their character & what could be taken from it.

So he would rather not have merch at all rather than to have merch that misses the point of who "in-game" Chara was intended to be.

Since the only direct hint we have about this is that what Toby meant couldn't have been portrayed with merch properly, then the only way to obtain more insight into what he meant exactly is to go about it the other way and to ask which pieces of Chara's character merch could have portrayed and work backwards.

A prime example of what could have been done for Chara merch would be content similar to the Tarot card mentioned earlier.

As that card shows, it is far from difficult to make designs that capture most of the concepts and themes that are explicit-genocide-route-dialogue-specific & are said by or associated to the character.

To cite only a few that can be seen from this card, life & death & killing, power, demonic parallels, the number 9, the absolute, statistics, consequences, souls, knives, nothingness,...

(Side note : The person who made the Tarot card actually did not even know about the name "Chara" at the time, they weren't really a fan of the game and mostly went along with their first impression of the genocide route & the fanon of the time.)

Aside from perhaps their relationship with the player, there is frankly nothing about the direct Chara appearance at the end of genocide & the heavily Chara influenced flavor text of the end of the route that cannot be easily shown through merch. (Just look at all the fan content over the years)

And considering the way Toby acts merch-wise with Frisk and with Kris respectively, we can be pretty confident that their relationship with the player is not the reason that Chara merch is being blocked either.

So with that, we can be pretty much sure that what he meant wasn't about the explicit-genocide-route-only parts of in-game Chara.

Aside from the genocide route, the only other direct appearances of Chara are that of pre-death Chara. Between their fall into the underground and their death after the failure of the plan.

While we don't have clear cut examples like the Tarot card here, we do still run into the same problems.

The game implies a lot of things about pre-death Chara in many different ways. But all of those details or personality traits are either not much of a problem to portray or are also shared with other characters who do have merch made of them, meaning they can't be it either. (Its usually Undyne)

Not to mention that, when it comes to pre-death Chara, the game itself does show us some sepia artworks of Chara & The Dreemurrs. Like this one for example :

If properly representing those character traits of pre-death Chara was truly what this was all about, then why not simply make merch out of a colored version of that image if nothing else ?

It's in the game, right ? So surely it can't possibly be misrepresenting the game...

A trivialisation means to downplay something or to reduce it to something simpler.

If both pre-death Chara and genocide route-Chara & what the game shows about them could be represented with merch like any other character, but that Toby considers that doing so would still be missing out on an important part of Chara's character & their message, then the only conclusion would seem to be that Toby is not refering to any of the direct appearances of Chara in the game at all, but rather to another seemingly very important side of Chara that isn't shown directly in-game, and couldn't be through merch either.

While those could still be accurate in theory by themselves, making merch of Chara like this sepia art or the Tarot card would still be trivializing them in Toby's mind in the sense that it would be limiting Chara to only those things, and thus exclude that core part of their character from "merch Chara". Something that Toby refuses to do.

So our situation would seem to be : There is more to Chara than just what we are told about pre-death Chara and genocide route Chara. However, this part of Chara's character cannot be properly shown with merch yet is too important to ignore in Toby's mind.

There is one last thing we can say about what this part might be, though.

Toby seems quite insistant on the fact that this particular part of them was absolutely key to understanding what was Chara's role as a character in the game, and to understanding the message that he was trying to convey through this character.

A character's role & message can be conveyed through their story, through their actions, and through their mentality.

As we've seen earlier that this part of Chara was not an explicit appearance, the "actions" part is either minor enough to miss, or absent.

So it would seem we can be somewhat confident that this piece of Chara's character that Toby is worried about also either adds more implicit parts to Chara's story or gives important insight on their mentality (or both).

That would make Toby's core reason for not wanting to make merch of Chara be less about Chara's character itself and more about what the player is to understand from the way he constructed their character, which would match up with his words about it being "something that cannot be bought in a store", too.

Anddd... As far as purely impartial analysis goes, i think that's pretty much all that you can deduce, unless i've forgotten about something.

If you want my personal opinion on it, though, i would have to say that using NarraChara theory would be a really elegant way to fill up all those blanks.

Considering that the theory, if true, would constitute 90% of Chara's character & be absolutely crucial to understanding the character's mentality and the way they think or behave in different situations or routes, that would certainly make it key to understanding Toby's intent with the character relative to their message or what they would stand for.

I can also hardly see plausible alternatives. Considering that pre-fall Chara and post-game Chara are pretty dry wells in that regard and genocide Chara's words about when they were "brought back to life", the only moments left timeline-wise for this key part of Chara's character to happen would be during neutral/pacifist routes or during the part of the genocide route that weren't already brought up earlier. That would make it seem like a pretty natural answer.

But more importantly, anything to do with the NarraChara part of their character (if the theory was intended) literally couldn't be properly represented through merch.

Because, unlike the common fanon portrayal of it which exists for that same reason, NarraChara according to in-game flavor text wouldn't be a ghostly figure floating around Frisk, but rather a foreign entity sharing their body and their mind. Which is a crucial part to both how NarraChara would work in-world and to the morality-wise implications of it.

Of course, that didn't prevent some fans from sweeping that under the rug anyways, even though it misses one of the most important points of the character they're trying to represent.

That might just be why Toby would rather just not.

How would you make merch of that ? You would just be making merch of Frisk instead... Let alone portraying correctly such a complex character. It just wouldn't work. This is a pretty common problem for media with bodysharing characters, those mechanics and all the implications that follow genuinely just cannot be "sold in stores."

They are a purely psychological experience.

[aus-from-undertale]

Chara centric aus!

Swapfell- Chara is surviving capitalism (aren't we all)

The caretaker of ruins- Chara is alive and hates humans more than ever!

Underphase- Chara is a smartass

Flavor text chara- Chara's point of view of Frisk's journey

Underline- so... What up with chara? And all ut secrets?

Underswap- Chara has the Frisk role, you know the deal

Underbrushed- Chara is Rapunzel

Drunk!Chara- Chara got some drinking problems

Burstale- Chara doing her 100th genocide run

Chocoblook- Chara is a ghost!

Frisk plus Chara - Chara is alive... How?

Stand in- Chara is taking over Frisk body for 6 years after they went to the surface (Frans warning)

Endertale- Chara wants to finish the genocide run, but frisk won't let them :/

Systematic restore- Frisk fell before the tragedy

Fellswap- Chara is surviving dictatorship

Magustale- Chara is an experiment

Charatale- Chara is everything and everything is chara

Soulwarstale-Chara will do anything to save Frisk

Ragnartale- Chara is a runaway princess

Tantamount (reboot) - Chara is trying to survive a world where everything is shifted and strange

Reversed context- Chara is a meathead

The overseer- Chara has been having some weird dreams

Ask fallen royalty- Chara is alive and things aren't fine

Ghost switch- Chara is flowey

The Chara timeline- Deltarune au where Chara gives a crash course about soul possession to kris

Skele!Chara - Chara is a skeleton

Eepytale- Chara is happy

[utdrmv-confession-box]

Transcript: I didnt like how so many ppl treated UT Yellow like direct canon. I've people get hate or made fun of if they didnt portray The Justice & Integrity souls how they were portrayed in UT Yellow.

Really dont like that its caused canon Integrity to be viewed like like some monster killing maniac based off their tutu being dusty in 1 line of flavor text. Hey maybe thats what the text is implying but it just feels like the Chara mischaracterization all over again.

[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