One thing that will always drive me crazy about the way people talk about Undertale and, more specifically, Frisk is the way that people will talk about Frisk like they are just… not there. Completely and entirely absent from the narrative itself, a placeholder for the player or, for fans that do pay closer attention to details but still disregard Frisk, a placeholder for Chara. I think a good chunk of the reason for this is the way people will go to any extent to dehumanize nonverbal characters and project a facade onto them. While Frisk is not, within the world, nonverbal, they come off this way to the player because there is no way of reading or hearing the things they say in spoken dialogue, including spoken dialogue that would in fact necessitate them having the ability to vocally communicate, i.e. phone calls. As a result, I find that the actual analysis of Frisk’s intent and feeling towards monsters is Vastly Undertalked About.
In the beginning of the game, the oppression dynamics of this world is made immediately clear, with humans being the class that holds systematic privilege and power. Genocide WAS something that monsters had already experienced and had been subjected to before being driven underground. Because of this, the Genocide Route reflects a light onto Frisk in a way that underlined the oppressor role of humans—Frisk *eagerly* wipes monsters off the face of the planet and never expresses caution in doing so. Even in the beginning, when the file is at a blank slate that can still be turned into a neutral run, Frisk never Resists the temptation to kill, necessarily. Killing monsters is a mundane task, a one that you can argue is defaulted to, even, which makes it easy for the player to continue killing monsters whenever an encounter occurs, even if you don’t grind and trigger the Genocide Route. In any other game, this is normal. Monsters are trying to kill you. If they aren’t trying to kill you, they still serve some kind of purpose in being killed, or occupy or represent some kind of threat. In Undertale, though? The game TELLS YOU IMMEDIATELY that monsters were chased underground after being driven to near extinction. There is no neutrality here. Frisk is not a neutral entity. Frisk is a political presence in the homes of monsters who have a reason to fear them. When you DO trigger the Genocide Route, Frisk’s default approach to killing monsters turns into an eager, incessant need to kill, communicated multiple times through dialogue but also implicitly stated by the fact that killing monsters only gets easier and easier as Frisk gets “stronger.” Frisk only gets “stronger” because “strength” in Undertale is defined by killing intent. People are so obsessed with possession theory and Chara as a marvel concept that they forget that Frisk comes from a system that enables Frisk to not see monsters as people. It benefits Frisk to act upon their biases, because a world where the oppressor hates the oppressed is a world where it is easier to oppress them, ergo a world where the oppressor stays in power. Genocide Route is Frisk leaning into their hatred of monsters based on biases that would have already existed in them prior to their fall, and because of this, Pacifist Route can easily be seen as Frisk unlearning this learned behavior. Even in the Pacifist Route, killing is still the default option. It’s the first button on the battle UI. It’s the option that Toriel teaches you to *not* do, because of the correct assumption that you would do it if you did not know there was another choice. Frisk only ever unlearns their violent tendencies and biases towards monsters if you listen to what the game is telling you, and it’s why you don’t get any benefits from the Genocide Route. Frisk is enacting the role of oppressor in all runs of the game, but how they choose to wrestle with this internally determines how the game will go, and end.
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