#narrachara

[salchichas-art]

so chara didn’t like when frisk took more than 1 candy

[randomreader92]

Alastor's Tale: Swap AU Part 6:

Angel: Hey, Smiles, what you gonna do about that Vox guy? Since he’s, you know, completely obsessed with ya.

Alastor: *not looking up from his newspaper* Pfft, Vox is hardly worth worrying about!

Angel: Smiles. He’s stalking you.

Lucifer: *starts choking on his drink*

Alastor: Yes, I know.  

Charlie: You know Vox is stalking you? Alastor, why didn’t you come to us? We would’ve helped!

Alastor: *seems honestly confused, tilting his head at her* My apologies, dear, but I don’t see what the fuss is about?

Vaggie: He is STALKING you and you don’t consider it a problem?

Charlie: Alastor, please, I’m really worried…

Alastor: Oh, I’ve made certain none of his bugs are able get into the hotel, so there’s no need to worry.

Charlie: That’s... good to know, but not the main issue here.

Lucifer: *sputters in outrage* Listen, stalking is in of itself a huge problem. Don’t you care? Or is this some sort of ego-boost for you?

Alastor: I don’t like it, but I am used to it. Honestly, Vox is relatively tame compared to other stalkers.

Lucifer: *frustration is slowly overtaken by horror as the implication sinks in* “Used to it?” “Compared to other stalkers?” What are you talking about?

Alastor: *laughs* Well, I have dealt with stalkers most of my life. When I was eleven, my attempted murder was televised in front of a Live Studio Audience! Multiple times!

Alastor: *turns back to his newspaper* Yes, Vox may try to slander me, which is annoying, but at least he hasn’t tried to cook me on Live TV or put a bomb in my drink. He mostly just watches and listens.

Alastor: …

Alastor: …?

Alastor: Why are you all looking at me like that?

Inspired by @crookedfood23bog's Alastor's Tale: link

[prism-forgone]

chara doodles (they've been on the mind)

[strawberristorm]

I love narrachara

A lil undertale doodle practice (first time drawing toriel)

[rainbowinyourhands]

Something i really like about Undertale is just how mean the Narration can be early on

One of the biggest (and most overlooked) proofs for Narrachara imo

Just compare these two pretty similar moments, one from the Ruins(beginning) the other from Waterfall(Middle)

"You feel bad" is pretty standard Narration for explaining the protag's mental state

"You feel like the Scum of the Earth" is an underhanded insult

[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.

[enteringdullsville]

[bloomyblemy]

CHARA AND FRISK REMAKE

This is me trying to re draw frisk and Chara since a got inspired again (or maybe a should call it re doodle??))

-from left to right(I think??)

-first one Full view

-second (Chara is info dumping something to frisk , while frisk listens not saying anything )( to the corner there are two eyes on the top is frisk’s (dark brown with a black iris )(explanation shows that living beings have dark irises ) (under it is another eye which is Chara’s the eye is wider more circler but slightly sharper at the end , the eye colour is red with a white iris in the middle)

Third - frisk while looking extremely beaten up gives a thumbs up with a box on the upper right stating “ just fine!” , Chara looking extremely frustrating and worried exclaims “ ‘just fine’ MY ASS “ with a small text at the bottom asking “ how aren’t you crying ?” Then chara demands “ eat some monster food!)

fourth - frisk tries to bargain their box stating “ * you tell Chara that you might need it later “ Chara frustrated states “ you need it now!” With bottom text stating “ you food hoarder”

fifth - frisk teary eyed eating a unisicle that heals their wounds their text box stating “* you eat a unisicle ( you feel like you wasted a useful item)”

sixth- drawing of frisk touching the save point while listening to Chara, Chara happily stating “ the sight of bright lights fills you with ‘DETERMINATION’ (determination is in yellow text) , there is also in the top left corner a very mischievous looking frisk , next to it is the eyes of a very determined frisk

seventh - frisk dropped their ice scream and is staring blankly at it , Chara looks at it then says “ oh Woops”

eighth - Chara looking upward stating “ well nothing we can do about it! (I mean) we COULD buy another but your to stingy” “ let’s just g-“

Ninth- frisk crying while holding an empty ice cream cone

tenth - Chara panicking internally exclaiming “ oh SHIT”

eleventh - Chara awkwardly comforting frisk while their mourning their fallen ice cream “t-there there..?” “* …”

“we can…buy another one?” “*shake” “ you don’t want to waste gold?” “*nod” “ We… can fight monsters and take their gold?” “* …Nod” “ phew . Ok let’s Go!”

[silverstormsxx]

I need an au where napstablook swaps with chara purely so i can see narrator napstablook

"you kicked the ball........."

"oh no............."

"it ran away........."

[abandoned-quiche]

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

[salchichas-art]

“why was i brought back to life?”

[randomreader92]

Alastor's Tale: Swap AU Part 2:

How it started:

How it's going:

Inspired by @crookedfood23bog's Alastor's Tale: link

[fractalheart-real]

[lilybug-02]

you are also subcribe to the narrachara theory arent you

Hehe kinda :) The narrachara theory is just so fun!

Who wants to see Frsik walking around alone when they can have a little fwend. 🥰

[testedcatdraws]

This is the last poll today, sorry for the poll spam :P