Thinking about Undertale, and mental disorders.
Chara isn't evil, that much is obvious.
But they still have a situation that's familiar to megalomania...
Except it's not the cartoonishly evil "power for power's sake"
"If everything gets high enough,
You become invincible.
Nothing can hurt you anymore.
Nothing can hurt anyone anymore."
-- Asriel's Letter from the Undertale 9th Anniversary Newsletter, which talked about Chara's favorite number and their reasoning for it
It's megalomania built on trauma.
Thinking about megalomania, like other mental situations, from a nuanced perspective rather than immediately assuming negativity is… interesting to think about.
Like, neither psychopathy or sociopathy are automatically "evil" behaviors, methinks (and, funnily enough, both of those kinda relate to Flowey).
Saying someone is automatically evil because they have trouble with empathy when they can't control that is just… weird, and wrong.
There's a difference between that and actively ignoring being empathetic.
Interestingly enough, from a lot of the dialogue aside from Flowey outright saying he can't feel anything for anyone, there are times where he is, in fact, feeling things for others. He's simply having trouble doing so, not outright unable to or choosing not to.
And, for another Chara related one, misanthropy
At this point, with where society is going, I can kinda get hating humanity a little. The societal situations we're all in, the powerful people that are basically in charge of the world... and the people going through "not very happy" reasons like Chara had, whatever it was.
But I don't see it as a "humanity must die", cartoonishly evil type of hatred, as much as people picture Chara with at times.
There's a lot of times where humanity has had trouble with nuance in many situations, and I'd say mental disorders is one of many.
But it's funny how Undertale of all things is what got me to realise that particular one.
