Discussion Characters / UndertaleSpoilerCharacters

I recommend to take a more positive outlook into account, in case of Chara. But we shouldn't leave out what happens when we complete Genocide. The video is easier to get into to, as it requires less effort.

Now let us rewatch/reread the content of these two links and then go to work step by step.

http://determinators.tumblr.com/post/143284030397/greetings-uh-so-ive-been-working-on-this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYHXpdNqdGs

Well, I've managed to undo a lot of htuttle's edits, but there's still probably more work to be done.

Looking through all these, I'm betting htuttle like subscribes to a lot of NoChocolate's theories, who has an extremely passive-aggressive stance on Chara. Like, they say, "Chara's our favorite character and they're not good or evil!," and then turn around and say, "Everything is Chara's fault, Chara just wants to kill everyone, Chara abused Asriel, Frisk is the only good character, Chara is the devil, but we still think Chara is Frisk's partner and likely the narrator (even if it's a stupid idea)!"

Ideally, for a character as ambiguous as Chara, we want to remain neutral. We want players to come up with their own theories, not just what it merely says on the character page. Ideally, we provide everyone a balanced view and let them decide for themselves.

Edit: There's a new video out that utterly piledrives and nukes the "evil Chara" idea from orbit. The more fans find, the more outdated "evil Chara" is. I used to want to be balance, but the more I dig on Chara, the more ridiculous this idea becomes. Perhaps Chara is the ultimate test of Mercy: a character so ambiguous, we don't know whether to spare them or not, and if so, how.

Excellent video and work. Though... I like to add a few more things.

"Where are the knives" is a phrase by Chara expressed in red text. Red text implies, that they feel something very strongly about.

Since the phrase is spoken only in genocide, it has the effect to imply that Chara wants knives to hurt others.

However... What if Chara feels so horrified by our actions, that they look for knives so they can kill themselves, forgetting the fact that they already are dead?

Though... "About time" which is in white, could imply that they changed their mind about suicide whatsoever, if they were indeed horrified.

In any case they were confused, when they awoke by Frisk's determination.

About the "laughing off" thing on Chara's entry here. It still lacks the alternative interpretation, that they laughed the inner pain and guilt away, for poisoning Asgore by accident.

Several monsters also laugh off their inner pain away. So does Toriel when you backstab or kill her, while you are on the Genocide Path.

In any case, keep up the good work Spaztique.

I added now more detail and reasonable interpretations for Chara. Also, the Stockholm Syndrome is one of things, which should be taken into consideration.

In other words, Chara is not the person, which we think they are. They are but a traumatised child through the horrifying experiences we put them through, merely by letting them watch our attrocities. In short we created a child soldier, which completely distanced from itself through our increase in LOVE (Level of Violence).

Draco in Leather Pants, much? How does being a narrator make him not evil? Simply not saying the evil things he does when you play pacifist does not make then good since the comments are neutral. Plus, there is Asriel's line about Chara never being that good to begin with as well as the final scene of genocide run among other things (he wants knives) seem to make them evil.

You shouldn't speculate like that.

You might want to take a look on more material, if you wish so.

http://narrachara.tumblr.com/tagged/narrator%20chara/chrono

http://narrachara.tumblr.com/tagged/narrator%20chara/chrono/page/2

http://narrachara.tumblr.com/tagged/narrator%20chara/chrono/page/3

http://narrachara.tumblr.com/tagged/narrator%20chara/chrono/page/4

Maybe, but it's still all speculation. Plus, most of those are too neutral to make Chara appear good. And some are fan interpretations. Again, that's just speculation on your part.

If Chara was anything, they would hardly be called traumatized. If anything, they are encouraging the genocide route actions.

If I may intrude on a months old conversation, nothing supporting the narrachara theory suggests that they encourage you to do violence, and most of those actually suggest the opposite, with the noteworthy exceptions being once the player is already on the No Mercy route and Asgore's fight, where there's no way to spare him until you smack him around a bit.

Additionally, very little of what DV provided could be called baseless speculation...

We have now more. And this is a extremely well done compilation of information gathered there about Chara, which shows that they are indeed the narrator. http://determinators.tumblr.com/post/143284030397/greetings-uh-so-ive-been-working-on-this Here a bit out of the "Chara can be corrupted" section:

There’s an interesting clue to the narrator and their state of mind when you check the bag of dog food in the lab.

You see, unlike the dummy and tree, it’s affected by kill count, not LOVE.

If you kill no one…

• (It is a half-full bag of dog food)

Pacifist route text. You haven’t killed anyone at this point; the narrator is optimistic (”glass-full”). They’re having a good time on this path. They’re hopeful.

After killing someone (even a single Whimsun, who won’t even raise your LV at LV 1)…

• (It is a half-empty bag of dog food)

The narrator is pessimistic. The bag is now “half empty”. Their state of mind is directly changed by you killing even one person.

But if you kill Doggo, and your kill count is 21+….

• (It is a half-empty bag of dog food)
• (You just remembered something funny)

The dog bag becomes funny. This is directly affected by killing Doggo and killing more than 20 people. The narrator doesn’t find his death funny before 20 kills. Something has changed in them.

Their view on the world is directly changed by how much you kill.

• If you kill no one, they’re optimistic. They don’t want you to kill.
• If you kill even once, they become pessimistic.
• If you kill over 20 people then they can be sadistic, even on a non-genocide route.

But they do not find Doggo’s death funny unless you kill more than 20 people (which is more than the equivalent of an entire area’s worth of monsters). They did not find it funny before the kills corrupted them, or they would always find his death funny, even without the kills.

I've been doing tons of research myself, and it seems Narrator Chara Theory is slowly beginning to overtake Genocide Chara Theory, mainly because there's so much more solid grounding in-game and it deepens the game/characters a lot more than Genocide Chara Theory.

With that, I have a possible rework of The Fallen Human's description, plus a few trope changes, to accurately reflect a compromise:

(Revisions redacted: they've been added to the main page now.)

You did a really good job here, and this is good for the most part, but I'm detecting just a bit of bias in favor of defending Chara over other stances one may have toward them. For example, saying that they cared about Asriel with such definiteness strikes me as suspect; while that's certainly a valid interpretation of their relationship, the fact that Chara was willing to manipulate him in the way that they did makes me believe that it would also be valid to believe that they only pretended to do so to get what they wanted. Maybe do another look-over and iron some statements out?

These are the problems with writing Wiki pages about intentionally-ambiguous characters with a multitude of interpretations - they don't mesh well with concrete information.

@Fossils Da Da Da, how is the guide that Death Void posted not enough concrete information? Besides, how/why else would Frisk suddenly get a flashback about Chara and Asriel, two characters they had previously never met?

I even compared the theories in a guide of my own, The Many Faces of Chara, which is a meta-analysis of the various Chara theories, and my conclusion is that Genocide Chara Theory is the most flawed by far, and that the two strongest arguments are that Chara is either the narrator or even the player themselves, all based on in-game evidence.

The truth is Genocide Chara Theory is slowly growing weaker with each passing day: from what I've seen all across the internet, the fandom is poking holes in Genocide Chara Theory and are finding Narrator Chara Theory provides more depth to the game, the story, and tons more feels than making Chara simply a one-dimensional villain. On one poll of 9000+ Undertale fans on Reddit, Narrator Chara won by a landslide victory. Only TV Tropes and the Undertale Wikia seem to support Genocide Chara Theory anymore, and since these are the main sources people turn to for information about characters, the rest of the fandom is starting to get annoyed with it. Think about it: these are the top two websites people go to and trust for information, and yet word-of-mouth is slowly killing Genocide Chara Theory and growing Narrator Chara Theory. Something has to be done about this shift in the fandom sooner or later, and it may be high time for a mass edit on TV Tropes in the near future to reflect these changes.

Alright, then, that's fair. Go ahead and make the edit, sorry for butting in like that.

I guess my problem is that, at least from my perspective, no one theory seems to 100% fit all the evidence we're given. Despite all the evidence, even Charator doesn't quite seem to fit perfectly; then again, I haven't read your entire essay, so maybe I should just do that. I guess anybody saying anything about them as an absolute fact outside of what we're given just rubs me the wrong way, I apologize for letting my bias get in your way like that.

Welp, just made a dozen edits, trying to keep a nice balance between all of the theories, but I'm kinda pessimistic about how long they'll stay. Let's see how it all pans out.

Luckily, I'm banking on the fact that Narrator Chara Theory is growing at a rate where, sooner or later, the amount of people demanding edits will overtake those wishing to keep the status quo.

I recommend anyone to watch the following video, which helps us to understand Chara even better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYHXpdNqdGs

Hey Htutti, I had send you a PM regarding your last edits. I personally see them too biased without taking everything into account.

Flowey is both a hero and villain. This does not invalidate the villain tropes we apply to him.

Like Flowey, she became a "fighter" after her own "pacifist" route led to her death. And, like Fowey, she can be redeemed. Unlike Flowey, she is not a character. She is a cipher. This is the linchpin to all kinds of "Chara Defense Squad" theories.

The theory seems to be at odds with the ending. "That's me", and "since when were you in control" implies that Chara is not entirely blameless. If she had power of Frisk then she could have stopped it at any time. Or simply reset it, as she forgets to do in the "post-genocide" endings.

On the other hand:

I agree, we do not know enough about Chara's past. So it's unknown whether she was always this crazy or just went off the deep end, it's not really clear.

I think the confusion lies in the fact that:

Flowey gets two character sheets. One (Asriel) is front-loaded with all of his good qualities. Chara also has two personalities. One of them is called Frisk, and embodies all of their good qualities. The Chara personality is mostly negative.

Actually, htuttle, I think where the confusion lies is more direct than that: just the fact that it's EXTREMELY unclear where the lines between Chara, Frisk, and the player lie, and where one stops and the other ends. In addition, the game has many different story routes, and none of them are really "canon" or "non-canon"; what you personally played is what happened in your game. Therefore, it's easy to make a "Chara Defense Squad" case if you only take into account the Pacifist run, but equally easy to interpret them as a villain if you take into account a Genocide run, and the lines only get blurrier the more routes you take into account and in what order and how many - Chara would look like a very different person in a story where only a Pacifist route happens than they would in a story where the player plays different routes over and over and over again, for example.

I don't think it needs to be. Flowey and Asriel are completely different characters in the long run, and Asriel's section isn't long enough to justify removing it from the spoiler characters.

valid point.