#neutral/genocidal chara

[iamdoru1]

What I made for Undertale's 8th Anniversary last year. Yeah some are pretty dated...

[grapemoon]

A few details about Undertale that I really like:

Napstablook is over 100 years old. They don’t recognize the King or (former) Queen.

Napstablook either has never seen Toriel in the Ruins, or just doesn’t care that she’s there.

Papyrus is really strong. REALLY strong. He’s just way too nice to even capture you.

The fact that its like. A plot twist on BOTH of the human’s identities. The kid you named was actually Chara, and the one you played as was actually Frisk, and neither of them were actually the “players self inserts” that people thought they were.

Flowey trapped himself in a time loop of his own making, and then got bored of it even though he could’ve just. Stopped resetting ? Unless I’m missing something here this is very funny to me.

Just how many characters are mentioned, but never seen.

How every time a character says something meta that implies they know they’re in a game, it can always be turned into something else, making it very vague. I like vague.

The sign on the Librarby.

In the Genocide route, you’re so far gone that Asgore, a monster that’s been alive for over 100 years with six human SOULs in the very next room, is unable to recognize Frisk as anything human.

Flowey is still Asriel under all that, and while he has indeed gone through a LOT of shit, you can still see that when he’s suddenly so terrified of the person he’s convinced himself is Chara that he feels fear for the first time in who-knows-how-long, after pretty much convincing himself he couldn’t feel anything.

The changes in the Neutral endings!!!!!! I love how many different variations of it there are it’s the best hehehehoo!

The Papyrus phone calls… they’re so hectic and there’s sooo much dialogue it’s amazing

This is moreso speculation than anything concrete, but I really like to think about why Flowey thought Frisk was Chara. Had it really been so long that he’d forgotten them? It’s understandable in Pacifist since he was reeeally going through some shit AND Frisk was wearing all of their stuff, but in Genocide he sees them kill everyone and goes “!!!! Chara!” which. Huh ? I personally like to think he spent so long in that little self-imposed time loop of his that he forgot about how Chara actually was, and deluded himself into believing into them being a bad person, just like he felt he was now, simply based on their last moments alone. Kinda fucked up huh?

[ultrabean]

JUDGEMENT

The last corridor is probably a pretty common subject in UT fan art but I decided to attempt it anyway because I wanted to test my lighting and perspective skills~

[univer-underfell]

How do the Neutral, Pacifist, And No Mercy endings work?

Good Question! Lemme just cook up a rough draft of them..

Neutral: No matter what you do, at the end of the Asgore fight, he... Well, he finishes the job for you, to say the least. Flowey tries to stop him every time, but can't. The souls are then freed from their containers, and Flowey, who just accidentally absorbed ASGORE's Soul, accidentally absorbs the Six Human Souls as well. Instead of fighting good ol Omega Flowey, you fight this Amalgamate-like version of Asriel, with flowey's melting face and some other melting parts. You have to remind all 6 Souls on who they are so they can let go of Flowey. When that's done, Flowey apologizes to Frisk and begs them to kill him, because he ruined everything. You don't get an option. Frisk spares him, and walks out of the barrier with Flowey.

True Pacifist: Flowey tells everyone his plan up and front. Once he absorbs everyones souls, however... something else happens that's.. Not Ideal. Asriel feels everyone's hearts beating as one, and feels.. Chara? No, that can't be right! Frisk would have told him.. Asriel feels betrayed that Frisk kept the fact Chara was still there a secret. You have to remind all 9 lost souls who they are. (Original 6 + Noelle, Woshua, and Vulkin.) And then, you have a heart to heart with Asriel, along with Chara, who with the power Asriel has, is able to manifest a physical form for them, sorta like how Inverted Fate does it. He apologizes to both of them, and they both give him a hug. Like with Sparing Flowey, this isn't your choice. He then breaks the Barrier and releases everyone's SOULS, becoming Flowey again. Everythings back to normal again, with the slightest difference. Chara's not gone. They're alive.

No Mercy:The ending is pretty much the same as in Undertale, but Flowey (And noelle) don't express how they think this isn't a good Idea, Until after the Sans fight and Asgore's death. After that you have the final battle against Flowey and Noelle teaming up.

[butterscotch-goat]

just saw a post that said Chara "canonically slaughtered half the underground" please show me where that happened.what are you actually even talking about

[skaluli]

wulf replayed undertale

[promise-keeper-papyrus]

In my opinion, the Dog Ending is the best UT ending!

[starclast]

💖💖 Choose your side 💖💖

[undertaleofficial]

i know megalovania was overplayed and remixed all over for the longest time and sans became one of the most infamous characters ever overnight but if you were there playing undertale before being spoiled, there is no denying that sans is a badass, however flawed he may be

megalovania is fucking sick and fitting for a climactic final battle between a demon hell-bent on destroying the world and Just Some Guy who's almost lost the ability to care anymore but even still manages to stand up against you when it really matters the most, because he does still care underneath all his nihilism and depression, he does want to save the world even if it doesnt matter since you can just reset all his hard work away...

but he still isn't so resigned to this fate that he'd simply let you past without a fight, it would be so easy for sans to just let you go through, but he doesn't, he beats your ass into the ground until you figure out how to surpass him, and every step of the way he's telling you that you're making the wrong choice, knowing he's going to die no matter what he does but fighting and trying to teach you (just like his brother tried) anyway

[eyygee]

inseparable

[forever-eternal]

Just got out of my tonsillectomy:

Have some more art for my Guiding Light (name being workshopped) AU.

We all know what happens after this...

An extra series of just Cadenza (oc):

[ifellinthelake]

This is such a good analysis!

The thing about Sans that (esp in the context of Sans Deltarune) makes the character endlessly funny/sad is how badly he wants to be Just Some Guy. Here he is cursed with knowledge of saves and resets and game mechanics and faced with an anomaly in time and space that could tear his entire world apart, and his response is basically to say "gee that's a lot, hope everything goes okay with that." Then his friend ropes him into PROTECTING the potentially universe-destroying entity and he says "sure" and basically just. Checks in with the kid every so often to be like "hey u still alive? killed anybody yet? oh a lot of people? ok proceed" you dont have to fight him unless you have literally tracked down and murdered the entire Underground. heck you dont have to TALK to him past snowdin until chamber of judgement. Man THRIVES as an NPC it is his calling it is all he wants to be. But through circumstances beyond his control he has to keep getting involved in emotionally traumatic morally complex bullshit. We're all laughing about sans' reaction to "eggs-husband" as if his reaction to ANY conflict in UT isn't to turn around and hope it ends soon.

This is the central tragedy of sans' arc in any of the neutral runs and finally genocide. You see just how far Sans will go to stay out of all of this. Just how badly he doesn't want to hurt this kid. Especially early on in the Genocide run, when you're being creepy, disregarding Papyrus' puzzles, and--lest we forget--hunting down every monster in the area so that the entire town flees from you--there's this odd kind of peacemaker desperation to Sans' dialogue. Pretending to like Junior Jumble. Not returning any of Papyrus' jabs. Saying "cmon just humor him you might like it" to a child who is showing every sign of being a homicidal maniac. Even his (objectively terrifying) warning before the Papyrus bossfight seems pretty weak given the situation he's in (faced with losing his brother!) and the power we know is at his disposal. He is literally doing the equivalent of filling up a watering can and pouring it on a burning building. He does not WANT to be the antagonist! He does not WANT to be the hero! He wants to be the weird funny little guy who tells jokes! He wants to be the convenience store guy! But the game won't let him!

[under-lore]

First impressions on the new Asriel letter

So...

It seems we finally have some new Chara content in 2024 !

At the end of the latest newsletter, Toby shared one more letter with us, which contained some very interesting things.

Let's try and dissect it a bit.

First, to start with the obvious, this is a letter written by Asriel about Chara. We can see this from such as things as :

Using the term "best friend"

But also because 9 is already a number associated with Chara.

Of course, it is present with them rather strongly during the genocide route. Such as during its ending, but also through things like the statistics given to some items associated with them in the route.

The same can also be said for Narrator Chara too. Such as how new special dialogue appears from the narrator if one were to attempt to talk to Asgore precisely 9 times.

The idea that it would be their favorite number thus comes fairly naturally.

Next, the few following lines rationalise this association, all the while phrasing it in a way that reminds of their speech at the end of the genocide route.

Finally, we have a few more minor implications.

Asriel & Chara with flowers together may call back to this image :

But it was also a very old concept, that could be found way sooner in Toby's concept arts for the game.

While Chara's "creepy faces" are openly mentioned in-game.

The friend is also refered to as "they", which may be noteworthy.

As for laughs...

The letter ends with

...But alright, what can we learn from it ?

Quite a few things, actually.

First, obviously, Chara's favorite number being 9 feels more like confirming some trivia or association that had been noticed by fans a long time ago than actual true new information.

But it isn't the only noteworthy thing in this letter.

Here are some lines that i had cut earlier on :

The last few lines feel somewhat unprompted from that initial context. But they may have secondary meanings.

First, they may be used to indirectly refer to a type of numbness brought upon by killing mentioned by Sans in his neutral judgments.

However, while that hint may have been intentional on Toby's part, it surely wasn't the main thing that the "in-world" Asriel who wrote this letter was trying to suggest.

The main "in-world" intended meaning of this section was far more likely refering to this :

While Chara did not ever tell Asriel exactly what happened in their past, Asriel seems to believe that the humans they had known did not make a good impression on Chara. Suggesting that they may have been abused or even have come to the mountain to disappear because of them. Regardless, this was all something that had worried Asriel regarding his best friend.

Of course, in the original game, those things remained mostly implicit or speculative. Asriel did not know these things for certain. And neither did we.

But bringing it back up today after so many years certainly feels like a very interesting choice on Toby's part...

Of course, this is all still from Asriel's point of view, which is limited. But metatextually, this is saying more than it looks.

Asriel associating Chara's favorite number the idea that with it, "Nothing can hurt you anymore" is a much more direct way of saying that he believes Chara was hurt by humans in their past than we'd seen before.

Again. This content comes from Undertale's 9th anniversary. It was pretty much Toby's one special occasion to show us content about Chara again. Which he actually did with this letter.

He only disposed of a limited number of characters or lines to either tell us something new about them, or give more precision/information about something which he believed was important for us to see.

From the metatextual context of asking "What was Toby trying to do by showing us this letter ?", him choosing to give more detail on Asriel's belief that Chara may have been abused of all things would serve no other purpose than to volontarily insist on pushing forward his line of reasoning to the fandom.

This suggests that Toby is very likely trying to tell us that Asriel is at least largely correct, and thus that the idea of Chara having been hurt in some form by the humans in their village is now significantly more likely.

Indeed, this had been an issue in some parts of the fandom. While that interpretation had been largely popular amongst most of it for a long time, there had been some voices calling out to the lack of clean proper evidence pointing to that which weren't somewhat speculative. So this seems a lot like Toby attempting to point us in the right direction. Seems like the simplest answer may be the right one, Occam's razor strikes again.

A new questions also now asks itself : Is this meant to suggest that this was Chara's motivation for power ?

Having power, so you are no longer weak ?

Not being weak, so you can no longer be hurt ?

A way of feeling "in control" ?

There were already some implication of Chara disliking to show weakness to others in the past. This would be coherent with those.

In such case, the genocide route may be a macabre recontextualisation of this original motive on Chara's part.

It might also be made relevant in the context of Chara's plan, though that deserves its own future post.

Besides, Asriel saying this highlights how much he cares about Chara. Which is always nice to see.

As a side note :

Between the demo and the final version of the game, the flavor text for the faded ribbon was changed from a regular one to one which raised a few eyebrows :

While some people had tried to use this line as evidence of Chara having been abused, many other voices had (fairly rightfully) pointed out that this piece of "evidence" was quite fragile, due to things like other interpretations of it being just as plausible, the fact that it specifies " 'monsters' won't hit you as hard" which wouldn't fit Chara all that much, or simply the lack of other similar implications elsewhere in the game.

Now that we do have such implications, this argument, whilst still a bit of a long shot, is at least not quite as far fetched as it used to be anymore. The item is a thing which gives you DEF (increases your numbers), and prevents you from being hurt.

We are not quite done yet, though :

These lines feel like they also have meaning.

Once again, there is an indirect reference to the genocide route, with 99 being the maximum value for things like HP, or the next required EXP to gain LOVE. When you have them, you cannot get any more. It is the absolute.

However, there seems to be another strange connection to make here.

What is the opposite of a so called "good memory" ?

The bad memory is an item obtained from the memory head amalgamate.

It feels noteworthy as it, along with the "Last dream", are the two items in the game who's effects are theorised to have something to do with NarraChara in the way they are presented/work. (Suggesting that the memory/dream may come at least partially from Chara.)

For a reminder, the bad memory is a item that actually decreases HP by 1. Unless it is eaten on the brink of death, in which cases it restores all HP instead. Bringing it to the "highest number".

On top of that, this item also had a strange specificity to it :

It is impossible to drop it.

With this additional context, one may draw parallels between the Bad memory item's effects and what Asriel is saying, only in a reversed way, and applied to Chara.

In the same manner as previously. The previously existing theories trying to tie the bad memory to Chara now find themselves being rendered more plausible. In fact, given that these lines directly follow the previous ones, you may even associate them to make the argument that the memories could be of Chara's past on the surface hypothetically. Though that would likely be stretching it.

Also :

39 left.

Pretty impressive, the way every last line in this letter can be read as a genocide route reference one way or another.

And... the code of the page describe the contents of the page as "Here's a letter".

This is also the wording used in the lines with which Toby introduces us the letter.

This wording of this feels very significant considering who the letter is talking about...

So i suppose that makes for even more NarraChara fuel to have Toby writing down such things.

For one last thought, those couple lines.

If one were to follow a certain interpretation of things such as "Mr Dad Guy", the "future of humans and monsters", and Chara's relationship with the concept of "efficiency" & "usefullness", then they might be readable as an allegory for pre-death Chara's view on their role within monsterkind & one of their motivations regarding their plan. (along with their hate of humanity).

And this odd insistance on the term "happy" throughought the message..Is there a chance it could be refering to those secret lines, stored within the game's code in the echo flower room number #9999 ?

Some of the things mentioned in this post are somewhat stretchy admittedly. I am not yet certain of which ones of these would i actually argue for and which are only a product of first impression brainstorming.

Nevertheless. There are many many new ideas to explore regarding Chara now.

Thanks, Toby !

[howlonomy]

Got three questions in one, here we go

If Clover ever did a Neutral or, God forbid, Genocide run, did they ever consume the Hydrochloric Acid?

In their new Monster body, would they safely be able to consume acid? (probably not but it'd be funny if they could, Ceroba would probably have a heart attack)

This one isn't really a question but I still find the idea funny. Science Fair Project: How good does acid taste? Clover (with Frisk's help to save and reload should they, y'know, die) makes and drinks various types of acids (maybe Axis helps to make/secure them) and then rates them on a scale of 0-10 with 0 being "Absolutely do NOT try no matter what" and 10 being "If it weren't for the fact that it kills you, it would be a really good beverage". I can imagine the judges just being confused and Clover just says "Ask my assistant for confirmation" to which Frisk replies "It's true, I saw them turn into dust many, many times" (also maybe Flowey, unprompted, just says "It was very funny" maybe also during the experiment Chara says the Frisk "You've seen them die like, 22 times. You feel like you should convince them to stop. No seriously, stop them")

Anyways, that's all of my acid related questions, have fun with it I suppose.

1) oh you KNOW they ate the acid in neutral. it was too tempting

2) I THOUGHT VERY HARD ABOUT THIS AND I WILL SAY YES (KIND OF). starlos lizard genes allow clover a little more resistance to it so while they could theoretically drink acid it would hurt like a bitch and make them sick for like a week. so they really SHOULDNT drink the acid

3) PLEASSEE WORLDS WEIRDEST SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT i think they would win. this is such a strange group to be helping each other. axis has more knowledge (and resources in the steamworks) so he’s helping frisk mix everything. clover is the guinea pig and just drinking anything thats given to them. flowey and chara are both egging clover on to try worse and worse mixtures and cheering when they do. frisk and axis are trying so hard to make a good project and chara flowey and clover are in the back mixing up all sorts of shit. absolute disaster

[thegrinningkitten]

Is there a reason why Re:Swap Chara kept doing neutral and genocide runs and only tried a pacifist one after much, much later on?

Like, why did they kept killing some/every monster?

Chara initially has lots of issues with trust and proper inter-personal relationships and such. So when they initially end up in the Underground, they make an attempt to get out without really bonding with anyone (so, the no-kill Neutral run), and when that fails, they're content to just... let it be. Frisk isn't, however, and they manage to force a reset.

This happens enough times that Chara eventually starts to lash out at people. And Neutral runs are... depressing — even the most benign of them. So at some point Chara loses it and commits their first Genocide run.

A direct encounter with Frisk that follows that run's ending bonds Frisk to their soul even more, and, now even more upset, Chara commits several more Genocide runs.

They keep going until they can't anymore. And that's when Frisk suggests staying with Asgore for a while. They spend months in the Ruins, finally letting themself bond with other people. Which both terrifies Chara and gives them the push needed to put them on the path of the Pacifist run — finally accepting Frisk's help.

TL;DR: Past trauma. Then past trauma + additional current trauma.

[goldflowerfield]

something something about asgore clinging onto memories of his family, constantly wishing for a chance to see them again, yet failing to see them for who they are at present. he mentions how frisk reminds him of chara in the neutral route, yet doesn't notice chara in the genocide route. he mentions wanting to see asriel again, yet fails to recognise him in the same route as well. he mentions how he and toriel will take care of frisk without taking into consideration if toriel is even alive, and even in the true pacifist route, asks her if they can be friends failing to consider how she's feeling at the moment.

something something about flowey taking this same form of clinginess towards the past and unwillingness to accept the present to it's most extreme form via outright keeping people stuck in place through saving and resetting, not allowing them to grow on their own terms, and how his final goal as the god of hyperdeath is to reset everything back to 0. he similarly tries to use frisk as a substitute for chara as well, also taking that to its most extreme by pretending that it actually is chara. something something like father like son something something.