it may be hard to believe, but the caretaker of the ruins is finally over. finished. it took a long time, and we put countless hours into it, but it feels great to have it done. when ellipsis came up with the concept originally, minty and i knew we just had to make a project out of it. the three of us have been an unbending team this whole time, ever since the nochocolate days.
what an experience! we’ve made so many fun memories together, all based on one question: “what if chara never died?” we took a lot of creative liberties on the character designs, but wanted the story to be at least plausible based on undertale’s canon. based on guesses a lot of readers made, i think we did a pretty good job!
based on the tapes in canon, as i’m sure a lot of you will be aware, we don’t think that chara is very good for asriel. we thought that their behaviour would only grow worse into adulthood, especially with a power like that. it made sense to us to put an emotionally abusive relationship at the forefront of this: it looks welcoming on the outside, but belies a darker underbelly. the growing discomfort from readers as it became more clear how chara treated asriel was encouraging in its own way. if you didn’t see it immediately, try rereading caretaker from the start! there was a lot of effort put into making chara’s behaviour around asriel questionable. the cutesy bonus art was all part of the mask.
i remember the shock from readers when frisk died for the first time, and then again when chara killed frisk with their knife. that was when people realised what they were in for, i think. but it was never supposed to be all doom and gloom: it’s the story of a horrible day (and the events preceding it), followed by a future full of hope. the plot never veered off track from our initial outline and went exactly where it was supposed to go.
well, i hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed being able to share it! the support from everyone who sent asks, who read, who shared, who discussed things with each other on other websites really filled us with strength. determination, even, one might say. from the bottom of my heart: thank you.
Wow, it feels unreal to have finally finished this story! It took countless hours of planning, drawing, and writing, but we did it! Thank you so much for sticking with us, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we loved writing it.
In the early drafting period, we went through a few different ideas for the ending, but ultimately I’m really, really pleased with how we decided to bring this story to a close. Even though no one got what they wanted, everyone ended up with something they needed, and I think that’s pretty beautiful.
(On that note, ask me about our scrapped endings, they were terrible!)
There were all sorts of ups and down we experienced while writing this, but writing Caretaker will always be something I look back on with fond memories. It’s a little sad to finally write “The End” but I’m proud of what we accomplished. To all our readers both old and new, thank you so much for joining us on this journey. We truly would not have been able to finish this story without your excited feedback and enthusiasm. We hope to see familiar names following us to our next grand creative endeavor!
To this day, I’m amazed at how far Caretaker has come. After answering that “what if” question, I mused on the hypothetical situation of an older Chara meeting Frisk—and this Chara had not given up on their plan. They took matters into their own hands instead. After all, if you want something done, do it yourself!
I took this idea and wrote a short story, which I shared with Eruto and Minty. I did not expect anything big to come out of this. My ideas tend to live just as drabbles I usually keep to myself. But they both loved the idea so much, and the rest is history.
Seeing the story come to completion has been surreal, especially after so many years. It grew so much bigger than I could have ever imagined, and the support we receive is tremendous. As much as I (jokingly) cried about how many messages I had to read through to make compilations, it always brought me so much joy to see the reactions and support from our readers. Thank you all for reading Caretaker. <3
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