🖤❤️🖤

If you use Tumblr on a web browser, you might have noticed us testing a brand new navigation on your dashboard in the last month. Now, after some extensive tweaks, we’ve begun rolling out this new dashboard navigation to everyone using a web browser. Welcome to the new world. It’s very like the old world, just in a different layout.

Why are we doing this? We want it to be as easy as possible for everyone to understand and explore what’s happening on Tumblr—newbies and seasoned travelers alike.

Labels over icons: When adding something new to Tumblr in the past, we’d simply add a new icon to our navigation with little further explanation. Turns out no one likes to press a button when they don’t know what it does. So now, where there’s space, the navigation includes text labels. Since adding these, we’ve noticed more of you venturing to previously unexplored corners of Tumblr. Intrepid!

What’s already been fixed? Thanks to feedback from folks during the testing phase, we’ve been able to make some improvements right out of the gate. Those include returning settings subpages (Account, Dashboard, etc.) to the right of the settings page instead of having them in an expandable item in the navigation on the left; fixing some issues with messaging windows on smaller screens; and streamlining the Account section to make it easier to get to your blogs.

What’s next? We’re looking into making a collapsible version of this navigation and improving the use of screen space for those of you with enormous screens. We’re also working on improving access to your account and sideblogs.

For those who might have trouble figuring out what to do:

Install Stylus.

Go to this link: https://userstyles.world/api/style/11286.user.css

Copy the whole script

Go to the Tumblr dashboard

Click on the Stylus extension on your Firefox toolbar, and then click on the bottom box where it will say something like, "write for Tumblr"

Click "manage" after you enable the box

It should take you to a page titled "Edit Style." Once there, click "write new style"

Paste the script you copied from userstyles.world underneath the text already on the screen (otherwise you will get errors)

(so put the text on line 11.)

Complaining in comments, reblogs, and tags probably isn't going to do much.

Lets use the help center. Use this to complain. They are more likely to see it.

Why? I just think it is an amazing piece of information and writing and I don't want it to be in just one place in case something happens. Plus if I'm the one who remakes it, I'll have easy access to it lol. (reblogs disabled so as not to compete with anyone else's traffic/steal notes. Just reblog the original when possible or share a link to this one when you want to talk about it) @not-the-conversation-starter @redeterminators (<- that's me. I need to @ myself to be able to reblog this to get past limits)

Starting, NOW:

🐉 MainBlogURLNotSharedForPrivacy Follow Apr 23, 2016

🐐 determinators Follow Apr 17, 2017

Greetings. 

Uh, so I’ve been working on this meta post for around 3 months now, gathering screenshots, gathering feedback, gathering more screenshots. The result is what could conceivably be called thorough.

Compared to the animation I made as the header, the post’s content was much harder to put together and write; I consider the animation icing on the cake. If you liked the animation, and like Chara (or don’t like Chara) then please consider reading the meta. It’s finally done!

Sections…

As a good portion (though not all) of this post is based on the well-known “Chara is the narrator” theory, first and foremost, this section has to be here to provide the base of the post.  It has most of the information known so far that supports the theory, and then some.

Here, we see the Chara describe the bed on the right as Asriel’s bed.

Nothing seems off about this in the pacifist run. There it’s just described as a “twin-sized” bed.

But the narrator has areaction upon seeing the bed on the left in the Pacifist route. What’s so special about the left one? Why is it this one that prompts this reaction?

Chara’s bed. Chara’s deathbed.

That’s a pretty morbid comment to make; “If you laid down here you might not get up”. That sort of comment, especially in the pacifist run, is probably enough to make you squint and go “the fuck, my dude”. It’s completely out of left field. Most importantly, the narrator only had this reaction to Chara’s bed. The narrator knows Chara died here.

Why does that prove the theory?

They only seem to know what Frisk knows, and what they know.

At first, they don’t know what the plant in Toriel’s hallway is any more than Frisk  does.

Then Frisk reads the book about it…

Now the narrator knows what it is:

It’s another line that seems out of place the first time you see it - shouldn’t the narrator know everything? You’ve taught the narrator? Narrators, as you know, are supposed to be informative and helpful. There is no reason the narrator should fail to know something so obvious this soon in the game. They seem excited, too.

And they may not have known what a water sausage was called, but they knew what a golden flower looked like when they saw it at the very start, before anyone has even mentioned them or pointed them out. 

No one had to teach the narrator what this rare species of flower was name, even though they didn’t know what the common water sausage was called.

In addition narrator’s inconsistent botany knowledge, when you check the snow poffs in Snowdin, the narrator also shows a reaction to something they didn’t know before (after indulging in some serious sarcasm at Frisk’s incessant checking)

…and they seem a little dismayed to find there was something worth the repeated checks after all.

They also think Shyren’s tone deaf until Frisk starts singing with her…

And, my personal favorite:

The narrator doesn’t know everything and can learn or be proven wrong.

So we return to this neutral/pacifist line:

This narrator knows something about this bed that makes it different from the bed on the right. They react to this bed only, and pass this rather morbid, off-handed remark here. Mind you, this is still the pacifist run and white-text.

Despite not knowing everything, they know what happened here. Frisk does not yet know what happened in this bed. Chara does.

There is a jarring moment in the Pacifist run where the narrator completely breaks their usual way of narrating.

It’s Asriel’s phonecall.

The narrator has a huge reaction upon hearing his voice - the biggest emotional reaction they’ve had so far. The text spacing doubles out, the line delivers extremely slowly. This voice means something to them.

They just found out their best friend was alive after dying with him. Chara had no reason to believe Asriel was alive until then, speaking, breathing, and calling their name. They’re in shock.

They don’t show any reaction if you get the Snowdin phone call from Alphys, by the way, even though you’ve never met her, even if you’ve never reset (you can get this even if it’s your very first playthrough!). It’s Asriel’s voice, not the surprise phone call itself, that elicits this unique reaction.

There’s a mode called “Serious Mode” (full list of changes here[REPOSTER NOTE: the link is no longer embedded, no idea where this went. Probably just a wiki or another tumblr post]) in which the narrator drops the little jokes they usually make, particularly of the items:

Such as…

Buttspie

SpidrDont

Leg.Hero

Mandanna

to more serious versions…

Pie

SpdrDonut

L.Hero

Bandanna

and becomes very somber during the fight, and, at times, very quiet.

Serious Mode happens on four occasions:

Toriel’s fight, Asgore’s fight, Asriel’s fight, and the entirety of the Bad Times.

In other words, Serious Mode will only happen during Dreemur family fights on neutral/pacifist routes.

And speaking of Bad Times, examining the photograph of everyone smiling in New Home elicits a similar reaction:

Somehow, it still gives them pause, even after everything that’s happened. Even Flowey, after all his runs like this, was so jaded by then that his base reaction to these things was just “lol”.

Speaking of Flowey…

Flowey is not talking to you (although you are meant from a gamer’s perspective to take the following speech personally).

Chara can be named by you, but they don’t have to share your name.

(contrary to popular belief, which is the first screenshot taken out of context)

Your explicit instructions were to “Name the fallen child” not “What’s your name?” although the game plays off you assuming the latter.

Chara is not you. They have a true name.

And, seeing as how the other characters react if you try to use their name, and the speaking mannerism, this is Chara themself telling you this.

In the game, we play as Frisk.

And…

That expression he’s making in the first panel is not of someone talking to a stranger.

Flowey is talking to Chara at the end of the Pacifist run, with the same name he has been calling them the entire game, except now he knows that they and Frisk are not the same.

So what does he have to say?

After a deeply awkward, long pause, he informs them that everyone is happy.

…and that Chara shouldn’t worry about them.

After acknowledging their ability to reset, he then says that the power to save and reset is something Chara was fighting to stop.

He knows Frisk and Chara aren’t the same person, and he no longer over-idolizes Chara, but he has an idea that Chara, by the end of the Pacifist run, had been fighting the power to save and reset, asks them not to do it themselves, and tells them not to be worried about everyone.

Flowey says Chara was with Frisk during Pacifist, and cared enough about the safety of Frisk and their friends to worry about their happiness by the end of Pacifist.

Combine all that with these well-known screenshots…

The narrator is speaking in both of these screenshots (still in Toriel’s house) in white-text. The narrator didn’t say, “It’s you, Chara.” They said “me”.

The Chara=Narrator theory is made pretty obvious by this. The mirror dialogue could be taken as its “big reveal”.

You can read more evidence here, here, and here. [REPOSTER'S NOTE: Again, none of these are embedded for me anymore]

The narrator isn’t Gaster. His entry # 17, triggered in the True Lab (the only entry missing from the monitors) was done at the same time Alphys was conducting her Determination experiments (all other entries, except #17).

Meanwhile, the narrator…

…seems rather unsure about the whole True Lab.

And gosh diddly darnit, the narrator isn’t Toby. This is Toby:

The narrator isn’t Frisk.

 When Frisk’s name is revealed in pacifist, they say, “Still just you, Frisk,” (so the narrator obviously isn’t Frisk, even in Pacifist).

The “you” the narrator speaks of is always Frisk; Chara is never referred to with “you”. The “me”, the narrator themselves, is always Chara. It’s stated outright.

Chara’s narration also includes the narration in parentheses, such as:

There were no flowers when Chara fell (as seen in the intro) so the “you” is still Frisk. Other characters use parentheses occasionally too, as a thought, aside, or whisper. Frisk doesn’t speak outside parentheses either. “Still just you, Frisk” has no parentheses.

 Frisk is never the narrator. The narrator remains Chara on both runs; the first instance of “It’s me, Chara”, Frisk has no way of even knowing the name “Chara”, since it’s in Toriel’s home in the mirror, before Flowey calls them “Chara”. It’s Chara talking to Frisk, not the other way around.

Chara does speak in white text often in the Less Than Favorable Outcome…

…but they now seem to use red text to describe things they feel especially emotionally strong about something.

Red text is also used by the narrator in Pacifist, when they sarcastically get excited about something that’s not actually that interesting at all.

On top of that, the narrator seems to be explicitly in the same place as Frisk (which is, to say, in their head)

…because they didn’t say “You felt strange lying in the bed”. They said “It felt strange” and then say that it feels, to them, too small for Frisk now.

And it seems Frisk talks to the narrator on occasion.

The person is in Frisk’s head, can communicate with and be heard by Frisk, likes to make little morbid comments about Chara’s deathbed, gets very quiet on most routes when confronted by Dreemurs, reacts to Asriel’s voice, and only ever refers to themselves by name as “me, Chara” while referring to Frisk as “you, Frisk”.

(I’m a dirty liar, that wasn’t brief at all)

They seem excited upon seeing the toys in Toriel’s house. There’s a small pause in the narration (if you don’t skip) as they assess Frisk’s thoughts….

...then they’re disappointed when Frisk isn’t interested in the ‘cool’ toys; so, a child, with more childish tendencies than Frisk.

They can be very impatient with repeated checks of objects or people (on several occasions)...

(note that this particular example was added in the most recent patch. yes, extra narrator impatience was patched in. word)

They can be very critical of your choices...

They also have a sense of humor that runs from weeb shit, to puns, to sarcasm...

...even in serious situations:

So keeping in mind that Chara seems to be having a good enough time on neutral runs to joke around (even about their own death bed)...

... what happened?

The narrator is not having such a good time during the Unfun Run.

They become no-nonsense...

very impatient...

(even compared to their usual impatience with multiple checks; this time they simply refuse to give information on it twice)

angry...

completely focused on things that will aid the “mission”.

(Sound a little like a gamer speedrunning, doesn’t it?)

There’s an interesting clue to the narrator and their state of mind when you check the bag of dog food in the lab.

You see, unlike the dummy and tree, it’s affected by kill count, not LOVE.

If you kill no one…

Pacifist route text. You haven’t killed anyone at this point; the narrator is optimistic (”glass-full”). They're having a good time on this path. They’re hopeful.

After killing someone (even a single Whimsun, who won't even raise your LV at LV 1)...

 The narrator is pessimistic. The bag is now “half empty”. Their state of mind is directly changed by you killing even oneperson.

But if you kill Doggo, and your kill count is 21+….

The dog bag becomes funny. This is directly affected by killing Doggo and killing more than 20 people. The narrator doesn’t find his death funny before 20 kills. Something has changed in them.

Their view on the world is directly changed by how much you kill.

If you kill no one, they’re optimistic. They don’t want you to kill.

If you kill even once, they become pessimistic.

If you kill over 20 people then they can be sadistic, even on a non-genocide route.

But they do not find Doggo’s death funny unless you kill more than 20 people (which is more than the equivalent of an entire area’s worth of monsters). They did not find it funny before the kills corrupted them, or they would always find his death funny, even without the kills.

In addition to that, Chara becomes unrecognizable to Asgore in the Bippity Boppity Bad Path. Whereas before he was reminded of Chara when he saw Frisk...

in this route...

...they are completely unrecognizable, even when before he recognized the similarity in neutral/pacifist. Why is that?

Because in this run, Chara has changed. They were so unlike this during their lifetime that Asgore no longer even recognizes the murderous creature before him as human, much less resembling his child.

So how is Chara able to get that far gone?

They state outright that they woke up confused, and sought your guidance. You led them to this conclusion. Either they become optimistic and value life, or they think power is their reason for living, and it’s kill or be killed.

We’ve seen this before. Why is Chara able to be taught this way - to either extreme?

By the time we show up, Chara’s own soul is long gone.

This is how he’s able to recognize Chara in the Goddamn Bitch of an Unsatisfactory Situation. This is not a commentary on how Chara acted in life (because you’ve been killing countless monsters and there’s no way anyone would let that shit fly, and Asgore, again, couldn't recognize them,+ also their LOVE starts at 1)...

...but because your actions indicate someone empty of a soul, and that’s what Flowey is expecting of Chara if they were to come back to life like him.

Even after Chara saunters up with the same colored red soul they also had in life beating inside them, Flowey assumes it’s stolen (he’s wrong, it’s still Frisk’s, but more on that later).

Asgore has never seen a soulless, murderous person (being soulless is unprecedented until Flowey) but Flowey has, and he's been waiting for Chara to turn up as a soulless person, just like him.

Flowey is fully expecting that if Chara were reborn, they would be soulless, which is how he recognizes them: as “someone empty like me”, a being with no soul.  But how does he figure?

Their souls were combined. When Asriel lost his, Chara lost theirs. Their soul would suffer the same fate, because they were combined.

Chara confirms that they don’t have a soul by their comment here:

It seems as though they were once able to understand “these feelings” but are no longer able to.

Even with Frisk’s soul. Why is that?

Look what happened when Flowey got six souls. He turned into

Like Chara, who’s attached to Frisk’s soul even when they don’t “own” it, Flowey can feel what the souls are feeling, but those feelings are incomprehensible, not his own.

Frisk had to SAVE him while he had the souls to make him feel love again.

The Chara who’s doing the Dusty Dance here is about as much like the “original” Chara as the Flowey we meet is like Asriel. Flowey took a long time to get there on his own; he didn’t have a “guide”. Although when Frisk comes along...

Even soulless people can learn.

...one direction or another.

(non-pacifist neutral endings, had to use a transcript because I can’t find screens and I don’t want to reset and kill anything llollol)

This is what you’re doing. You either prove to Chara that you don’t have to kill (which seems to help them, going by the “half-full” statement and general spirit of the narrator at those times) or you teach them that killing is not just fine, but they HAVE to kill. Like Flowey, they seem highly suggestible, and they are looking to YOU for direction.

And like Flowey, if you show Chara any sign that this “kill or be killed” rule isn’t absolute, even after killing dozens of people, they hesitate. If you fail to kill everyone you possibly can in an area, no matter what it is or how much LOVE you’ve gotten, Chara will not kill Asriel. You’ll be bumped back on the neutral route.

I mean, it’s not like they can’t move your body for you at that point, but even so, they drop everything to see what you do next and don’t even try to “possess” you for the duration of the run.

But there is one point of no return.

If you teach Chara that Asriel’s way of thinking was wrong - for sparing lives and getting them both killed in the process - and to kill with no exceptions, they go on to kill him.

If they kill Asriel, it’s all over. Nothing you can do brings them back from this. They will immediately go on to destroy the world, because "there is nothing left for us here."

That’s what the Pacifist route is about, by contrast. 

If the narrator is optimistic upon seeing the "half-full" bag only when you haven't killed anyone...then they don't want you to kill anyone. They want to believe that Asriel was just trying to do the right thing.

Because if you don't kill anyone, then Asriel's "never kill, no matter what" actions are validated, and he didn't betray Chara by sparing the humans.

But you have to prove it.

If you kill even one creature, you show that there are circumstances you can kill in, meaning Asriel was wrong, and then the narrator is pessimistic, and says the bag is "half-empty".

You're doing the narrator a favor, making them happy, optimistic, by being a pacifist. You teach both Chara and Asriel that he was right all along. And this seems to make them both happier and more at peace, despite being soulless. They are able to let go of their regret and move on.

A soulless person has limitations, but not inevitabilities. They can show concern for others and retain a portion of their past identity.

Flowey cares about Frisk’s future at the end of their journey, and Chara fights alongside Frisk during their journey. Speaking of which...

This is a little more blatantly obvious than everything else. Any time Frisk loses consciousness in any way, on any run, one of Chara’s memories comes up. 

When Frisk goes to sleep....

Memory of Asgore telling Chara to wake up.

When Frisk falls from an incredible height after being chased by Undyne...

 Memory of Chara falling down.

When Frisk dies...

Memories of Chara’s death, and Asgore begging them not to die.

Not to mention the “jokes” Frisk tells Woshua, which draw unconsciously from Chara.

Frisk fell on their grave. 

Toriel took Chara when she left and gave them a burial in the ruins.

When she left for the ruins, there was only one golden flower in the entire Underground.

Harvesting seeds from it...

...she planted them, Chara's favorite flowers, over Chara's grave, where they were buried at the same place they first fell.

That’s why the coffin is empty, and how they came in contact with Frisk.

But other humans have fallen here before, right? Why attach to Frisk?

They’re both red souls. The coffin reads “Chara”. It seems Chara’s essence is only able to attach to the same kind of soul they had in life.

According to Chara themselves, they’ve been awake since more or less the beginning. Yes, even before you started doing the Monster Mash.

Their awakening wasn’t due to the all the murder - they woke up confused and then looked to you for guidance. It wasn’t like they smelled blood and went “oh gee whillickers!! I gotta have me a piece of this”.

They woke up due to Frisk’s power, which wasn’t LOVE but, as Chara says...

....Frisk’s human soul and determination.

As you might remember, Asriel was sleeping peacefully before the flower he was in was injected with determination. The determination revived him, woke him up. Frisk's determination, their "power that awakened me from death", also woke up Chara the exact same way. Chara was suddenly within a vessel that had enough determination to awaken a soulless essence.

Frisk has had more determination than the determination-injected-soul-revived Flowey since the moment they entered the Underground; Chara has been awakened by it since then, too.

Actually, it wasn’t at the very beginning. Although they are attached to Frisk when they fall on Chara’s grave (the stat menu) they are neither conscious, narrating, nor giving options...

In the very first room, you get no narration of any sort no matter how hard Frisk stomps around these flowers. It’s silent as the grave hahaha...

And during the fight with Flowey...

No narration (which would likely say something like “Perhaps don’t touch the “friendliness pellets”). No options.

And Chara’s name is not there.

Dates, storytime, sure. But even the fight where you “fake hit” Undyne has Chara’s name. Because it has the options interface. It’s expected that when bullets fly, and damage is dealt, you get your options interface. The options interface only shows up with Chara’s name.

And if you backtrack, even immediately after meeting Flowey, you get the narration:

The narrator's choice of words is interesting here - instead of saying “They broke your fall” they’re guessing that that’s what happened.

The narrator was not around to see Frisk’s fall, and up until the moment after Frisk meets Flowey, they weren’t even awake to say anything about it either. If you walk into the second room, then walk back, the flowers still can’t be read. You have to “meet” Flowey/Toriel.

From this moment on, you have Chara’s name on your battle interface, the narration, and your options during fights. And given what Flowey says here...

...there seems to be a reason for that.

At the end of Pacifist, Asriel has something he “feels like he should tell” Frisk.

Most likely, their connection works something like this. It seems that Chara even performs minor actions on their own during the pacifist route...

such as them opening to a page in a book, vs Frisk doing it...

...and if Frisk tries to “gift” Gyftrot after giving them 35G already, they are stopped.

...although it seems like Chara is generally content to take the back seat, as Asriel did for most of his and Chara’s walk on the surface. As they said, they woke up “confused”, and considered Frisk’s proceeding actions “guidance”.

They see what Frisk sees...

Smell what Frisk smells...

...taste what they do....

They can even feel pain.

And they seem to have enough insight into Frisk’s feelings to comment on them.

As for movement, whether or not they move Frisk’s body doesn’t seem to be dependent on LOVE. After all, they start walking on their own at a fairly low LOVE (6) ...

(namely, through all of Papyrus’s puzzles)

...and they completely stop moving Frisk’s body on their own if they spare anything, even if LOVE is high.

Not to mention, Chara had control over the Asriel-Chara Combo Pack while they had no LOVE, and Asriel took control back when he had no LOVE. It seems purely dependent on how much either person wants to move.

In other words, they always have the ability to move Frisk, but mostly choose not to do anything against their will. That’s because...

LOVE isn’t power.It's just a unit of measurement, to measure how much a person is willing to hurt people.

This is what you increase when you execute a monster.

That’s why your stats increase; you’re not gaining power, you’re emotionally distancing yourself, and, through you, increasing Chara’s capacity to hurt, which, by the way...

Starts at 1.

This is what they mean by “We defeated the enemy, and became strong”. At a LOVE of 20, strong to them means this means “emotionally invulnerable, distanced enough to hurt and not get hurt”. This is how they can bring themselves to destroy the world at the end.

It’s likely that they were always able to ERASE the world, having already the power to SAVE and RESET, but that is was a choice not to.

Flowey even says so when he talks to Chara at the end of Pacifist.

In fact, once Flowey regains control over the timeline, he is able to destroy a SAVE file.

So what do you think happens if you're the one in charge of the timeline, and you destroy your own SAVE file? When no SAVEs exist any longer?

Flowey himself seemed to be shooting for this goal, too.

This is why Chara thought you were killing the monsters; to build up enough “strength” to go through with complete annihilation. To leave nothing that would attach you to the world. This is what they thought your guidance was for on that route.

So...why aren’t they using their control over Frisk more if they always can?

Boutta make a wild statement.

 ...and as for what Frisk needs help with, that can change dramatically.

They give Frisk options they think could work during fights and whatever info they have on objects you check (knowledge including deathbeds...but not water sausages).

They even tell them how to spare monsters outright if they know.

(this check can occur even before Loox says anything if check is picked first)

They can point out weaknesses....

Or give Frisk advice on dodging....

Of course, we know Chara’s not all-knowing. They seem stumped at Mettaton initially - at this point an invincible metal box with no weak point - so they put this as an option instead.

"I'm helping."

- Chara, probably.

Thanks, Chara.

They cannot tell a monsters stats if a monster tries to hide them...

...but it is clearly the narrator who is providing the check text.

This is not Muffet telling you to decline any invitations she offers you.

This is not Mettaton telling you his weak point, as he is very honestly trying to kill you.

This is not Endogeny wondering how many dogs they count as (they can't even speak).

And it makes no sense for all monsters to suddenly refer to themselves in (sometimes insulting) third-person. It's the narrator who provides the CHECKS, but not the stats.

As for Frisk themself, they get subjected to some light teasing...

...but they seem to be regarded affectionately.

Chara excitedly points them out in the mirror,

sings them what appears to be a nursery rhyme on their first CHECK (I wonder if Frisk is much younger than them?)

calls them cute,(get out of here shippers, this isn’t a shipping post)

and once New Home is reached, if Frisk, despite being attacked at almost turn, has chosen not to kill everything that attacked them, Chara sounds impressed with them.

This, when they could have just said “It’s you” again.

After all, they were once faced with a similar situation. Going back to what was said before, they are being taught that Asriel’s decision was right on such routes, and it’s working.

However, aside from their morbid comment about their deathbed, which apparently they just could not hold back, they have chosen to try to avoid disclosing their exact identity from Frisk by withholding certain information about all the other items in New Home.

Why is that?

Chara seems to be a pretty introverted, quiet person.

If we note their posture, they’re much more tense than Asriel, and are using flowers to hide their face. Smells like anxiety ( and not the super-confident, hyper-aggressive flirty yandere everyone keeps portraying them as for some reason).

Asriel was their best friend, and... well, they haven’t known Frisk for that long, and they’re not about to tell practically a stranger (albeit, one they are sharing a body with) every detail about their entire past life within like, a week??

Hey, does this sound familiar?

Flowey never reveals what his identity in the past was - Asriel - until he thinks you're his best friend. Likewise, Chara doesn't really think it's relevant what their name was before they died...

...but no need to hide things like that from their best friend, right?

It’s like I said before. On the Pacifist run, you teach them that what Asriel did had merit. Frisk survives, makes friends, and helps get the ”best” ending, all without fighting back, even when attacked.

But if you’re riding on the Asshole Avenue, you do the pretty much worst thing possible. You teach Chara that Asriel was wrong to not kill, that the “mission” is worth more than anyone’s lives. Which means he betrayed them. Their most trusted person... And then, it seems, as a coping mechanism, they project this relationship on Frisk in his place.

Hey, does this sound familiar?

“I don’t know why I ever acted like you were the same person. (pause) Maybe...the truth is...Chara wasn’t really the greatest person, while, Frisk...you’re the type of friend I wish I always had. So maybe I was kind of projecting a little bit”.

Asriel wishes he could have always been friends with someone like Frisk, so he projects the persona of someone he was always friends with - Chara - on to them. If you take the Highway to Hell, this happens in reverse.

Remember that locket? The one that says “Best Friends Forever”?

...the one left on Asriel’s side of the room?

...the one Asriel generates on his image of “The God of Hyperdeath”?

It does not appear on either of his true forms, so it’s not ‘really’ there, but a projection he creates.

There are two presents in this room, indicating one is meant for the other. The one on Chara's side of the room is a worn dagger, useful, according to them, for gardening (and excited-about-watersausages, constantly-drawing-golden-flowers Chara seems to like plants). The one on Asriel's side of the room is a single heart-shaped locket.

It’s possible there were matching lockets, but if that’s the case, the one Frisk picks up is likely Asriel’s; Chara would have been buried in theirs, and it explains why he’s not “really” wearing it when Frisk has it. It’s also possible given that it’s called “The Locket” that there is only one, also possibly indicated by there only being one in the present box.

Regardless, the locket in the box seems to be Asriel’s. This locket belongs to Chara’s best friend.

Which, in this run, is Frisk.

The “you” is always Frisk. Chara has already use first-person pronouns to describe themselves at this point. “In my way”, “My bed” but still refers to “you” often. Even in this route, the description on the golden flowers is still “They must have broken your fall”.

 It was neither Chara or the player who fell on these flowers, but Frisk. “You”, as Frisk, are still the one walking around. So when Frisk equips the Locket...

The locket is right where it belongs.

Forever.

You, the player, who objectively know Asriel was right outside of the game, inflict that great pain of betrayal on them and manipulate them into thinking you are the better partner by comparison. That Asriel wasn’t their best friend, but you are.

Chara doesn’t hate or even want to take over Frisk in this route. Far from it. That doesn’t mean they’re all sunshines and rainbows, though.

In pacifist, Frisk can get subjected to numerous bouts of impatience from the narrator (who seems to get weary and annoyed with repeated checks especially) but for the most part it seems like they’re trying to humor the kid.

Sometimes they turn repeated checks into little jokes, like the “Snow Poff” conversation, or this one if you keep turning the sink on/off:

But in this route they're angry and impatient  The underlying fury of being “betrayed”, the potential for moral depravity that comes with being soulless having been met to its utmost, colors their every interaction with every being, including their new partner.

They snap at them upon checking the presents in Snowdin...

won’t offer up the “snowdecahedron” joke...

The overall tone in this route is “What are you doing? Let’s go.”

But, even so, there are seldom occasions in which they actually remove control from Frisk McChecksalot (actually, the player).

In fact, you remain in control for most of the route, being able to move, act, and spare on your own with no interference. These occasions that Chara is acting stand out very starkly from the rest of the route because they’re the ones you can’t control.

...and they mostly seem to be a case of someone sitting next to you and yanking the controller out of your hands, going, “AUGH!! LET!! ME!! DO!! IT!!!!”

But these actions aren’t all insignificant. Even though you, the Player, are at the head of this dust bath, and they are sitting back and letting you “guide” them for the most part (if you hit the fight button, the kill is yours) they make a few “contributions”.

They make an initial mistake in their narration (lmao) but they’re still suggesting battle plans for you, so you are actually the one fighting this fight, not Chara...mostly.

At the very end, that last strike is not from your input. After your attack is dodged, they quickly make a second - the first time they attack on their own.

and their first kill. Since LOVE hasn't increased before their strike and is still 19, this proves they could have fought without your input but allowed you to be in control for this fight as well, even including the "Spare"  option. You were still "guiding" them.

After this, they then quickly march on to the garden, and kill the two people waiting there. Not because they don’t trust you to (after everything, I’m sure they’re fully expecting you to) but because, I think, they felt they should be the one to do it.

This route ends with their kill count technically at three, but as they feel they’re in partnership with Frisk and therefor an accessory to all the murders, they both share the LOVE and EXP for all kills.

Then...

They go on a spiel about the nature of stats, give thanks, praise, etc. Emphasis is placed on your actions being done willingly and their partnership. Here’s where things get interesting.

They give this option. This can be seen similar to a “fight” or “mercy” button, for the world this time. Obviously, they've been conditioned to expect you to choose "fight", or "erase".

 Interestingly, they can erase the world themselves, but still provide an option dialogue for this. It’s as I said; they’re not interested in taking over. They believe they’re following your guidance (or what they think is Frisk’s, rather, but you are controlling Frisk) and a person can’t be guided if they take over all the time.

That, of course, doesn’t mean they can’t take over.

The option dialogues are a courtesy. Chara could’ve taken over at any time, but allowed you to do what you would - to guide them, one way or another, because they woke up confused and didn’t trust themselves after the failure of the plan. That’s what they meant.

You have led them on to believe this is what you were after all along. If you choose “erase”:

They're like “right, exactly as I thought. You’re great, we’ll be together forever” and they’re practically making heart eyes. or whatever the hell those are

Choosing no...

They get a little flustered, if not dismayed. I mean, they just killed their family not five minutes ago for you - including their best friend, who they thought betrayed them, who they replaced with you... who just betrayed them.

You were not after some lofty goal like destroying the world, you were killing because it was fun, because the world is your playground, when Chara assumed you were on some kind of mission. An appropriate amount of pissiness ensues.

Regardless of your choice, they strike down the world...

...not Frisk; this is erasure of world, visualized; the window of Undertale shakes, and we know what Frisk getting attacked and killed looks like.

If you wait on the screen for several minutes, making your intention to go back clear, and retroactively making it obvious you did the run for fun, not a “purpose”, they chew you out.

After venting their annoyance at you (and confirming this route’s actions were mostly on you), they suggest a compromise.

This confirms that, throughout the route, Frisk still had their soul. Otherwise, it couldn’t be used as a bargaining chip here.

You’ve never had your soul taken more politely. They asked for permission. They even double-checked to make sure. They give you want you want in return.

Except, it’s not your soul. Chara thinks they’re talking to Frisk when they ask for “your” soul (they think they’ve been talking to Frisk this whole time) and it is Frisk’s soul that they take. Otherwise, this...

...couldn’t happen. congrats. you just sold an 8~ year old’s soul. asshole.

Of course, that leaves the question of why they do this during these endings.

I believe they’re trying to hold you accountable.

It’s right after this statement that they suggest the “compromise”. If you kill everyone for fun, reset, and try to live happily after with them, they can now shut it down. They don't really interfere in the neutral endings. You led them to their point of no return - killing Asriel - and they make sure you can’t return from it, either.

But if you bring back the world and don’t try to get a happy ending, they chew you out anyway.

“Kinkshamed again!”

- you, probably

And they are so weirded out that they feel an obligation to tell you to do, literally, anything else.

"Despite me not understanding feelings anymore, I feel morally obligated to tell you to do something else".

Some people have suggested this is to “kill humanity themselves” but. come on. LOVE is just your willingness to hurt. That shit cuts through monsters like a hot knife through butter, but out in the real world they’re just an angry baby with a gardening tool, humanity could fend them off with a wet mop.

On top of that, the destruction of humanity is literally only one soul away.

Asgore would have taken Frisk's soul and wiped them out, and by killing the children up close and personal, he's proven he has the mettle to do it. If Chara wanted humanity destroyed, they need only give Asgore Frisk's soul. They could even inhabit the now completely soulless, determination-infused body like Flowey does if they chose. They do not ever go this route.

Plus, it’s a pointless act when they can already destroy the world, and Chara’s whole reason for being pissed at you is for killing when you didn’t really have a point, then dodging responsibility for it.

They don’t stop trying to hold you accountable on the second pass, either.

Functionally, you paid for the game so you have to be able to play it, but that doesn’t stop this pissed-off 12~ year old from appointing themself your final, unkillable judge if you choose to murder everyone just for funsies and then act like you can get away with it.

That’s why they’re here in this route. Chara is Undertale’s very last stand in a long, long effort to try to make you responsible for what you do here.

Aside from narrating, Chara makes their own contributions for Frisk at the end of this route, too.

After ascertaining that neither they or Frisk can move their body, or reach the save file, they give this suggestion with zero prompting:

Once they’ve thought of it, they then give you an entirely new option on the option menu.

And if you go to SAVE your friends, but back out of it (with shift or x)...

...they get shocked beyond speech, because why the hell would you back out of saving them.

But they’re not even sure at first if this is going to work.

Until it does.

And when Frisk finally gets to the point where they SAVE Asriel, they need to trigger memories of friendship with him somehow - that’s how they saved the others, by reminding them of the times they shared together.

Puzzles, fighting, jokes, phone calls, hugs. It seems that they can only use memories they’ve shared with their friends themself to save them; they can’t save Alphys by using Undyne’s memories.

Frisk has no such shared memories with Asriel they can use to SAVE him.

Fortunately, they know someone who does.

Asriel’s memories with Chara are triggered.

For the rest of the fight while Asriel talks to Chara about how much he cares them, the narrator lapses into complete silence.

After all this, they stick with Frisk until the end...

...but there’s no way of knowing what happens to them after The End.

Flowey dropped by to give Chara that status report, which can’t be physically next to Frisk...

...but the Mysterious Black Void is kind of a special place; it’s unknown if it’s even a “place” or how one reaches it or communicates with beings inside it. Someone is addressed by Flowey here in Neutral endings, too.

So their status and future after the events of Pacifist are unknown.

Buuut, we do know a little about their past before the events of Pacifist, if not after.

As far back as the KS, the legend has been “those who climb the mountain never return”. According to the story, Chara trips and falls in while trying to get a closer look at the hole, but we’re more concerned with why they climbed the mountain.

“Why would you climb a mountain people are said to disappear from?”

...wanted to disappear?

This unhappy third reason was why Chara wanted to climb the mountain.

The “small child” who was scaling Mt Ebott was trying to commit suicide.

Asriel doesn’t state the reason outright to Frisk, but Flowey’s conversation with Chara makes it obvious what this meant.

“I decided it wasn’t worth living anymore, so, like you, I tried to die”.

As we know, Chara’s successful, later suicide attempt was planned, from Asriel’s point of view, around the idea of having their soul in Asriel’s body, which would not erase them from existence. Flowey is referring to their “unhappy reason” for climbing the mountain. They tried to "erase themselves from existence". 

There are indications that Chara fell before monsters left to go to "New Home", and was the deciding factor for them journeying to the other end of cavern.

The first is that it seems Asriel lived in the Ruins Home for a time, as the child’s room in the Ruins Home is called...

...Asriel's room.

And he, Toriel, and Asgore all have their chairs at the Ruins Home table.

Two big chairs for two big goats, one little chair for a little goat.

On top of that, Asriel seems to have been in the Ruins close enough to hear the injured Chara.

Chara likely stayed there for a little while (say, two weeks to a month, apparently not long enough to justify buying them their own furniture yet) as one of their golden flower drawings, identical to the one they put up in the same place in the New Home room, is hanging up in the Ruins Home room.

As we know, the reason the monsters retreated the farthest end of the tunnel from the barrier after being trapped is because they were afraid of the humans on the other side.

However, something changed. After millinia of being in one end of the cavern in the Ruins, where Asriel was born and where he found Chara, monsters very suddenly decided they weren't afraid of humans anymore.

...and journeyed to New Home.  (there also appears to be a missing history book volume in between these two volumes)

Asgore himself had also changed his mind about humans killing them all once they left the barrier. 

Why would he change his mind after all those millenia?

Because he had the "future of humans and monsters". 

 Chara fell when the monsters were still in the Ruins, and was heavily implied to make them unafraid of humans any longer after millenia, brave enough now to populate the rest of the cavern rather than staying as far away from the barrier as possible, and heavily implied to have changed Asgore's mind about humans too.

By necessity, we’re going to have to toe the line of HOPE a little here, since Chara has never stated the reason for this outright in their entire life.

This statement comes right after “I know why Chara climbed the mountain. It wasn’t for a very happy reason.” with no pause; Chara’s reason for climbing a mountain people disappear from, for wanting to “erase themselves from existence”, is related to their reason for hating humanity.

But, unlike their reason for climbing the mountain...

they refuse to talk about this, even with Asriel. Suicide is already a very private topic, which they were willing to breach with Asriel, so there is something even more private going on they explicitly don’t want him to know about.

And no, it’s not because they killed someone.

These are their starting stats. Their Level of Violence is 1, correlating with 0 Execution Points, which go up any time the Frisk-Chara Combo Pack kills someone.

Was their reason for hating humanity because humanity is objectively the worst, ever?

Nah, Asriel knows this already. It seems they’ve probably talked about this. At length.

So the reason they hated humanity is tied to something specific, private enough that Asriel can’t know, not murder, and big enough that they wanted to erase themselves.

In relation to this, I’d like to call attention to an indisputable fact.

The distance between the village and what they see as Death Mountain is about the distance of the underground, which we can walk Frisk through in a day or two. Given its track record, people are probably forbidden from going there, so they’re not hitching a ride there and since they're children (the coffins all being the same size as Chara's coffin and Frisk's sprite barely fitting into one) they're not driving either. 

The children who flung themselves into the Underground probably had to walk there on their own. They probably all came from the same settlement. Eight children who came from this village all tried to "erase themselves from existence" in a relatively short span of time.

Also, by the time they get Underground, they have something in common.

Context: after you reset and she guesses your favorite flavor.

Context: Asgore completely unsurprised to hear you can come back from the dead and have many times. He fought the other children, and it seems he’s heard this story before.

The children who climbed the mountain and came from the same village as Chara somehow had the ability to SAVE and RESET on their journey. But they gave up at the end, and without determination, they died for real, and their ability to save and reset was passed to someone else.

We know that only one being can hold save/load powers at a time, since Flowey's are taken away when a being with more determination arrives. For some reason, this individual has been the fallen children on many occasions if not all of them, and that's no coincidence. There is a reason for that.

I believe Chara also had that power. Frisk’s SAVE file is in their name.

And there’s this question that Flowey asks them at the end of Pacifist.

He’s asking them if the power to save and reset was one they were fighting to stop. Given that they use this power along with Frisk even in Pacifist (to, at the very least, keep them both alive), I he may be referring to their efforts in life. Maybe they believed their death would erase this power. They likely lost it upon committing suicide, having lost their will to live/determination.

And how does this relate to their possible reason for hating humanity, that they could never tell Asriel about?

Even after he says Chara was fighting to stop the resets, he makes this accusation. I think this is what they might have been afraid of. (although this is a fair accusation, because starting the game up could only indicate that there is an intention to reset and play again, and he has picked up on that and only confronts them if it is started again) 

But Chara seems to hate the power to reset's potential for using it to dodging responsibility. Your attempt to abuse it completely sets them off.

They have an overwhelming drive to hold you responsible for the actions you take, to prevent you from getting away with outright abusing the power for fun without consequences.

It's possible that their secret power to reset is linked to their reason for hating humanity, which means it, too, must remain secret. That the humans in the village tried to abuse their power, and the humans were never held accountable for it, and that other children who could reset were driven up the mountain decades later for the same reason.

It would also explain some strange actions taken by Chara during the trip outside the barrier.

We know Chara has some kind of real fixation on these flowers - they have drawings they made of the golden flowers next to their bed. But I don't believe they made this request, and carried their body over just to see the flowers.

Was it to force an attack on Asriel? Hell no. Chara already has control over his body before they even pick up their body. And he's already agreed to take six souls. If they had any idea that Asriel would have "betrayed" them, they would not have trusted him with the reason they climbed they mountain, the locket, and their soul.

I think the beliefs of the villagers and their subsequent attack was an accident that the combined intellectual "might" of two 12~ year olds couldn't have predicted. Plus...

It seems that the monster-human combination with one soul is a little frightening to look at. The God of Hyperdeath has enough souls to generate an image to his liking, but with one soul, his appearance is "very unsettling" and described by even the monsters as a "horrible beast". The villagers might have assumed he must have killed the child he was holding because of his appearance.

And if Chara really wanted the villagers to attack, they could have mutilated their own body in front of them, faked an attack on their corpse; all they did was carry it to the golden flowers. The image was likely similar to a parent carrying their sleeping child to bed.

But I do think Chara wanted the villagers to see their dead body.

Chara, for reasons unknown to us, has an extreme fixation on holding people accountable and responsible for their actions. Their reason for hating humanity - I believe this originated from the villagers, who did something so awful that Chara thought an appropriate punishment for them was death. 

They want the villagers to see their dead body; to hold them responsible for driving them up the mountain, to show them the reason they were about to die. And if Chara had the power to reset as long as they had determination, that the villagers abused, Chara’s death even being a possibility is an indication to everyone that they lost the will to live.

I think they're trying to say...

And I don't think their eventual plan was to restart a war on humanity - they seemed to truly want to break the barrier.

That said, would they have been altogether that fussed if monsters managed to defeat the hated humans, and regain control over the earth, after being slaughtered and trapped underground? Probably not. Many monsters themselves, during the events of Undertale, are "so hype for the destruction of humanity", after all.

And no, I don't believe "premeditated murder is A-okay as long as one's backstory is tragic" (which no one has ever claimed), but this way of thinking is also analogous to the monsters believing it is alright to kill seven children to break the barrier, despite monsters souls supposedly being made of love and compassion; it is a flawed "ends justify the means" sort of thinking and Undertale's message is that there is no right reason to take a life.

Chara also refers to the plan to break the barrier as "our plan", not "my plan".

Their plan was to "just" take six souls - this was as far as the plan was Asriel-approved and could be called "our plan", which was...

If there had been any ulterior motive besides that they would have said "my plan", although Asriel realizes in hindsight that breaking the barrier with murdered souls would mean having to battle the vengeful humans beyond, as his father was on his way to doing, after declaring war on them.

It’s worth mentioning that the narrator has a little moment when the barrier is broken:

It's one of the very few moments when the narration voice goes nonstandard in the game, and it even matches Chara's way of speaking at the end of the Lethal Limbo (but it's not as slow and spaced out as their reaction to Asriel's phonecall). The breaking of the barrier spawns an emotional reaction in them.

They may have even thought breaking the barrier was their purpose, as someone who was "the future of monsters and humans".

Remember what Asgore tells them on their deathbed?

They've probably heard this line before. This is the angle Asgore pleads to them from.

Now, as a singular human with a singular human soul, knowing monsters can absorb human souls to exit the barrier that's trapped them for millenia, how does one become the "future of monsters and humans"?  How would you, as a suicidal child, have interpreted that line?

How would you have fulfilled your dad's wishes for you to become "the future of humans and monsters" knowing what resources were available to you: your one human soul, your boss monster pal...and your knowledge of where to find 6 of some very bad humans' souls?

We know they held this line very close to their heart, because...

...even after death, they remember it.

There are clues scattered around New Home, and in the behavior of living characters, that indicate that Chara had a mutual love of their adoptive family.

Toriel obviously cared for Chara very much. She took them with her to the Ruins to give them a proper burial when they died...

she took the seeds of their favorite flower to plant over their grave...

and even has one of these flowers in her room.

And, after she leaves Frisk at the door of the ruins, when she thinks she'll never see them again, she goes to stand quietly by Chara’s grave.

Chara, who I believed loved all of them very much, likely thought very highly of her. Their way of speaking (if not necessarily their tone) sounds very like hers:

Some of the narration even sounds like it could have come from Toriel herself.

And given Toriel's reputation for being a strong and intelligent person,

they might have thought of her as a role model.

They also seem to have inherited her sense of humor.

During the battle with her they give the check option:

and when she finally starts relenting, and talks about taking care of Frisk and begging them to go upstairs, their narration turns to silence.

If she is killed, then, even on the Violent Venue - where Chara had thought talking to her about what they're doing was useless - they express sadness while walking around her home.

Asgore and Chara seem to have been pretty close.

Flowey even makes a comment on this...

That, even where Flowey's "hundreds of methods" couldn't get Asgore to show the souls, he'd do it for Chara...implying that Flowey thought there was some favoritism going on. you made the whole room awkward, Flowey.

Asgore seems to have held hopes during Chara's life that they would become "the future of monsters and humans".

...a hope which he immediately puts on Frisk after deciding that the look in their eyes is similar to Chara's.

But we know that Asgore cared about them far beyond that potential, as he is still attached to them after they've died.

During the events of Undertale, Asgore seems to have developed an attachment to their favorite flower...

...it's even on his trident.

and he drinks it as tea.

(which Chara seems to like, too)

Seeing as the gift to them in their room is described by them as a simple garden tool (on everything but That One Occasion When You Try to Kill Literally Everyone)

and how excited they were to learn what the hell is a water sausage

it's probable that Chara and Asgore spent a lot of time in the garden together; maybe this was when Chara starting bringing up the golden flowers, and why he cultivates them after their death.

And it seem that Chara was highly attached to him too. Walking around new home, one can discover this tidbit about a "pink, hand-knit sweater":

They know the sweater was hand-knit, and there's a pause when the narrator sees it, implying some surprise.

And it's so relevant to the narrator that it even has red text associated it, in which they express interest in that he still has it.

Their bed ("my bed") does not have red text, but "my drawing", their picture of the golden flower, does, implying that they were the one who made it for him.

Meanwhile, the bureau with a Santa Claus outfit inside is given no pause by the narrator in Pacifist...

and is dismissed completely in the Significantly Unpacifist route.

...completely unlike the sweater. The narrator is not surprised to find this goofy object is owned by Asgore, they're surprised because he still has the sweater they gave him. A likely huge sweater, that they knit by hand.

Given that it says "Mr. Dad Guy" it seems that they once called him this (either as a slip in regular conversation or because they couldn't quite say "Dad" outright) and it become an in-joke for them.

The fight with Asgore starts out with some narration...

...but once Asgore strikes out the Mercy button, and it becomes clear you'll have to fight him, they go dead silent for the entire fight.

And during the fight with him, the narration doesn't even try to give him any CHECK text - it simply says Asgore and gives his stats.

They're not enjoying this.

Post-death, Asgore's relationship with Chara is complicated. By this time he's already declared war on humans, so he tried to keep them in a cold, above-ground coffin with the rest of the children, perhaps as a way to detach, and talks of having a child.

Since he and Toriel knew, while Chara was dying of the same symptoms Asgore had had, that Chara was trying to commit suicide...

...it’s possible he felt they had a role in Asriel's death when he declared war "in a fit of anger".

But he also describes them this way:

(a look of hope he sees in Frisk's eyes right after he offers to make them a family; it seems Chara possessed similar hope for this to work once.)

And given that he still has the sweater they made him (maybe this is why Chara was surprised to see it?) and the ongoing motif of golden flowers, I don't think he every succeeded in hating them, if that's what he was going for. I don't think Asgore has it in him to truly hate anyone.

And Chara remembers the words he told them on their deathbed, and seems to have kept them close...

as Chara remembers them every time the Frisk and Chara Combo Pack™ die, and finds the determination to come back.

So about that buttercup incident.

Would they really try to kill someone they cared about this much?

Asriel describes it as an accident they both made together regarding the word "buttercup" being close to "cups of butter".

Chara didn't even know what a water sausage looked like; their knowledge wasn't perfect. Even I didn't know until Undertale that buttercups were poisonous, and I once dug a hole for a jalepeno plant. A whole hole.

If they really, really wanted a boss monster soul, they could have gone after the weaker Asriel's soul, or just attacked outright; even in pacifist, with a LV of 1, Frisk can cut through Asgore and bring him to his knees with ease. Humans are just that strong.

And Chara wouldn't have had Asriel as a witness to the pie-baking if they were doing something secretly murderous to his father.

Plus they could have just reset until it worked, if that was what they were after.

(And why didn't they reset after the poisonings?)

There is, however, an indication of their true feelings towards this incident.

They've decided to use buttercups to kill themselves.

Buttercup poisoning - a truly atrocious way to die, if you've ever read about the symptoms - is their preferred method of suicide.

This child, who climbed the mountain looking for a way to die, must have been able to think of other options...that "gardening tool" they had, falling, maybe even the bullets of a monster. Instead they chose a particularly painful, gruesome way to die, the symptoms of which everyone would recognize as buttercup poisoning, ruining any potential efforts to conceal their suicide.

Which it did.

Why?

They're holding themself accountable this time. They might have considered it "making up" for their mistake.

Toriel even seems worried that Chara might think that she and Asgore are angry with them about the incident (given that it's their choice of suicide) and tries to reassure them that they both want Chara to wake up:

...So why’d they laugh about it?

I think it's important to realize that "laughing something off" doesn't just mean standing there chuckling like an asshat. It means "to make light of a situation", which is a process that can include making jokes and laughing.

Also, given the context:

It seems that they managed to diffuse the situation with Toriel by making jokes (probably relating to butter puns), which is why Asriel mentions "laughing it off" as something he thought was the correct thing to do.

Actually laughing at his dad's pain itself would never be seen as the right thing to do by Asriel (jesus, he's not stupid) and would definitely have alarmed the aforementioned Toriel, whose bullshit detector, by the way...

...could fry a snail at 25 yards.

Given that they kill themselves painfully with buttercups, it seems they really were deeply, deeply disturbed by what happened, made light of it to cope and de-escalate the situation, and this was their chosen method of making it up to them: enduring the symptoms themselves and giving their soul up in an effort to break the barrier.

There's another clue to this later on, in the True Lab:

For Snowy's mother, you are given the same act options with her as you did with her son (the other amalgamates also have options relating to their less drippy counterparts).

But choosing laugh elicits a very strange reaction from the narrator (who is already acting strangely, repeating "It's so cold" over and over the entire fight).

They seem to have zoned out completely during the fight, and describe an action that Frisk does not, in fact, do, but more likely what Chara themselves felt like doing.

Choosing to laugh again makes the Chara snap at you:

And, despite laughing "until tears ran down their face", they don't say "But you don't think it's funny". They say "But it's not funny". It's a statement of fact, not of Frisk's feelings; Chara doesn't think it's funny.

Interestingly, there's a situation that corresponds to this.

It's Snowy's dad. Consider that you're talking to Snowy's mother here.

It’s a parallel to what he said. Neither Chara nor Snowy's father think it's funny, and they say so outright.

Seems they're using laughter to cope with a situation that disturbs them so much that they became disoriented and even incorrectly describe something Frisk completely didn't do.

And that the laughter is a stress response that they "can't stop", even while they're crying.

Which is, uh, hardly unheard of.

And, interestingly, choosing to "heckle"...

...results in an even more disoriented response, in which they don't even state what they think you did, but guess you said "something like it". It's a little concerning to think where they may have pulled this exact response from.

Choosing to heckle again results in them heckling you.

This response wasn't something "you" said, so it wasn't said out loud. Given that this space is for Frisk's ears, or else this dialogue would have raised some goat-brows...

...they are directing this towards you, who have chosen on your own to "heckle" twice. This is a parallel to the somewhat snappy "But it's not funny" that they say upon you choosing "laugh" twice (which must confuse them), and also to another situation.

If you continue to heckle - and continue to heckle - Snowy over and over, suddenly Frisk says something quite mean, and the narrator's tone is obviously dismayed. Likewise, it's a little concerning to think where Frisk might have pulled this response from.

Although some think the "you", unlike ever before, issomehow Chara here because Frisk is a Mary Stu who can do no wrong. Actually, it is the player who chooses the action. Frisky Bits just does the details.

Chara also gets concerned if you keep ignoring Greater Dog...

And they get pretty judgmental about the candy dish.

All the bad ACTs are on you, if you choose them. Saying the bad ones must be all Chara and the good ones must be Frisk is just wrong, when all ACTs are done by "you", the player, Asshole in Chief. If anything is done by Chara, they always narrate it as "I", and since you're controlling Frisk, Frisk’s actual input is limited.

Chara's just providing the options, so you can act good, or bad (or "burn", or "cry")  with complete freedom, thus not impairing your "guidance" with any bias that actually prevents you from choosing an action.

Mostly.

As for the laughter in the Edgy Exigency, these times are a case of corruption, calling back to earlier...

...in which the dog food bag only becomes funny after killing 21+ people. Since it was not funny before, it can be surmised that there's been a critical change in the narrator directly from killing over 20 people.

Basically, you turned them into another Flowey (except one who's in Frisk's head) who really does laugh at misfortune, even though it isn't Flowey's true nature, and it's not Chara's, either, or they'd always find the bag funny if all the dogs were dead.

It doesn't take just a soulless person to find this funny; it takes corrupting them, too.

Back to goats.

Okay, so obviously these two were close in life.

The other monsters noted that they became like siblings.

Flowey says that they were "inseparable".

They were constant playmates:

And together in embarrassment over the nose-nuzzles.

They also seemed to confide in one another and talk quite a lot:

Asriel might have played a caretaker role of sorts to Chara. He knew they were suicidal, and there's a line of Flowey's that sticks out:

He had some sort of reason to think Chara would find it surprising that he was suicidal and that he would want to "follow in their footsteps".

It's possible that he tried to talk them into wanting to live, or encouraged them, and reassured them, on more than one occasion, and that this is why Flowey thinks Chara might not believe he'd try to "follow in their footsteps" and "erase himself from existence".

Asriel also tries to caretake Frisk, too.

It's who he is. Asriel is a person of sympathy and compassion, two huge fundamental aspects of his personality (which is why he changed so much when he lost the ability to feel those things), whereas Chara seems to be a person of empathy and analysis.

During their conversations, Chara likely relayed some of their experiences or views on humans to him:

even if the exact reason they hated humanity stayed secret. It was likely during those conversations that their strong hatred for humanity became apparent.

And it seems that Chara might have tried to take care of Asriel in the same way, given this line exists:

During this part of that run, Flowey hasn't said this before, so it was something he told them during life. Asriel told Chara during their lifetimes that "they were the only one who understood him".  Except this time, Chara is unique in that they're the only other person able to share the experience of being soulless.

He also says this during the Pacifist run:

It seems that Asriel was also going through something during this time of his life, and Chara offered up (apparently accurate) analyses of his character or his feelings, which made him feel understood by them.

Chara does have the potential for trying to "caretake" someone, given that they try it with Frisk sometimes...

and they also spend a lot of time analyzing Frisk's feelings during the narration.

However, Chara seems to be able to be very strict sometimes regarding acting "grown-up" (even with their way of speaking) ...

so it seems they and Asriel must have been close or the same age, and Chara very determined that he act his age to the point of harshness.

They seem relent on this somewhat with Frisk, giving them the option to "Cry" on the battle with the then-invincible MTT (so maybe Frisk is a few years younger?)...

but they draw the line on acceptable sobbing conduct for someone Frisk's age, um, somewhere.

(it should be noted that this is the narrator speaking, not MTT, who already has a speech bubble next to him and speaks in all caps)

But according to Flowey, they seem to have had fun playing together:

But for Asriel, it's not just because they're "special" for still being fun to play with and understanding him:

He just really, really cares about them.

Like, really really cares about them.

(although I would not go so far to say - like some people apparently have - that his attempted murder - while a soulless person - of someone he thought was Chara just to keep them from leaving him, was a sign in and of itself that he cares about them; it was definitely not good behavior there)

So, uh, anyway, like, one would hope all that (non-soulless behavior) love is mutual.

Well, given that the narrator completely loses their shit when he shows up:

it's evident that they do have some pretty strong feelings about him. (the last occurs randomly during his fight, up to several times, and never gets that shaky outside of it)

During his fight (as with Toriel and Asgore) the narrator's Serious Mode is entered. They are in fact, pretty serious. They keep talking about the end of the world...

and their CHECK is somber:

while Asriel uses the same attacks Toriel does. 

Then he goes rainbowy, floats around, starts using stars instead of fire to attack.

...and suddenly the narrator gets super excited.

They change his name to rainbows in the text, the CHECK text for him suddenly gets really... childish?

And suddenly they know every move he's about to use, and they make sure Frisk knows, too.

Which all are named attacks, which is completely unique, and a little silly.

Yeah, I'm making the case for it.

It's Asriel's edgy deviantart OC.

He and Chara are playing their childhood game again.

And Asriel is taking his turn to be the sassy shonen antagonist, complete with unique evil laughter for this persona that he doesn’t use even as Flowey:

And that apparently sounds like this.

So maybe the "Demon Who Comes When People Calls Its Name" is Chara's edgy villain OC to Asriel's "God of Hyperdeath"? But, uh, that's HOPE stuff and we're not there yet. so forget you just read that.

Eventually Asriel (who says he'd been holding back to make "The God of Hyperdeath") gets serious again, and the narrator is back to pessimistic despair.

And, of course, we know the whole sequence where his memories with Chara are triggered.

After that, when Asriel's talking about how much he cares about Chara...

Chara goes quiet in their narration for the entire rest of the fight  (as they have for Toriel and Asgore's fights). What he says here definitely means something to them.

Asriel also seems to have owned a locket (possibly matching, but at least one that was his) that said "Best Friends Forever":

that Chara gave him,  which he takes immense pride in.

So they've probably told him before that he was their best friend. And they trusted him enough to talk about wanting to erase themselves, and climbing the mountain.

And, of course, they trusted them with their soul when they died, when they could have quite possibly more easily convinced another, more human-hating monster to take it.

I'd say they loved him.

I don't think they could have predicted the events that would occur as a consequence of their failed plan.

But, as much as they loved each other, their relationship, as we know, wasn't perfect.

After Asriel initially says he doesn't like the plan, it seems like they press forward with their reasons. They seem pretty deadset on the plan happening. I think they had already decided to kill themself a while ago; they had a detailed plan already in mind for it.

Then, after he agrees, they must have asked something like "do you think I'm wrong?" or "do you doubt that it will work?" and this idea seems to actually offend Asriel, who had been speaking haltingly before then.

And this is where things go wrong. If Chara had listened more to why he didn't like the plan before going forward with their reasons for it, maybe they would realized he really didn't want to go through with it, not just because he didn't want them to die...

but because he also didn't really want to kill.

If Asriel hadn't thought Chara was above imperfections, and knew that he could still be a good friend while doubting them if they were doing something wrong, he could have told them when prompted why he didn't like the plan.

Even on their death bed, never doubting them is a huge moral concern for him that he uses to convince himself that the plan is right.

It's possible, given the time, and the fact that they were only like 12 when all this went on, that they could have worked on these issues and matured into a more equal, healthy relationship. But we have no way of knowing what could have happened.

Here's what did happen, by the end of Pacifist:

Asriel comes to terms with the fact that Chara wasn't perfect, an undeniably healthy development. And despite apparently previously finding enough similarity in Frisk and Chara to confuse the two, Asriel finally realized the difference. Pacifist Frisk has refused to kill even in self-defense, and Chara didn’t.

 But I think he might has another reason for telling Frisk all of this, including this line...

See, in the Neutral-Pacifist route (not following an aborted Murderous Mumbo, that is) he seems to get this idea that Frisk is Chara, calling them up on the phone as Asriel, pretty quickly after the Photoshop Flowey fight.

He brushes this off as "projection" (which likely did have something to do with it)

but then he talks to Chara after Pacifist, knowing that they were with Frisk, knowing they could SAVE.

And even seems to have an idea before the fight that Chara is inside Frisk.

So what he's telling Frisk here isn't entirely true, but he also doesn't out them by name as the voice in Frisk head (as Chara hasn't outed themselves, although Frisk could likely guess) but he does make sure Frisk knows a little about them for the road. 

Then, of course, we have Flowey's conversation with Chara at the end of Pacifist, which is our biggest indicator for where they stand.

He's still taking the time to reassure them that everything is okay, and tells them not to worry, a role he probably played in life, too.

He talks about the resets, says he couldn't do it all again, and guesses that Chara was fighting to stop them...

And:

He's making it clear from the get-go that he doesn't approve of resets himself, and if Chara were to go that route, he wouldn't go along. Considering what happened before, it's a massive development, and absolutely a healthy one.

He's made it obvious that he still cares about them, that he wants them not to worry, and acknowledges his own actions as Flowey, but he will now let them know if he thinks something is wrong, and tell them if he doesn't want to do it.

And during his last moments, he watches over their grave.

I don’t think he stopped caring about them.

This would leave some hope for, maybe, a healthier friendship than they had when they were alive... but it's also true that neither of them have a soul by the end of Pacifist, and a lot has happened since they did, so it will never be what it was, or could have been.

Both of them have, however, found some peace, and it's possible that they communicate intermittently like they did here.

Unless you reset. That button is actually yours to press, unlike what Flowey thinks. If you leave everything be, Chara doesn't do it on their own, even though they've proven they can act without player input.

Okay, so there's this common misconception that Chara is constantly harassing Frisk to just kill a monster, already. By now we ought to know that's not true...

...because they just want to see what Frisk thinks is correct, since they no longer think they know what the right thing to do is themselves, after their plan failed.

Whatever Frisk does, they can come up with a reason to justify it, because they're soulless and think Frisk is their "guide".

But what we haven't covered is that Chara is actually - outside of the Shin-stabbing Shindig - a dirty monster apologist.

They

will

white-knight

for

every

monster.

Even while these things are shooting bullets at Frisk.

Chara, as we know, hates humanity, but in life they tried to martyr themselves to break the barrier, and the monsters took better care of them than humans ever did. They don’t hate them.

And it might surprise you to know that they found an idol among them.

Undyne is, technically speaking, fucking cool, and Chara knows it. It's likely they didn't know each other while Chara was alive (because Undyne has to guess if Toriel is Asgore's ex) but no matter what route you take, they're impressed with her.

In Neutral-Pacifist, they describe her as:

And they start getting really, really dismayed if she starts dying on a Neutral route.

Even during That Time in Which the Amount of Fun You Will Have is Actually Rather Small I Think, even after they've taken to describing other monsters dismissively... 

they describe her the same way as they always have as they always have.

As the heroine.

So what were they like?

I have no idea. By the time they show up in Undertale's timeline, they don't have a soul, so it's hard to get an exact idea of what their true personality was like. I think the neutral route, and details of their old life with the Dreemurs, are the fairest ways to estimate this.

So, they were, as we know, fairly strict on some things.

And they often try to talk like a "grown-up".

But they're also still pretty childish sometimes.

And somewhat of a messy child.

They were quite possibly anxious.

They were artistic:

with the ability to draw, and hand-knit a sweater for a goat the approx size of a small car, which must have taken them damn near forever, so they were capable of the dedication to finish large projects.

They were also able to read fairly advanced books, given that they quote Japanese literature  [RESPOTER's NOTE: This link doesn't work, but you can definitely just look up the quotes to find the book] word-for-word on one occasion:

so they're obviously pretty intelligent.

They enjoyed gardening, which might be related to their love of the golden flowers:

and while their knowledge is limited, they get excited learning new things about plants:

They're capable of being highly empathetic:

which does not mean they're always sympathetic.

They can be teasing...

harsh...

and warm.

And they were suicidal, and extremely self-destructive...

And they are bitter, and wrathful, over something we don't know about.

which has made them very determined to hold people accountable for their actions, particularly with resets.

Also, they, uh, really like dogs.

Except this one:

Okay, maybe this one too.

Even if he can't knit for shit.

They were some kind of weeb??

They have a sense of humor:

They seem to have an interesting way of dealing with upsetting emotions, starting with irony...

to silence…

and, when things get really bad, tearful laughter.

And, ultimately, whether they find peace, whether they accept Asriel’s view point as right or wrong…

…depends on your “guidance”.

wait, wasn’t that just a tl;d-

This post was brought here with the help of people like @passivechara​, @buttercupcinnamonpie​, @doge-w-a-bloge​ @saveloadreset​, @narrachara​, @starfaits​, @wordbending​, and @saccharinescorpion​, @vgfm, HylianAngel, @asexualmew and everyone who proof-read it before it was published! Thank you!

If you would like to create theories based off of this or adapt these theories to videos (plz I hear Narra-Chara hasn’t even reached youtube at all) then you’re free to! I don’t own Undertale after all lol

Congratulations! You have reached The E-

You want some HOPE, dontcha? 

You can leave now. Really. This is just for all the things I couldn’t find a place for in the main analysis because I suck ass at organizing, or that I couldn’t find enough evidence for. And just wild theorizing. And you wouldn’t like that, would you?

There’s a message in the strings of the data from Chara, that doesn’t show up ingame under any circumstances; it’s a message for people who look at the game data. Right at the very top.

And it’s not just for genocidal players, either, or it’d have been put in the currently-empty files you get upon completely that route. Any dirty hacker could find this message, even one who never completed that run, like my weak ass.

Here it is:

Why this definitely has something to do with Gaster:

He got a lot of attention in the new patch, and this only shows up in the patched strings

Chara usually calls themself partner, not servant

It’s in the strings, not the game

Why this definitely has nothing to do with Gaster:

There’s no evidence they knew each other in life; related skeletons (Sans and Papyrus) don’t even recognize Toriel, their mom.

Additionally, the plan to break the barrier couldn’t have been Gaster’s because it sucked ass and he was supposed to be brilliant. Plus, it’d require Chara, a child, to commit suicide.

Chara is currently chillin in Frisk’s head so there’s not much opportunity for communication between the two unless Frisk is also there, or the Mysterious Black Void really is just that mysterious.

The player is the one who reads the strings, and the message it replaces in the old version was directed to the player.

Illuminati not confirmed. Illuminati ambiguous.

Yes, they were. They had a human soul strong enough to give Asriel the power to cross the barrier.

The reason people don’t recognize the Frisk-Chara Combo Pack as human sometimes, specifically in the No-Mercy run, is because…

…their actions indicate someone without a human soul. Flowey seems to think this disqualifies someone from their status as a human.

By the way, Flowey’s lack of a monster soul seems to make others hold him in a category outside of monsters (who even have snowmen in their ranks):

Besides that, Asgore clearly recognized them as human in life, and in Frisk after their death, like I said, but no longer recognizes them now.

…so it’s some kind of completely separate villain persona he’s made up to be edgy and cool and it shoots rainbows and stars, unlike his regular fire attacks. Chara seems to know about his OC and what his attacks are called, so I imagine it started as a game they played.

What if Chara’s counter to “The Absolute GOD of Hyperdeath” was “The Demon Who Comes when People Call It’s Name”?

And since we know Flowey’s “creepy face” is associated with the GOH...

maybe Chara’s “creepy face” was associated with their edgy villain OC?

But that’s just a theory.

It seems they refer to themselves by neutral pronouns at least twice:

and Asriel does too:

aaand that’s all there is to say about that. lol

They act serious and intelligent, but the KS describes them as a “small child”…

not a teenager, so I’m gonna guestimate their age at like, 12. so stop drawing them in creepy stuff and shipping them with adults, you freaks.                                               

NO!!!

I see people throw out the “bandage” as proof that Frisk is, in fact…………………………………….a zombie.

Frisk does start with a bandage, but the things in the coffin? Not exactly bandages.They’re described as mummy wrappings. Not a single bandage, used many times.

However, Frisk’s fall was broken by the flowers.

And when Frisk comes in, the ground around the flowers is not dug up.  Chara is still buried there. 

Frisk has their own soul, whereas Chara’s was combined with Asriel’s and destroyed.

It seems that Chara may be a few years older than Frisk, given the difference in behavior (Frisk “waving their hands wildly” to “conduct”) and the way they expect Frisk to be excited by toys, and the nursery rhyme dummy check. I’d guestimate Frisk’s age at 8-11? so stop drawing them in creepy stuff and shipping them with adults, you freaks.

C O N F I R M E D

And eventually people just go "well clearly you don't want a solution to this problem, you just want to be miserable" when you still don't know how to explain to them that the problem that they were trying to suggest solutions to is not the problem you were having, currently have, and are still in the middle of having. You would probably be doing the solutions they were suggesting if it weren't for the problem specifically preventing it.

“I twisted my ankle, what should I do?” - person who is asking how to make the pain stop right now thank you

“Hike regularly” -person who is answering “things that helped me stop twisting my ankle so much”

“I’m so depressed I can barely get out of bed” - person who is suffering right now and needs both help with the effects of this, and access to something that will blunt this effect so literally anything else in their life can happen

Gravitational Pull vs The Desire For An Aquatic Life

Wait, I'm getting some glances from PR department.. what? Questions? I must ask a question?

Uhh uhhmmm

Oh! What's the name of that idle game you playing lately? Sorry I'm always distracted and can't remember it

PASSED?? YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS DEAR BOY? WE'RE IN THE CLEAR!

we interrupt this can can for a SPECIAL news bulletin:

be on the look out for an anon who's been passing themselves off as a boobs inspector in order to obtain free boobs. that's all for now.

FREEE BOOOBS???

maybe we oughta tell our anon about the phony impostor

YOU LOONY LOOFAH! THAT IS THE IMPOSTOR!

WE'VE BEEN DUPED!

duped!

BAMBOOZLED!

we've been smeckldorfed!

THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD AND I AGREE WITH YA!

LOOK AT THEM.

I BET THEY NEVER CHANGE THEIR UNDERPANTS

i bet they bite whale bubbles

I BET THEIR MOM BOUGHT EM THOSE GLASSES

IF THAT IMPOSTOR WANTS BOOB PICTURES, THEN BY NEPTUNE WE'LL GIVE EM ONE

YOU'RE DANCIN WITH THE CRAB MAN NOW. JOIN ME BOY OR YOU'RE FIRED!

it doesn't seem right...

but it feels so good

glitch effect. the gnarliest stuff in procreate

OH! HOLD ON. I GOT A JAR OF GOONING CAPTIONS IN ME OFFICE!

oops! i converted it into a webp!

WELL FISH IT OUT, AND I'LL CONVERT IT INTO AN AVIF!

i call it mouseboobsREAL.webp.avif

hereyouareanonenjoy

LISTEN! THEY SAW IT!

LOOK AT EM CHOKE!

ARRARARARARARAR

hahahahahahahahahahaha

LOOK AT EM SUFFER!

hahahahahahahahaha

we interrupt your laughter at other peoples' expense to bring you this NEWS FLASH

the fake boobs inspector has been caught. here is his picture:

if a boobs inspector comes to your ask box and they're not this guy, they're real.

phew! that's a relief, ay mr. krabs? i'm sure our anon will understand if we just explain the situation. then we can all have a good laugh about it!

I DON'T THINK THEY'LL BE LAUGHIN, BOY

why, sir?

BECAUSE THAT BOOBS PICTURE KILLED THEM!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa