Part of why I say “demon!chara is not really representative of human!chara“ as though they’re separate people is, well.
Asriel and Flowey are the same person. But imagine a version of the game where we never get to see or meet Asriel as Asriel, only as Flowey.
Yes, Flowey is Asriel, but Flowey being a malevolent, sadistic houseplant who has done his own kill-everyone runs prior to the start of the game…doesn’t really say anything meaningful about Asriel’s “true nature.“
Like Flowey is a gnarled, distorted version of a very unhappy dead child, the spirit that grows increasingly malevolent and powerful over the course of a kill-everyone run is a corrupted, distorted version of a very angry dead child.
If one has our sympathy, the other one should, too.
(I would elaborate more on the parallels between postdeath asriel and postdeath chara, such as the smiley-face imagery or the way the Angel prophecy is fufilled by one in True Pacifist and the other in Kill Everyone, and why I think the parallels are significant, but it’s past midnight where i am so. gnite)
Whatever it is that allows Chara’s memories conciousness to persist, it apparently isn’t their soul - Frisk only has one soul inside of them, and at the end of a bad run Chara affirms that that said soul is Frisk’s, not theirs.
Eh. It’s stated at the end of True Pacifist, if you walk all the way to the beginning of the ruins to talk to Asriel, that “it wasn’t for a very happy reason” that Chara went up Mt. Ebott - a mountain that people never return from. Frisk is also implied to have the same or similar reason for ascending a treacherous mountain that they had no idea was filled with goofy monster people.
One reading is that both Chara and Frisk climbed the mountain to run away from unhappy lives, or possibly even to kill themselves. (What kind of kid keeps re-using the same bandage over and over the way Frisk apparently does, looking at its description and its item effects after being unequipted?)
And there’s also the weirdness of, well, they poisoned themselves so that Asriel could absorb their soul, right? But the same runes that tell us a monster can absorb a human’s soul also tell us that a human can absorb the soul of a Boss Monster - the very species of fuzzy goatlike monster that Chara was adopted by. And a human with hate in their heart can tear through monsters like tissue paper - the game both states and demonstrates this. It would have been so, so much easier for Chara to cleave Asriel in half with the real knife and absorb his soul, or to slip buttercups into more of Asgore’s food and kill him to absorb his soul, or to kill the entire goatfamily and absorb three boss monster souls to obtain godlike power. But Chara doesn’t do any of these things.
Instead, Chara decides to slowly, painfully poison themselves. (Look up the symptoms of buttercup poisoning - they are not nice or pretty.) And the runes gave no indication that an absorbed human soul could gain control of the monster that absorbed it - did Chara even have any idea that would happen? Or did they just trust that Asriel would carry out the rest of the plan after they died?
Why would they poison themselves, instead of the more ruthlessly efficient options in front of their nose?
Why did they climb a mountain nobody returns from, and fling themselves down a deep hole in the earth?
Why did a kid who couldn’t possibly be older than around ten hate humans, and their hometown in particular, so, so much?
Chara is the original owner of the real knife (aka the worn dagger), but they are also the owner of the heart-shaped locket (aka The Locket) that says “best friends forever“ inside it - and a murder run makes it fairly explicit that it is in fact their locket, not Asriel’s. (”Right where it belongs,“ they say when you equip it onto Frisk’s body.)
And Chara is always subtly present in the game even outside of omnicidal runs - they are the character you name, whose name is present on the menu and in the battle screen. The game over screen is their memory of Asgore taking to them while they lay on their deathbed, as is the message you can sometimes get if you sleep in your bed at toriel’s house. The flashback you get when you plummet from the bridge in waterfall - Chara’s memory of meeting Asriel. The images you see when you start the game - that’s not Frisk climbing the mountain and falling down, that’s Chara. 201X is the year Chara arrived in the underground. The game doesn’t want the player to realize this until they’ve nearly completed the game, but it plants this stuff from the very beginning.
I’m just not satisfied with the “Chara was always evil“ reading. I feel like there’s evidence that Chara was a misanthropic, emotionally messed-up, self-destructive child, who has the potential to become much worse - but also the potential to, yanno, not become Tiny Satan. As long as you never do an omnicide run, Chara’s lingering spectre never becomes a videogame creepypasta demon.
(And I like the idea that, in a Pacifist run, what’s left of them has some chance to heal, if only a little, by being inside Frisk while the latter child goes about friendshiping their way through the underground.)
The whole concept of passivechara was shaped by me having these same thoughts.
#chara’s memories are what allow you save asriel in the end people, #they are what resonate with his soul, #how could asriel consider chara to be the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN HIS LIFE if they were such a monster?
reposting these tags, and since we can no longer bold other people’s stuff for emphasis, here:
Instead, Chara decides to slowly, painfully poison themselves. (Look up
the symptoms of buttercup poisoning - they are not nice or pretty.)
print that sentence out, write it down in your notebook, sharpie it on your body, whichever. i did not pull chara’s physical state in green beneath the rime and someone else’s fire out of my ass. poisoning yourself with buttercups is a long, horrible, gross, drawn-out way to die. and this is how chara completes suicide.
chara is the player character, they are both mirror and blank slate, and they have very little opportunity to speak in their own defense or give us their perspective on things. so there’s going to be a lot of room for interpretation here. and you can, in-game, turn chara into a world-eating demon if you so choose.
but the really cool thing about undertale, to me, is that the pacifist route points to chara—chara, who despises humanity; chara, who was abused and suicidal and deeply messed-up; chara, whose revenge would have been disproportionate and destroyed their entire hometown and everyone in it instead of just the people who were responsible for or complicit in their suffering; chara, whose plan to avenge themself and free the monsters failed and brought their loved ones to grief and brought about so much misery they never intended—chara, the child who you can convince that total destruction is the answer and the reason for their existence—that chara, our chara—
and this game says that none of that makes any difference in chara’s ability to save someone. chara cared deeply for asriel. their memories are the key to saving him. whether you believe that chara has an active part in that or not, nothing can change that fact.
and this game never even insinuates that chara’s hatred might not be justified. you can draw the conclusion that chara’s hatred might be one reason why asriel admits that “maybe chara wasn’t really the greatest person” but this game never says it in as many words.
and i’m never going to be able to fully articulate in an essay context how much this means, how important a discussion that is, that having negative emotions is a thing that you’re allowed, and what matters is if and how you act on those feelings, but—
we save asriel together with chara and frisk. and if, like me, like everyone who’s already spoken up here, you believe that frisk also climbed the mountain to disappear—then maybe, exactly the same way that chara and frisk save asriel, and the way that frisk and asriel save chara—chara helps us and the monsters save frisk, too. chara, too, is someone important that frisk meets on their journey, just like toriel and asgore, and papyrus and sans, and undyne and alphys, and mettaton and napstablook, and the monster kid, and asriel. maybe, just like all the rest of them, chara had some small part in frisk finding a reason to stay alive. it’d be nice if that is what happens. it’d be nice if that empty space on the final load screen is meant for both of the children you have to leave behind, not just one.
undertale is frisk’s story, it’s asriel’s story, and it’s chara’s story too. “but nobody came.” and the call for help that is answered despite all odds—one of the central elements of undertale—is present in all these children’s arcs. you can’t cut chara out of pacifist route no matter how hard you try.
you can have chara be evil if you want them to be. but as for me, i don’t think that undertale needs a villain.
At the end of the genocide run, chara asks for your soul. Not your body, your soul. Chara was just as soulless as asriel was when asriel became flowey. Chara may not have been the most pleasent of people, it is possible that in taking her soul and leaving her body soulless, Asriel accidentally caused her to become straight up malevolent.
do you ever think about how little Michelangelo cared
All right, everyone, grab a chair and sit back because I’m going to share with you what I learned about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel in my Art History Class.
The man NEVER wanted to paint the damn thing. But the pope at the time “forced him to” According to my teacher. Michelangelo hated this man, I MEAN REALLY HATED HIM. So did a majority of people. The pope’s nickname translated literally means “Terrible pope”.
And the working conditions were awful. He had to work on his back with all that paint, which is filled with some toxic shit that gave Michelangelo a limp for the rest of his life. (Also, our teacher made us get on our backs and try drawing with both hands JUST to prove how bad and uncomfortable it is.)
At the time, the ceiling was so high, you could barely see it. You need binoculars to get a good look at what’s up there, by the time people could see the paintings, there was a lot of weird symbolism that Michelangelo hid up there.
This one? The creation of the sun and moon? God is mooning you. And the pope and all others after him prayed under that without knowing.
This one? At the time, dissecting was sacrilegious and everyone found out how behind God was what looked like half a brain. blah blah, science, science, that pissed everyone off.
And also, ALLLLLLL the men and women in the Sistine Chapel are all on fucking steroids. My teacher described the women’s bodies as “Men bodies with boobs slapped on.”
And then there is this:
Now this is the back wall. Michelangelo actually wanted to paint this one after he finished the ceiling. (and there was a different pope too, I believe.) However, originally, EVERYONE in that painting was naked. And they didn’t like it. Adam and Eve naked? That’s cool. But Jesus? Now you crossed the line. So the pope at the time hired someone else to censor it and give the important figures clothes. He worked on it for 6 or 9 months before he died.
And then the symbolism in this one is great. Somewhere in the right, there are homosexuals in heaven. (No matter what, the Vatican will say “Those straight men are happy” I’ll get to that in a second), Michelangelo painted himself near Jesus, and the terrible pope is in hell with a snake biting his balls.
And if you were to point ANY of this out to the Vatican, they will deny all of it and claim Michelangelo was a catholic hero. In fact, when they discovered the symbolism around the 60s or 70s, the guy who told the Vatican was kicked out of the Vatican for life.
TL;DR: Michelangelo hated the pope and made the best “fuck you” of all time.
YO. ALL OF THIS^. Michelangelo was hella grumpy all of the time. It was fantastic.
However, as beautiful as this commentary is, I’m gonna make a little correction. The Pope isn’t the one in hell getting his balls bitten; that guy is actually the Papal Minister of Ceremonies a the time, Biagio de Cesena.
See, when Michelangelo was painting this, as you said, lots of people were uncomfortable with all of the nudity (especially because the Last Judgement [back wall mural] was painted much later when nudity in religious art was even more controversial than before), but the dude who was the angriest was de Cesena.
He was so angry that he reportedly burst in on Michelangelo while he was working (which is already a big no-no because Michelangelo’s requirements for working were mostly “fuck the hell off and leave me alone or else I quit and I will stab you in the eye with my paintbrush/chisel”.). He then proceeds to tell Michelangelo that this fresco is disgusting and obscene and shame on him etc etc. He also referred to it as “i stui di nudi”, which means “A stew of nudes” which is one of the best descriptions of a thing ever, if you ask me.
So Michelangelo, probably on the cusp of homicide is like “Thank you for the notes. Now get the fuck out,” and de Cesena reluctantly does.
Later, he comes to see the finished product and finds that Michelangelo had painted his portrait down in Hell to represent the Minos, King of the Dead. He has the ears of an ass and the above described crotch biting snake:
Upon seeing this and being enraged, de Cesena went to the Pope to demand that it be changed and that Michelangelo be punished. However, the Pope was SO incredibly done dealing with Michelangelo’s snark, tantrums, and general hatred of the world and everyone in it, that he didn’t want to do shit.
The Pope’s response to him was literally to say “As Pope, I have a lot of influence on Earth and up in Heaven, but I have no jurisdiction in Hell. You’re shit out of luck.“
And it stayed.
Michelangelo, grade A artist, snark master, and professional dick.
Some more that I always love to add when this post comes around:
He didn’t actually do it on his back. He was actually standing most of the time, leaning waaaay the fuck back.
There is not a single Christian on that ceiling.
There is a cherub painted over a door through which the Pope enters. If you looked directly at the cherub, you would see that the little guy is “making the fig.” Making the fig was the Renaissance version of flipping the bird.
If you stand where the Pope prays, the depiction of Jonah and the whale receives a slight 3D effect, making the fish whale look like it’s coming at you. He wanted whoever stood there to feel overwhelmed.
