#ut genocide

So in the fandom, there's a bit of a disparity in how people view characters, a notable and parallel example is Asriel Dreemur, Chara's spiritual brother so to speak. Asriel is interpeted at a sad fluffy goatboi who really just got fucked over by seemingly every conceivable force in the universe. Chara is sometimes interpeted as an evil psychopath with very little to redeem themselves.

So why do people view Chara differently?

It's context. We got so much more time with Asriel Dreemur and similar controversial or "bad" characters, but we got none at all with Chara.

There are only six instances (that I am aware of) where we can glean anything from the game as to what Chara is like. Four of them come from the genocide route, but the two that comes from the True Pacifist Route doesn't paint them in a much better light either.

The first is where Flowey recognizes us as Chara immediately after exiting the ruins, which is telling that Flowey seems to recognize the first genocidal human as his dearly departed best friend.

The second is in New Home on the Genocide Route. (I didn't include Neutral or Pacifist as it's from the perspective of the monsters, and it doesn't really talk about who Chara was, or what they acted like, just how the Underground felt as a consequence of them being there with the monsters.) At this point in the run, Chara seems to be mostly in control of Frisk, however, is not kind or warm at all to their supposed best friend, even scaring Flowey with their "creepy face". That creepy face could either be the face where Frisk does not emote (which Sans points out) or Chara's signature smile which we see whenever Chara is shown, which is, admittedly, very little.

The third is after the Sans boss battle, where Frisk (perhaps under total control of Chara by this point) strikes down both Asgore and Flowey. If we are under the impression that Chara is controlling Frisk, then that means Chara willingly struck down their best friend and father figure. Even if we assume Chara is just an onlooker, they simply brush off the fact that Frisk just killed the only two members of their family, even though that not even a second after we kill Flowey, Chara comes up and is fully capable of killing us.

The fourth instance is the fact that Chara is fully willing to endlessly revive the world for the player to murder everyone over and over again.

The fifth is after the Asriel Boss Fight, where Chara's OWN BEST FRIEND admits that Chara wasn't all that great, not evil, but this is the same guy that was willing to destroy and reweave the fabric of the universe just to have Chara by his side again, that's a lot to do for one person, and a lot to pull an Uno card on.

The Final one which comes from the completion of a Soulless Pacifist Run, is where Chara kills everyone regardless of the fact that you went out of your way to spare every monster.

But now that we've discussed Chara, we need to talk about Asriel.

I don't think I need to say this, but Asriel and Chara's circumstances are wildly different.

For Asriel, he didn't start out as a mass murderer, he started out helping and befriending everyone. And his genocides didn't necessarily start as him wanting to kill monsters, he became curious after (presumed) countless cycles of doing the right thing.

For another, potentially the biggest factor is that Asriel lacks a soul, which seems to be the source of ones empathy. Even when you give Chara your soul at the end of a Genocide route, they still actively choose to kill everyone you befriended at the end of the Pacifist route, while at the end of True Pacifist, Asriel learns and accepts that he is wrong, even believing that he's not deserving of forgiveness, and he won't fight it if you decide that you don't.

In the end, Asriel does what's right by relinquishing all the souls, even though it means he must return to the worst possible version of himself, an unfeeling, uncaring flower. Asriel must make that sacrifice, even when it's understandable for him to want to be selfish, to want to cling onto this new chance at life.

This gets even better though. At the end of the Omega Flowey fight, Flowey will actively protest the idea of you sparing him, and won't try to dodge if you choose to strike him. Even as an apathetic flower, he still seems to understand why you'd want him dead, but not why you'd ever consider sparing him after he's tried killing you several times.

We never see anything like this for Chara, no growth, no development, so it's hard to see redemption for a character that seems to be uninterested in it.

That's not to say that Chara is necessarily evil, but their actions most certainly are.

When it comes to these sort of grey areas, I like to think about two quotes that work in conjunction from the same game

"Just because you do bad things, that doesn't make you a bad person"

And

"No matter how far you push your feelings down... they'll always come back somehow. And what you do with those feelings... That will be your truth."

Both of these work in tandem to say that it's not your actions, but how you respond to them which tell on who you are at heart.

There's all of that and probably even more, but to add to this, it's also about the sympathy a character can garner. Chara chose to enact out a plan which would result in their death and that of countless humans, seemingly disregarding how it would make Asriel and everyone else feel. Asriels death is a direct result from the plan being put into action, and it often feels like Asriel got the short end of the stick throughout life. Being forced to watch your friend die of their own volition, being forced to carry out the plan, being slaughtered by the humans, and fading away in front of your mother and father. Not even mentioning everything with Flowey. And finally, being so close to being whole again, only to have to fade away into a flower once more, all for the sake of doing what's right.

In the end, Asriel accomplished what he and Chara set out to do, but he isn't even able to celebrate it properly because he's the only monster that can't be there with the rest, all because fate is a bit of a shithead, and really screwed him out of his own life.

For Asriel Dreemur, there is no happy ending for him. He started out good and got corrupted, and finally regained his own sense of self after coming to terms with what he did, Chara at most started out okay, and became corrupted. Like I said, we just don't know enough about Chara Dreemur to map out their psychology, or who they were as a person.

In contrast, we don't really see anything that makes Chara nearly as sympathetic. They seemingly chose to die of their will, but Asriel never got to make peace with that.

So I've tried to go through and catch everything, but if something seems out of left field, or sounds like it's responding to something, it's because this was initially a reblog about a post where the user not-so-subtly suggested that because some people view Chara as female, that it was somehow the only/main reason Chara would be viewed as evil for their actions throughout their influence on the various routes

I don't understand how anyone could come to this sort of conclusion, and as should be obvious, I think the discussion is more nuanced than it being boiled down to sexism. That isn't so say it can't be sexism at play, but I don't believe it's got some allure or captivating hold on the Undertale fandom.

In any case, after finishing the rougher draft of this post, I figured it might be considered rude to throw a whole ass analysis as a reblog. So I decided to make it an original post.

I know this is likely not new, or unique, but I still put so much effort into this analysis to just throw it away.

I also understand that I may be incorrect about some of the things I said, I may have neglected to mention things, I am always open to a kind and common debate about my post, please keep it civil, however.