nelly the dweller 🦂

Seeing how their character has been plagued by countless misinterpretations and misreadings over the years, it's no surprise some of those will convince people that saving Chara is impossible because they're unable or unwilling to change.

Since Chara was fanatically obsessed with reaching the absolute by any means necessary, I don’t blame y’all for assuming that their obsession would remain as strong as it was when they were alive, especially with their soullessness stunting their ability to feel love and compassion just as it happened to Asriel. And speaking of Azzy, of course, it's also easy to assume they’ll be looking for some good ol’ fashioned payback with his ‘betrayal’ still fresh in their mind. So, because of that, it’s easy to assume Chara cannot or will not change, as those things I mentioned earlier would inspire them to double down on their worst qualities, right?

Additionally, another (mis)interpretation I've seen recently is the concept that post-death Chara is less of a person and more of a, well, concept. That is to say, they're not really a person so much as they are an entity: an amoral manifestation, embodiment, or representation of the player's desire to see everything pushed to the limit. And therefore, they can't really be saved because an embodiment of our our desires wouldn't exactly be interested in changing their ways.

But contrary to what some may think, they themselves are very much capable of change, and to prove that, look no further than these lines of the little speech they give at the end of the first No Mercy Run.

It’s interesting that, even with the memory of Asriel’s screwing up their plan still fresh in their minds, Chara didn't wake up vengeful, power-hungry, or omnicidal. They were confused, aimless, and even resigned. And these three lines are EXTREMELY important because they establish some details about what Chara was like after their death that will be ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL going forward!!!

A) Since Chara talks about how they were in a state of confusion prior to the player helping them “realize their purpose,” it stands to reason that the moment where Chara “found their purpose” was when the No Mercy Run began in the Ruins. Therefore, this confirms that Chara was awake and aware of their surroundings well before the No Mercy Run began (likely immediately when you named the fallen human, seeing how they’re the “demon who comes when people call its name”). So if that's the case, then that means they are aware of what goes on in every single run, INCLUDING THE PACIFIST RUN!

B) Because Chara talks about how “our plan had failed,” it clearly indicates that they are still very much the same person when they were alive, seeing how they still retain their memories of their plan with Asriel. So neither their soulless state nor the player’s influence altered their overall personality too much, meaning their current predicament is no different from their brother's when he became Flowey. In other words, despite everything, it’s still you, Chara.

C) Chara's death did not destroy or erase their memories, identity, and most importantly, THEIR AGENCY!!! Their death didn’t turn them into some dumb beast acting on raw instinct, nor some unthinking and unfeeling force of nature, nor some mindless physical embodiment/representation of the player’s hunger for completionism. They are still able to think and act for themselves and can discern right from wrong. So, as I said before, they’re not that different at all from Asriel when he became Flowey. And just like Flowey, THEY ARE STILL CAPABLE OF CHANGE!

Yes! Because Chara QUESTIONED and DOUBTED the very purpose they sought to fulfill when they were alive, this proves they are capable of change! And if they're capable of change, THEN THAT MEANS THEY ARE CAPABLE OF CHANGING FOR THE BETTER!!!!!

Therefore, we can safely say that without a shadow of a doubt, Chara is no less capable of redemption than Asriel. And as you will see, they do end up doing so!

Chapter 2: "With your Guidance..."

So now that we learned that Chara unquestionably has the capacity for change (and that they’ve even started the process to a degree), we can now dive into why and how they changed!

From what I’ve seen, most people seem to be under the assumption that Frisk simply just made them be saved; that they like mustered up all of their mystical and vaguely defined powers and were all like “Bippity Boppity Boo! Your trauma and angst are all gone!”

But as you will see, Chara’s salvation was not something forced upon them, and the evidence for that, funnily enough, comes from the run where they cannot be saved at all: The Soulless Pacifist Run.

Now, unsurprisingly, the people who (still) believed Chara was pure evil looked for anything that could prove Toby was being insincere or just plain stupid. And one of their favourite rebuttals was, of course, the run where they can’t be saved at all. They argued that whatever Frisk did to save Chara in the True Pacifist Run should still be able to work on them in the Soulless Pacifist Run. And since they don’t, well, “Checkmate Chara Defenders!”

However, as I shall demonstrate, not only does the Soulless Pacifist Run do absolutely nothing to dispute or refute what Toby said, but it actually helps paint a very clear picture of how they were saved!

If Toby Fox said that Chara was saved during the Pacifist Run, and if you can’t save them in the Soulless Pacifist Run, then what does that say about how you DO save them in the True Pacifist Run? Is it simply because Frisk’s magic SAVE powers just ricocheted off them due to them having your SOUL or something, or is it because salvation is not something you impose upon them, but rather something you inspire them to embrace!?

Remember people! Chara did not come back as a full-fledged demon hellbent on causing death and destruction (unless, of course, you shape them into one). They’re a troubled and restless spirit in desperate need of guidance and healing, which only Frisk can give them! They were in a state of purposelessness because they failed to achieve their ultimate purpose with that plan, and it made them doubt and question the misguided beliefs that ultimately doomed them and their brother! And that’s why you can’t save them if you’ve completed a No Mercy Run! It’s not because Frisk’s so-called SAVE powers didn’t work on them. It’s because fulfilling the No Mercy Run all but vindicates their distorted worldview and inspires them to triple down on it. And yeah, it’s rather funny how if you doom Chara by completing the No Mercy Run, you end up dooming monsterkind as a whole.

So if the No Mercy Run dooms Chara and unleashes their vengeful spirit by reinforcing and validating their toxic worldview, then it would make all too perfect sense that the Pacifist Run ends up saving them and helping them find peace because it challenges and refutes that toxic worldview!

You know how in fiction, folklore, and myth involving troubled and restless spirits, the reason they’re like that is that they suffered some unavenged wrong or some unresolved trouble that afflicted them when they were alive, which prevents them from moving on? And how the only way to help them find peace is by avenging, resolving, or healing what afflicted them?

And seeing Chara is a troubled and restless spirit in their own right, the best and only way to help them find peace is to inspire them to let go of the broken and flawed worldview that became the source of all their troubles. This worldview is made up of what I like to call the three M’s: Misanthropy, Megalomania, and Mercilessness.

Unlike your classic villains or evildoers, Chara’s megalomania was not purely driven by, well, egomania. They had complex, understandable, and even sympathetic reasons for why they wanted ultimate power. And they didn’t just want power only for themselves, but also for those they cared about. The cruelty and malice they endured on the surface left them with a destructive hatred of humankind, and there’s no question that it amplified when they witnessed the oppression that humanity inflicted upon the only people that ever showed them love and compassion. As a result, Chara became absolutely convinced that peace and prosperity can only be achieved through the total eradication of the human race, and that they must obtain the strength to do so by any means necessary. To ensure nothing could hurt them or anyone they cared about, they needed to eradicate the enemy and become strong. They needed to reach the absolute. 

Their obsession with strength, complemented by their destructive misanthropy, became the source of their troubles and every single bad decision they made. And it eventually was the source of all the tragedy they brought upon themselves and their family with that ill-fated plan. 

Now that their plan has completely failed and their purpose remains unfulfilled, they’ve been left in a state of confusion and doubt, questioning themselves and the very purpose they once zealously sought to fulfill. And that puts Frisk (and you) in a perfect position to inspire them to change their ways!

Yeah! Turns out that with the Pacifist Run, you’re not only convincing monsterkind to abandon their crusade against the human race, but also the very person who inspired it and wanted them to wage it! If Chara adamantly believed that monsterkind’s liberation can only be achieved if they were without mercy, without weakness, and without a single stupid human being, then what better way to completely refute that than by fulfilling their goal with exactly those things?!

How karmic that the misanthropic Chara witnesses monsterkind be liberated by a human being! Not just any human, but a literal child! WITH ONE MEASLY LV AND NO EXP TO BOOT! Not only challenging their views of humanity, but also their views of strength, power, and what must be done to achieve them.

Chara believed that love can only come from a position of strength; to safeguard their loved ones, they needed to be as powerful as they could be, so that “nothing can hurt anyone anymore.” But Frisk shows them that LOVE ITSELF IS STRENGTH. Frisk’s love and compassion made them so powerful that no opponent was a match for them. Not even the Kingdom’s strongest soldiers! Not even the frickin head of state! Not even an eldritch house plant endowed with the power of six human souls! Not even a literal god with infinite ATK and DEF!

Frisk shows Chara that they didn’t need to be omnipotent or invincible to be the friend Asriel needed. They just needed to be there for him.

And thanks to Frisk, they do get to be there for him.

One final time.

Chapter 3: "I realized the purpose of my reincarnation."

Here we are! The moment you've all been waiting for!

Now you’re probably thinking to yourself: “Excuse me, but I thought that moment where you save ‘Someone else’ was about Asriel! After all, that’s why the flavour text says ‘You reach out and call their name!’"

Heeeeeeeeeey, wait a goshdarn minute...

“You reach out and call THEIR name”?!?!?!?!?!?!?

If it’s supposed to be Asriel’s name being called, then WHY IS HE BEING ADDRESSED WITH A GENDER NEUTRAL PRONOUN?! Why not simply have it be “You call out HIS name” instead of “THEIR name.”

Well, I don't know about y'all, but I know that it was no accident that Toby Fox chose to use gender neutral pronouns when calling out the name of “Someone Else.” And now that he confirmed that Chara was the last person to be saved in the pacifist run, we know for a fact that Chara is indeed the “Someone Else” being referred to!

So there you have it. You shout out Chara’s name, which restores Asriel's memories, which in turn saves both him and Chara.

Sounds... kinda anticlimactic if I'm being honest.

Like, is that really it? That’s all there is to it? After all the trouble you went through when saving the Lost Souls, after all the trouble you went to inspire the main cast to change for the better, the thing that saves Asriel and inspires him to abandon his omnicidal and megalomaniacal aspirations is just... name-dropping their dead sibling?

Like, what the hell is so special and so powerful about calling Chara’s name that it ended up saving all of existence from a literal god?

Hmmmmm. Could it have something to do with the fact that Chara calls themselves The Demon Who Comes When People...

...CALL IT'S NAME?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Oh yeah, that's right! Frisk wasn't just calling out Chara. THEY WERE CALLING FOR CHARA!!!!!

And know what this means?!?! Toby Fox’s revelation didn’t just prove that Chara was being saved in the Pacifist Run. THEY WERE ACTUALLY DOING THE SAVING!!!! Remember how we established earlier that, even in their soulless state, Chara can still think and act for themselves? This means that when Frisk called on Chara to save their brother, they weren’t being FORCED to do so. THEY CHOSE TO SAVE HIM! So, regardless of whether or not you believe in that NarraChara theory, Chara was not simply just some passive observer in the Pacifist Run. THEY PLAYED AN ACTIVE ROLE IN SAVING ASRIEL!

And that brings us to another critical and extremely cool detail: Frisk would not have been able to do it without Chara’s help!!! And it beautifully ties in with how you saved the Lost Souls!

As you all know, prior to saving Asriel, you have to save the Main cast, who have taken the form of Lost Souls, who now reside in Asriel's own soul. You will note how the way they’re speaking to Frisk is as if they’ve been reset to what they were like before they bonded with Frisk, when they were still consumed by their insecurities and flaws, which drove them to fight against them.

So to save them, Frisk needs to remind these Lost Souls of the love they have for them, which will make them whole again. They accomplish that by doing something that reminds them of something they did to connect with them, whether it's making bad puns, sharing pie preferences, talking about anime, and so on. Even with Asgore, for the brief time Frisk has been with them, they still managed to form at least something. It also helps that he never really had any ill will toward Frisk and was more than willing to accept them as his own.

But with his son, they’re at a total impasse because with him, they don’t have the square root of diddly squat! Frisk could not form any bond with Asriel because he never gave them the opportunity when he was Flowey! How can Frisk hope to save him by reminding him of the good times they once shared, IF THEY NEVER SHARED ANY GOOD TIMES WITH HIM TO BEGIN WITH?!?! And worse still, the only person Asriel still cares about and still shares an attachment with is long gone!!!

I mean, it’s not like they’ve been tagging along with Frisk the whole time in corporeal form.

Oh wait! YES THEY HAVE!!!

You see this moment here where Asriel is left in shock and demands Frisk to tell him what they did to him, and says that he’s feeling something happening to him.

Yeah, that wasn’t just because Frisk simply blurted out their name, and that just randomly triggered his memories. It was good ol’ Chara Dreemurr answering the call, LITERALLY answering the call; restoring his memories of them and saving him by reminding them of the love he had for them! 

[Side note, I also think it's interesting that in Flowey’s post-Pacifist monologue to Chara, he tells them they were “fighting to stop” the power to reset everything. And since he’s speaking to Chara, I guess it means Asriel eventually realized that Chara was with them during those final moments.

[And yeah, I know some of y'all argue that he was actually talking to the player. But like you’re telling me that he can somehow detect the yahoo that’s been guiding Frisk behind the scenes from another plane of existence, and yet somehow he was not able to detect Chara’s spirit despite them literally being attached to Frisk? OH, COME ON!]

BUT I DIGRESS!!!

So even though Chara’s relationship with Azzy was far from ideal, it was still a loving relationship nonetheless. And it's by reminding him of that love and the good times they once shared with him that Chara is able to save him!

I know, right?! How poetic (and ridiculously awesome) that, in the scene where a person's love for another becomes the source of their salvation, the thing that saves Asriel and Chara is their love for the person they care about the most: EACH OTHER! 

So there you have it! Every piece of evidence presented up to this point proves that Chara’s choice to save Asriel in the Pacifist Run wasn’t done out of cold pragmatic necessity or mere self-preservation. But that it was a genuine, honest-to-god act of good, one that redeemed both Asriel and themselves!!!

Yes, you heard that right.

CHARA REDEEMED THEMSELVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember, it was only because Asriel was saved that he could use everyone’s souls to break the barrier and free his people. And if Chara played an active role in saving him, that doesn’t just make them directly responsible for Asriel's salvation, but for the liberation of monsterkind as a whole!!!

It really makes for a beautifully bittersweet bookend to Chara’s tragic story, as with this brave and unselfish act, they realize the dream they once sought to fulfill with that terribly misguided plan, and end up becoming the hope for monsterkind that Asgore wanted them to be. And not only that, but they also atone for the terrible consequences of that plan by not just freeing the underground, but also by saving Asriel from the terrible fate which they (inadvertently) brought upon him!

And Chara’s redemption becomes all the more poignant when you realize that they didn’t just save Asriel from a terrible fate they brought upon him in the first place, but they inspired him to abandon the twisted view of the world that they once embraced themselves when they were alive, which they wanted him to embrace!

If you really think about it, Hyperdeath Asriel is pre-death Chara’s idealized form of Asriel. Not only having become omnipotent and with every stat having reached the absolute, but also having fully embraced Chara’s ideals: that he must be without mercy, without weakness, and without any regard for those good-for-nothing humans. He became the very thing that they wanted him to be and sought to make him into!

Pre-death Chara would’ve killed to turn him into this! HELL, THEY WERE ACTUALLY LITERALLY GOING TO KILL WITH THAT LITTLE PLAN OF THEIRS!

But not anymore. 

The original plan to become a god with him failed, and that failure changed them. And thanks to Frisk, that change turned out for the better. Frisk showed them the power that comes from showing mercy to their enemies rather than eradicating them. Frisk made them see the terrible consequences their hunger for power had on the people Chara cared about. And finally, they showed them what it turned their best friend into.

All of this began because Chara wanted to use godlike powers to raze and reshape the whole world for Asriel’s sake, and the only reason that terribly misguided vision was never realized was thanks to their brother.

But now the roles have reversed.

Now, Chara finds themselves in the same position that they once put Asriel in! He’s once again the god they sought to make him into, but now he’s the one seeking to use those same destructive powers, having fully embraced the twisted philosophy that Chara sought to instill in him, and now he's seeking to fulfill the goal that he once fought so hard to stop Chara from accomplishing. 

And so, Chara, after finally seeing the error of their ways, ends up doing for Asriel exactly what he did for them in their final moments: THEY RESIST!

Just as he made the ultimate sacrifice to save the world from the wrath of a hurt and embittered Chara, they now make the ultimate sacrifice to save the world from the wrath of a hurt and embittered Asriel. And just like before, it results in both of them leaving said world too soon.

And what’s even sadder is that, despite everything they’ve done, monsterkind will only remember them as that human child who fell down, lived with the Royal family for a bit, and then fell ill and died an untimely death. They’ll never realize that they truly wanted to save them all on that tragic day. And even if they do find out the truth of what truly happened on that day, they’ll never realize that they eventually succeeded in saving everyone.

Because, just like us, they are not above consequences.

Now they have reached the absolute. A new absolute. One defined by healing, instead of harm; one defined by understanding your opponents instead of eradicating them; one defined by love, instead of LOVE.

With their dream of freeing the underground fulfilled and the wrongs they suffered (and inflicted) completely righted, there’s nothing left for them here. 

They can finally leave their beautiful world...

...and move on to the next!

Chapter 4: "Now we have reached the absolute."

And there you have it.

You know all those fics, comics, and AUs where Chara redeems themselves, such as Dreemurr-Reborn, Twin Runs, and Dogs of Future Past?

Art belongs to (from left to right): @dreemurr-reborn @akanemnon and @lynxgriffin

Turns out they were all inconsistent with the canon... because, well, THEIR REDEMPTION ARC WAS ALREADY CANON TO BEGIN WITH!!! No offence to their creators lol, you did a beautiful job on them!

So you see? The Pacifist Run wasn’t about vanquishing Chara, or banishing them, defeating them, slaying them, suppressing them, or even avoiding them. It was about saving them! Because in the end, they were just as capable of change and deserving of love and healing as much as Toriel, Asgore, Sans, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Mettaton, and sweet little Asriel. 

Even if Chara is a worse person than all of them put together, their flaws, follies, and failings didn’t make them any less deserving of salvation. And thanks to Frisk (and with a little help from you), they not only found salvation for themselves but also helped the people they loved achieve it. And that includes the sweet and sensitive little goat boy who said they "wasn't really the greatest person". 

They may not have been the greatest person. But that will never change the fact that they ended up playing a critical role in the greatest act of good their world will ever see.