#i love you frisk you are my favourite narrative device

[carlyraejepsans]

Oh! What are your headcanons for frisk? I know we don't know much about them in canon so it's hard to extrapolate but I'm still curious

oh sure! mind, these are all personal headcanon, as there isn't all that much canon info i can go off of, HAHAHA

obviously I don't think frisk had a happy home life, just like chara. but while chara's abuse was more active, i think frisk's abuse came from neglect rather than outright hostility or violence from the people around them. maybe they were a single, unwanted child. maybe they were among the last of many, many siblings. too many to be notable... or missed. so they left.

by the time the game starts, they've already been living on the streets (of the city that became of the village of the humans that chara was born in) for a few years. they get by with their wits. i think they're VERY clever, unnaturally so for their age, and judging from their ability to talk/charm themself into and out of anything in the game, they probably refined that skill for survival (you make yourself liked enough, people are quicker to show you kindness. leftover food, a dry shop window to sleep in at night, some used clothes).

undertale itself raises the question of why frisk climbed Mt Ebott. i like the idea that it was a force outside of themself. like a sudden, SOUL deep tension that would only release if they followed the call. an intrinsic certainty that, somewhere, somehow, someone really needed them. maybe it was fate. maybe it wasn't. maybe they were tied to chara's spirit long before they ever fell (by blood, as a long descendant? by magic? both?) and they were reacting to flowey calling out for them. point is, they felt the instinct, and they followed it.

because here's the thing: in my take on this, frisk desperately wants to be needed. that's what ties them so closely to chara. going with the more literal interpretation of them as a ghost, chara still has unfinished business in the underground. they haunt their former home, much like flowey did, and they NEED to see more of it, they just can't let it go. and they can't do it without frisk. they need them. so frisk goes along, because FINALLY, they're needed. that's why they reset at the end and try again, that's why they keep returning to the underground. but of course, chara isn't the only undertale character who needs frisk. the entirety of monsterkind does, and the entirety of monsterkind gets better thanks to their intervention. flowey, too. asriel, too. that's what resolves chara's unfinished business and allows them to finally let go (i mean... as long as YOU do, too, of course :])

and this is precisely the reason I'm not a fan of making frisk traumatized by their experiences in the underground. having leftover baggage from before they came? love that. but the whole point of their journey, to me, is that they were the single most powerful being in the entire story. the amount of liberties they could take, with their actions, with their words, with their own person, due to the sheer scale of power they had on everything else.. sure there was violence, and fear, and adventures and misadventures and betrayals, but when you can literally control time, i think that was almost euphoric for them.

after the life they used to lead, i like to think frisk saw their experiences in the underground as positive. no more powerlessness. no more loneliness. finally in (shared) control of their life. was it maladaptive as hell? yeah! but it was better than nothing! and if you've been following me for more than a month, you'll know by now that i am obsessed with the idea of a post pacifist, reset-heavy frisk freaking out AFTER their happy ever after, when chara doesn't follow them out of mt ebott and takes the SAVE power along with them (which is... kinda what happens in the game). being back to square one would mess them Up. fortunately, they now have a whole support system of family and friends who love them to make them feel needed and safe. it's gonna take some work, but man. it's gonna be worth it.