About Chara & the 10th anniversary livestream.
In the second Undertale 10th anniversary stream, Toby Fox has said something which sparked a lot of reaction among Chara fans :
This quote has many implications. Both for the character, but also in regards to understanding how Toby felt about the character he had written, and how those feelings changed over the years.
Before beginning to discuss the meaning of the quote, however, there is something else worth addressing.
Some fans have suggested that the line might also be readable as Toby having said "Now there is only one person to save, Chara." using a comma rather than a dot.
This interpretation of the line would have a fairly different meaning. As it may imply Toby talking about Asriel to Chara, rather than about Chara.
Luckily, we dispose of several elements which allow us to be highly confident of which phrasing was the one that Toby intended.
First, as shown in the images above, Toby's text to speech during the stream disposed of a live text-equivalent.
This is important for two reasons.
The first reason is that Toby in this quote was imitating the speaking style of Undertale's narration. This means, if extrapolated, that we can reasonably expect him to have been following the punctuation patterns of Undertale's narration as well.
In this instance, doing so would suggest that the return to line followed by a new textbox asterisk we observe would only be fit following a dot, not a comma.
The second reason is that a text to speech should remain consistent throughout the stream in regards to things such as the delay between the spoken words. (If using the same punctuation)
Once again, the delay between the words observed in practice matches perfectly the interpretation of the line which uses a dot.
Another thing to add to this, is that the quote was delivered within a particular context :
Toby insisted for "Chara" to be used as the name of the fallen human during the fight against Asriel.
The couch was cut during this battle, leaving us alone with Toby's words to build tension/emotion.
Toby chose to make the reveal by paralleling not just that particular line from the in-game scene, but also the greater "someone else" sequence, by having us wait for the next lines to find out about the person, etc...
The stream had been setting up that something new related to Chara was coming, with Toby being uncharacteristically forward about the character.
After Toby Fox said this, he then proceeded not to say a word afterwards for the full rest of the Asriel fight. Suggesting that the last word he said was meant to be a dramatic "mike drop" type of reveal.
I have some more things to say later in the post about some of those contextual elements, but for now, i would just like to draw attention to the fact that all those context clues suggested that the line was likely meant to be taken as a twist, something that would defy the initial "We save Asriel" reading made of this scene by a first time player. And that it would be about Chara, with them as the subject/centerpiece of it.
Because of this, the interpretation with a comma tends to fall a bit flat relative to how Toby had set things up. And does not feel as natural as the other one.
This albeit fairly theoretical point is more properly illustrated by the fact that in practice, the interpretation with a dot was the natural first reading of what Toby had said made by just about everyone during the stream. Even those that had been strongly opposed to the implications of this interpretation. The alternative interpretation only came second, if at all.
Lastly, as we will see in more detail in just a moment, Toby had been foreshadowing that he was going to make this reveal for a pretty long time.
Looking back at those foreshadowings now, it is fairly obvious that the reading of the line that was being foreshadowed was the one in which Chara is the one being saved.
For an example that came only shortly before the stream itself :
Now, the key to understanding what all of this really means actually lies not just within the game text itself, but also within Toby Fox's behavior when it came to Chara over the course of the last several years.
It seems as though Toby has been planning on making this reveal during the 10th anniversary stream for nearly 3 years ahead of time, if not even longer.
To understand why that is, we need to look back in time a little.
Initially, after Undertale came out, Toby was very reticent in getting involved in anything that regarded Chara as compared to other Undertale characters.
To the point of sometimes acting as though the character did not exist at all.
The only real answer as to why that might the case we had was one he gave in response as to why he did not want to make any merch of Chara :
Toby had said that he did not desire for there to be merch of Chara at the moment as he feared that portraying Chara in such ways may fail to represent the character as he imagined it properly, and be unable to convey the messaged they were meant to carry.
(Note : You can find a more detailed analysis of Toby's response here. It aged pretty well.)
In the end, Toby held true to those words for a very long time. Years passed by without any further acknowledgement of Chara from Toby at all.
Until suddenly, a little white dog pressed a switch, and things turned around.
The change was fairly progressive. Each step just slightly more bold than the previous.
Toby first promoted an Undertale fan-animation in which Chara was present, briefly shown playing along with Asriel. This was somewhat noteworthy at the time but ultimately not very relevant.
The first significant step was when Toby read and approved the Undertale Legends of Localisation book, including a section which affirmed Chara was present in all routes of the game.
This section had been, ultimately, written by someone other than him, allowing to maintain a level of distance between Toby and the extract.
However, it was the first real break from Toby's Chara taboo in years, and it came with a really strong implication in favor of an important lore statement.
During the 9th anniversary newsletter, more steps were taken.
The letter had a lot of explicit Chara theming. As they are strongly associated with the number 9.
This time, it was also directly coming from Toby. And of course...
The first explicit new official Chara content bit in years.
Finally, The de-taboo-ification of Chara was complete when Toby bluntly broke his own former rule, and made Chara merch.
(Note, although the design looks closer to Kris' shirt, it was primarily intended to be Chara's. More information here.)
Now put yourself in Toby's shoes for a moment.
If you were to reverse your position on Chara content/merch this way after having been so concerned about the ability of such content to represent the character properly for so long, it is extremely likely that you would only do so under the intent of doing your best to not do the one thing you were so concerned about.
This means that Toby had to either clear up what the part of Chara that couldn't be bought in a store was, or at the very least be extremely careful with the Chara content he made so that they would at least contain hints or traces of the part of the character that those couldn't properly convey, so that they would not feel like missing the point of the character too much.
So, lets take a slightly closer look at those things again :
The alarm clock dialogue had Toriel and Asgore reminiscing about Chara together, in spite of their strained relations.
The fan-animation showed Chara and Asriel playing around.
The book strongly hinted at Chara's presence in the pacifist route.
The newsletter fleshed out some parts of Chara's character whilst portraying them positively from past Asriel's point of view. The way Toby presented the special letter to us also strongly hinted at Narrachara.
The merch emphasised the importance of our connection to Chara and the ties between our loves.
There are some fairly visible patterns.
All of Toby's direct involvements with Chara related things since 2017 have been things that either hint at NarraChara & how their presence in any path of the game is important. Or things that through the lenses of those they once knew, show Chara as someone that, while not a good person, may still be someone else who we could decide to see as worthy of being saved.
And so...
This is, likely, what the above all culminated towards. It was the natural continuation & conclusion of what Toby had been doing with his Chara hints for the last several years.
Toby has probably been planning on making this revelation for about as long as he has been acknowledging Chara specifically again.
While i find it more uncertain wether he already had this in mind for the animation or the alarm clock dialogue, where Chara was hardly a major focus and the links to those themes were vaguer, he was definitely sneakily setting this up on purpose at least by the time of his role in the legends of localisation book.
Setting up the day he would finally stop being so vague about that "something more" about Chara's character that he used to rather keep quiet about than risk misrepresenting.
(In a way, the fact that he went that far to make the reveal of Chara's presence in pacifist not feel like a 180° policy flip on his part really showcases just how much Toby cares about this character, despite how little of them he actually made explicit in-game.)
All of this is also further evidenced by Toby's behavior during the anniversary streams, which makes so much more sense once examined with this knowledge.
The one thing about Chara that Toby had still yet to do until the 10th anniversary was to actually refer to them by their name.
Sure, we've known Toby calls Chara as such for a while. The name was featured way back on his concept arts. And Toby had to participate in translating the name for Undertale's japanese version. But "Chara" remained a name he never uttered. Sort of reflective of the way he would speak so little of the character for a time.
Until.
In the second anniversary stream, Toby seemingly ripped off his "im not allowing myself to talk about Chara" bandage.
Suddenly, he was taking every chance he had to speak the true name.
He did it so enthusiastiscally too, despite the text to speech.
As others have already worded it, Toby almost sounded like a proud dad finally being allowed to speak about his dear child.
And in context... Yeah ! Pretty much !
To Toby, this was going to be the one stream where he cleared it up.
This was going to be the stream where he gave away the main secrets about them he had previously felt so protective about.
For once, he didn't feel the need to treat Chara elusively, and so he did not.
Toby was clearly having just as much fun finally talking about Chara as the rest of us were hearing him, and it was a pleasure to see.
Speaking of.
As i alluded to earlier, it is pretty apparent rewatching the true lab section of the stream that both Toby and the rest of the team were fully aware of what Toby was going to do, and were growing a bit nervous that having "Togore" as the name of the fallen human during the reveal would undermine the dramatic effect of it.
Hence why Toby eventually broke their rule of "We support whichever name is currently losing to get charity the most money." by making it increasingly clear that he wanted people to vote for Chara. With the others soon joining in telling people to please do what Toby wanted them to do.
...They just weren't going to let a meme get in the way of this moment after three years of setup.
Note : (Toby likely knew way ahead of time that he would be able to get rid of "Gaster" and "Frisk" to rig the results if needed, but "Chara" also ending up losing to a community initiative name too might not have been the plan, hence Toby dismissively treating "Togore" as "a weird thing that took off recently for some reason" during the streams)
Yeah, the outcome was kinda rigged in a way, but it was probably for the best in the end.
Toby was served the wrong outcome, and yet still managed to spin it around to not only still get what he wanted out of it, but also raise even more money for charity thanks to it by organising a donation battle.
Classic Toby W.
One important question remains, though.
"Saving" Chara.
What does that mean exactly ?
While Toby clearly intended Chara to be savable in pacifist in some form, this does leave open the question of what exactly are we saving Chara from here ?
...From Asriel ?
...From themself ?
It is an important context to know that prior to the 10th anniversary stream, the theory that Chara was being saved in this scene was primarily based on Narrachara, on it sounding like a very Toby Fox-like thing to write into the game, and on the multiple convenient wordings used during the sequence (Things like, "The soul", "their" name, the ambiguity between the SAVE act and saving metaphorically,...) making Chara interpretations somehow barely be viable in spite of lines like "one last person remaining to be saved".
However, those things were never real evidence properly speaking. They rather merely just sounded like perhaps too many oddly convenient things were aligning for this reading to be able to work for it to only have been chance.
However, in term of actual proper in-game evidence, the theory was always really lackluster. If anything, things like Temmie Chang having refered to the cutscene as "Asriel regaining his memories" once went against it a little bit, as it made Asriel appear to be made the main focus of the section.
That is why many theorists had remained somewhat skeptical of this interpretation, seeing it as kind of a stretch, including myself to an extent honestly.
All of this is to say, that past it having been an intended reading after all & being narratively satisfying, the details of what "Saving Chara" means in practice in-world remain a bit unclear due how little there actually is in-game to work off of.
And in a way, maybe that was kinda the point. Maybe this is meant to be one of those things where your answer as to the specifics of it matters as much as Toby's.
Maybe you guys feel only my answer to these questions counts or matters. But to me, I only feel the opposite. [...] And i invite you to come behind the wall with me." --Toby Fox.
I did not mean for this post to be about my thoughts on the topic as much as i wanted it to be about peeking at the other side of the wall in regards to this particular line using hindsight.
However, now that i've written this much, i think i would like to share one thought after all.
There is an important difference between our "saved" Chara and Asriel.
Asriel's words near the flower bed have him reflect on his former self. Whilst ultimately bittersweet, it brings his character a rounding and a closure.
Chara does not have that. They do not have a closure.
In fact, they hardly have anything at all. Chara is never explicitely referred to nor acknowledged after the Asriel fight, nor does the narrator have some sort of tirade that we could infer from.
And its not like there weren't opportunities for that.
Even in the game credits & the alarm clock dialogue. The only "new" thing we hear about Chara is that their presence is not revealed to the monsters in the near future on the surface.
It kind of feels like 'saving' Chara hasn't really changed anything, has it ? Have they not changed at all ?
Well, perhaps Chara's saving is to be taken less at face value, in terms of direct immediate changes, and moreso in terms of opportunity.
Chara may not have changed much as a person, but this doesn't mean they're incapable of it.
The tone of the narration gets noticeably friendlier over the course of a playthrough :
They may not have let go of the feelings that had led them to their first death or to their participation in the genocide route, but perhaps those tone shifts suggest such things aren't set in stone forever. Or that at least they could be toned down eventually.
Asriel was "Saved" from a moral standpoint, but his fate remained sealed.
Maybe Chara was served the opposite hand.
So, what will they do with it ?
