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chara: an analysis

(undertale spoilers)

(for more info regarding what occured between chara/asriel prior to undertale, see here)

this post is an attempt to explain chara’s actions. after they gained control over frisk’s body post-genocide ending, they could have gone on to live a life with flowey or dedicated their time to fixing him, but instead, they achieve the best ending for the monsters only to rip it all away, presumably slaughtering everyone. if chara’s only goal was killing humans, why did they massacre all the monsters as well? what motivates chara? why do they act so callous?

here’s what we definitely know about chara:

in life:

hated humans

journeyed to mt. ebott for an unhappy reason

got hurt from the fall and cried out for help

found by asriel and helped to his home

adopted by the dreemurr family

treated like one of the family, even sharing a room with asriel

made a creepy face sometimes, apparently

asriel’s best friend

with asriel, got asgore sick with buttercups (instead of cups of butter)

laughed about it, despite the effects of the poisoning

realised the potency of the flowers in the garden

devised a plan with asriel to “free everyone”

this plan involved asriel absorbing chara’s soul so that together they could become a powerful being and cross the barrier to get six more souls

chara then died after making asriel “go get the flowers”, suggesting they died from intentionally eating the flowers

made a dying wish to see the golden flowers from their village that nobody could possibly fulfill before chara died

sharing asriel’s body:

control of asriel’s body was split between asriel and chara

chara made asriel’s body pick up chara’s own dead body and bring it to the human village

predictably, the humans attacked asriel/chara

chara wanted to use their “full power” against the humans

asriel resisted, and forced their shared body not to harm anyone

asriel smiled and made the body bring chara’s home

the shared body died and its dust spread across the garden in new home

both of their souls were lost

after death:

chara’s dead body was placed in the coffin with the red soul on it, near the throne room

wrapped up in bandages, like a mummy

when toriel left, she carried chara’s body all the way to the ruins to bury it where chara first fell for a proper burial

chara’s favourite golden flowers were planted on top of the grave

bound to frisk:

chara’s essence leaked into frisk after falling on top of their grave

chara cannot control frisk’s body unless the player forces frisk to kill

lacks a soul of their own

unlike flowey, lives within a body that does have a soul

even without a soul of their own, full of determination

pacifist route:

minimal references to chara are made

genocide route:

begins speaking through frisk directly at certain points in a genocide run, even as early as “where are the knives” in the ruins

usually says short or emotionless things with strange punctuation

flavour text becomes shorter, darker

however, if the player opts to spare monsters, a genocide route can be averted, and chara seems to relinquish control

comments that their old coffin is “as comfy as it looks” (humans can feel their bodies after death?)

uses their knowledge only to achieve their goals as fast as possible (”he leaves them in the kitchen and the hallway”)

excited to finally find the worn dagger, which they see as the real knife (”about time”)

sees the heart locket as just the locket, which they can feel beating

mercilessly slaughters flowey, chara’s old best friend, after hearing his tragic story (this is done without player’s confirmation, suggesting it was chara’s choice)

tells the player at the end of a genocide run that gaining LOVE made them strong

wants to erase each world one after another

forces the player to give their own soul to chara

if the player chooses to do the genocide route again, chara comments that the player should choose another route next time

post-genocide route, chara appears at the ending of the true pacifist route either with a menacing glint in their eye, having taken over frisk’s body, or with frisk’s friends crossed out in a photo, with frisk replaced with chara, implying that they’re all dead

so the rest of this post is going to be things i assume based on the information given. there is a lot of speculation here. this theory ignores the “chara is the narrator” theory as it’s not confirmed for sure (but it is one of my favourites).

why chara might have climbed mt. ebott: when chara climbed the mountain, “it wasn’t for a very happy reason”. at first i considered that chara was only looking for a way to die, but that contradicts too many of chara’s later actions. if chara truly hatched a plan to commit suicide by eating the buttercups (a HORRIBLE way to die), it wouldn’t make sense for chara not to take an easier way out if their only goal was dying. chara is described as a child with hope in their eyes – they searched the mountain for something, anything. and when they fell into the underground and got hurt, they cried out for help.

why would someone determined to die worry about their wellbeing? why not just stab themself and be done with it? it’s because chara had hope. chara had determination. chara had something they needed to do, and they searched desperately for some way to make it happen. they would achieve it at any cost.

so what was the not so happy reason that drove chara there in the first place? it probably wasn’t a suicide attempt. perhaps it was just an escape from a horrible life. something drove chara to absolutely despise humans, so it makes sense that chara would have been badly mistreated by their family or other people. despite their hatred, they still had determination and they ran away to find hope.

chara’s goal: chara wanted to destroy humanity. in my opinion, this is the singular goal chara had that gave them the determination to climb the mountain and ultimately end their own life. for reasons that chara never talked about, according to asriel, chara felt very strongly about their hatred for humans. every action chara took after running from home was to get revenge.

learning about the monster world: after asriel found chara injured in the ruins, he brought them back to his home. chara was adopted into the dreemurr family and treated as one of their own. along the way, chara probably read books and learned from other monsters the stories about the soul’s power. with new knowledge, chara began to formulate the plan: cross the barrier and turn humans against monsters.

first, to cross the barrier, chara would need a boss monster soul. but it could only come from asgore or toriel, their adoptive parents. alone, chara was weak and couldn’t see their goal through (they never would have gone to mt. ebott in the first place if they were strong enough to take on adult humans). not only that, but killing either of those two would turn all monsters against chara and against humanity. however, if the monsters still couldn’t leave the underground that wouldn’t have made a difference – there would be nothing they could do to humans. chara would just end up back on the outside with nobody and nowhere to live. so chara had to come up with something else.

buttercups and not cups of butter: making asgore ill was probably just an accident on the kids’ part. it was likely an innocent mistake from two children trying to do a good thing.

if it wasn’t, chara would had to have known from the surface that buttercups were deadly to eat (and if chara knew, the implications are pretty horrible). perhaps chara had heard from the humans they lived with that they should never eat buttercups and chara wanted to test just how dangerous they were, so they told asriel that the recipe called for buttercups instead of cups of butter. if this were the case, it would really go to show chara’s apathy and maybe even sadism.

however, nobody knows for sure why the buttercups came to be in the pie.

after asgore ate the pie and fell ill, asriel and chara had a different reaction. asriel felt guilty and hated that he upset toriel as well. chara “laughed it off”. if this were just a small stomach bug or something, it would be somewhat understandable.

but eating buttercups causes bloody diarrhea, excessive salivation, colic, and severe blistering of the mouth, mucous membranes and gastrointestinal tract. as for the colic (or “bloat” in goats), “in any type of bloat, the goat’s left flank will bulge, and it sounds like a kettle drum if tapped. symptoms of bloat include signs of pain, such as grinding teeth, depression, or striking out with their legs. in an advanced case, the goat may already be down due to respiratory failure or other complications.” even just touching them can cause dermatitus in humans. eating buttercups or other members of the ranunculus genus has the potential to be fatal if not treated.

so chara watched asgore suffer from these symptoms and their response was to laugh. asriel doesn’t speak as if chara felt any guilt about this, so it’s likely that this wasn’t just a nervous laugh. asriel even goes so far as to say later that chara “wasn’t really the greatest person”, which was after the fact and therefore a reaction to chara’s actions overall.

either way, this incident set the wheels in motion for chara.

gathering information: it was out of the question to simply take a boss monster soul. but there are some interesting writings in waterfall that chara probably noticed.

the pieces began to fall into place. what if someone else could just borrow chara’s soul? then the monster who did could go to the surface and get other souls, become a godlike beast, and slay humans in the process. even a monster with ONE human soul is said to be “a horrible beast with unfathomable power”. that sounds like more than enough to take on a few humans. but there was no guarantee that chara would maintain independent thought after having their soul absorbed. maybe this was just a risk chara was willing to take for the sake of eradicating humanity. maybe they thought their determination would be enough to will another monster to do what they wanted.

the waterfall writings also say that a monster with one human soul will become a “strange creature” that’s “unsettling” to look at. sounds like something that would make humans panic, in my opinion. it could be something humans might see as a fierce beast who needs to be destroyed in order to protect their families. even if chara couldn’t influence the monster who takes their soul, human attacks might still provoke the monster to defend itself.

if only chara could get the monster to go to the human village in the first place anyway.

there was only one real candidate for chara’s plan. someone who was already close to them. someone they lived with. someone who kept their secrets. someone kind who wouldn’t turn them down. someone that chara could watch over and manipulate.

someone like their best friend, asriel.

chara’s plan: chara needed to come up with something that would result in the deaths of a lot of humans (probably preferably all of them). it needed asriel’s cooperation and it had to be flawlessly planned.

step one: die in order to have their soul taken by asriel, chara would have to die first. but something that looked like a suicide would be harder to manipulate people with. it had to look like an accident. suddenly, those buttercups seemed like the perfect cover for a sudden and aggressive illness. it would be agony, but it would be believable. chara could leave behind some last wishes that might push asriel to go to the surface. nobody would suspect chara of a thing.

step two: have asriel absorb chara’s soul the plan would fail if chara couldn’t convince asriel that absorbing their soul was the best thing to do for everybody. asriel was good and kind to the core. this had to be taken into consideration.

step three: get to the surface if humans saw a horrifying or strange looking creature in front of them carrying the body of a child, there’s no doubt they’d jump to conclusions.

step four: kill humans, take souls, start a war the ideal end result would be that asriel would fight back against the humans, take six souls, and break the barrier. humans wouldn’t stand to see dead bodies lying around, and they’d declare war on the monsters once again. there would be deaths on all sides. most importantly, humanity would suffer. chara’s dream would be realised.

getting asriel on board: to make the plan work, chara needed a monster who would do anything for them. asriel loved chara. even without a soul, asriel (as flowey) admitted that he didn’t even want to live in a world without chara.

and that made asriel easy for chara to manipulate.

there are a few examples in the game of fun times that chara and asriel must have shared together: joking, cooking, maybe knitting sweaters for their parents (”mr dad guy”). chara most likely came across as pretty likable overall. they needed to become loved by their family. maybe this was something that chara cherished (they can feel the heart locket beating in the genocide route), but the merciless slaughter of flowey in the genocide route sort of contradicts that. regardless of chara’s feelings, it was important for their plan that they were beloved by monsters – and most importantly, beloved by asriel. so when the time came to share the plan, asriel would keep it a secret and believe in chara.

in my opinion, most of chara’s good side was an act – a means to an end. how else could chara treat their family so callously without feeling any guilt, both before their death and after they became attached to frisk? whether or not chara had genuine feelings, their actions were nevertheless grotesque.

presumably, the conversation above immediately follows chara divulging their plan to asriel. but the version they tell asriel doesn’t involve eradicating humanity – instead, the goal is supposedly to “free everyone”. from the confines of the underground, asriel assumed. when chara said they would “free everyone”, it’s likely that they didn’t mean “from the underground” at all, but “from living”. maybe because of chara’s bleak outlook on life, they saw death as freedom.

based on this conversation, we can assume some of the things that chara said to asriel:

“it’ll be okay, asriel!”

“but first, you need to get the flowers.”

“what’s wrong? are you crying?”

[encouraging speech]

“you don’t believe in me? you don’t trust me? you doubt me?”

“it’ll work! we’ll save everyone!”

“together we can do anything.”

“you’re the best, asriel.”

or something like that. basically, manipulation tactics. asriel clearly doesn’t want to go through with chara’s plan at the beginning of this conversation. he doesn’t want his best friend to die. he even starts crying. chara dismisses this and says something to convince asriel that it would actually be a good idea that would work out well for everyone. then chara makes asriel reaffirm his belief in them (very typical abusive behavior). some more convincing things are said by chara, and then chara asks asriel to get the flowers. the only thing i can come up with is that touching the flowers directly would irritate chara’s skin and make it obvious that they had been exposed to the buttercups. but asriel wants to do the right thing by everybody, and chara plays that up.

fast forward to after chara has consumed the flowers.

asriel is watching his best friend – his sibling – die in a gruesome and slow way. imagine: chara has bloody diarrhea and can’t even get up to change the sheets themself. their mouth is blistered and they can’t eat. they can barely speak. they can’t stop drooling and sometimes they throw up. asgore, toriel, and asriel have to sit by and watch this and clean chara. they have to watch the light go out of chara’s eyes.

chara fell ill and died the next day. the dreemurr family spent at least a day dealing with this. a full day of watching chara suffer and die in agony. a full day of cleaning up chara’s messes. and chara planned for this to happen. at some point during this time, they told their family that they wanted to see the golden flower from their village before they died, knowing none of them could possibly get one.

understandably horrified, asriel confessed that he didn’t “like this plan anymore”. whether chara actually replied at this point is a mystery, but if they did, it would only have been with more encouragement to go through with their plan. and asriel’s mind was set. he prepared himself to get the six souls he’d need while he said goodbye to his friend, maybe for the last time.

a life beyond death: asriel absorbed chara’s soul when they died, as promised. according to the monster’s tale, asriel did this purely out of grief. but there’s no way they could have known what was really going on. asriel kept it a secret. we aren’t told for sure, but according to the waterfall writings, asriel’s body would have changed then and become unsettling.

as it turned out, both had equal control over asriel’s body. asriel divulges this information to frisk at the end of the true pacifist route as though it’s shocking new information, perhaps suggesting that asriel had no idea he would still feel chara in that way. but “we’ll do it together” might suggest that asriel DID think that might happen. or maybe he just hoped that it would. because he loved chara. he would do anything for chara.

so, controlling their shared body, chara was the one “who picked up their own empty body” and brought it to the village, a place where chara knew the humans would see them. the humans did see them. the humans saw a frightening monster carrying the body of a child and predictably attacked.

chara finally had the power they suffered an unbearable death to achieve. everything fell into place just the way they wanted it to. finally, they could exact their revenge on the people from their village. chara wanted to use their “full power” against the humans.

but asriel stopped them. at last, asriel could see chara’s real intent. he was too good to harm anyone with a clear conscience. asriel resisted chara’s will. the two of them probably wrestled for control with each other. the best asriel could do was get their bodies home and die in asgore’s garden.

together with frisk: we know that when two souls inhabit one body, they split control of the body. in frisk’s case, they were able to hold onto control for the most part because chara didn’t actually have a soul, and only remained through their essence. much like how flowey was born out of only asriel’s essence, chara’s was given life after coming into contact with frisk’s determination (when frisk fell on their grave). it was nothing but a pure fluke that even surprised chara.

their plan with asriel failed, so chara decided to try again with a new host body: frisk’s. although it is the player that pushes frisk to start killing in the beginning, chara gains strength from this. my theory for this is that frisk’s gentle soul can’t handle the horror of combat while chara’s aggressive soul (and therefore essence) is empowered by it, and so frisk’s control takes a backseat to cope with the violence. eventually, at the end of the genocide route, chara has the strength to control frisk’s body completely, most likely with the assistance of the player’s own soul.

when chara speaks to the player, they show no remorse or sadness in regards to the slaughter of all monsters, including their family.

not only does chara not show any emotion, chara actually wants to travel to a new timeline after receiving the soul – the PLAYER’S soul.

chara is speaking directly to the player, not frisk. does this mean that frisk is the only human to house two human souls? is that what makes them so powerful?

they DON’T want the player to repeat a genocide route, however. but this isn’t an act of mercy.

chara claims not to understand the player if they complete another genocide run. does “i cannot understand these feelings any more” suggest that chara, like flowey, is incapable of feeling things after all? even with the soul? or does it just mean that chara cannot understand why someone would do something tedious like a genocide run more than once? that, unlike chara, the player’s actions are not motivated by any particular goal? or perhaps it’s just a comment about the state of the player’s soul in general, since chara now owns it? maybe it’s that chara remains unfeeling because the player was so callous in their own playthrough?

chara attempts to steer the player into other routes. ideally, they want the player to finish a true pacifist run, normally the happiest possible ending. but chara, now owning frisk’s body, changed the very end: it’s assumed that everybody will die. the monster friends that frisk made along the way certainly seem to, at least (including toriel and asgore).

we can only assume that chara would then destroy everybody and everything else in the world, including the humans they hated all along. not only did chara manipulate asriel in the past, but they manipulate the player as well if they choose to continue playing after a genocide run. this was chara’s plan from the beginning, the plan that started and ruined everything. with the player’s help, chara can finally see their plan through to the end. this is chara’s ideal ending – their true ending.

to conclude, a character can be morally reprehensible and still be an amazing and complex character. according to this assessment, chara was EXTREMELY intelligent, especially for a child. perhaps as a result of a tragic past, they used their knowledge to try to end all life through any means necessary. they had no regard for anyone’s feelings and only manipulated their family to achieve certain goals. their plan was almost flawless.

it seemed that chara borrowed their power and control from the player’s soul to begin with. frisk’s kind soul would never willingly cause violence, so chara was left to feed off of the player’s unpredictable soul. the player’s soul is what made frisk, and by extension, chara’s soul, strong.

chara can come to own the player’s soul. and if they do, the player can finally make chara’s dream come true.

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