Fanfic / If We Fall Down

If We Fall Down is an Undertale fanfiction series written by TheArchimage on Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction Dot Net.

The first work in the series, How to Save a Soul, was started in April 2017 and completed in December 2017 with 23 chapters. Set during the game, it follows Chara following Frisk on a Pacifist route.

The second work, The Munificent Seven, is a direct sequel. Set post-Pacifist, it focuses on monsters trying to coexist with humans. Started December 2017, it is ongoing with +30 chapters.

You can read it on Archive of Our Own here, or on FanFiction.Net here and here.

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If We Fall Down contains examples of:

Tropes # - E

• 20 Minutes into the Future: The story picks up in 204X, 31 years after Chara's death. The human world hasn't changed a lot since our time, and human culture and technology is roughly about the same as it is now.
• Abusive Parents: Those People, Chara's abusive grandparents. Chara's red eyes disturbed them and they disliked that Chara was not meek and obedient, but the last straw came when Chara let it slip that they weren't a girl or a boy. For two years they relentlessly inflicted horrendous amounts of emotional, physical, and psychological abuse to break Chara and turn them into a quiet, obedient "granddaughter", and showed no shred of remorse, even when they nearly accidentally killed Chara themself, when they drove their grandchild to attempt suicide, or when Chara ran away. Carol believed they were incapable of the self-reflection to stop the abuse or realize they'd done wrong. Worth pointing out is that when Chara did break and try to bend to their wishes by agreeing to "be a girl" and obey them without talking back again, Those People still weren't satisfied with it: they planned to continue the abuse until Chara fully and genuinely believed everything Those People said. Also counted as abusive to Carol for forcing her to witness and live with the situation they inflicted on her sibling and threatening her into compliance, and it's implied they might have abused their son (Chara and Carol's father) as well or at least been toxic people he wanted nothing more to do with, given that he cut them out of his life as an adult.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: It's established that Chara and Sans were around the same age as children and were well-acquainted with each other, with Sans as Chara's closest friend other than Asriel. In Undertale, it's unclear if Sans was even born yet at the time Chara was alive, and nothing in Sans and Toriel's interactions suggests he'd been friends with her surrogate child.
• Adaptational Badass: In Undertale, Grillby is a bartender and nothing else. Here, he is revealed to not only be a Retired Badass, he is a Magic Knight armed with a flaming rapier and former hired assassin sent after Marijane. Even after repeat reloads, she notes that she couldn't last more than a few turns against him.
• Adaptational Explanation:
  • Chara and Frisk themselves. In the game, the personalities and motivations of both kids are notoriously and intentionally mysterious: Chara is alternately suggested to have been a good person or a bad person, and like Frisk in-game, Toby Fox didn't include any dialogue for Chara in flashbacks and VHS tapes when they were canonically "talking", making Chara's "true" personality before their death a mystery. Meanwhile, Frisk is designed to play into player assumption that their avatar is a silent Featureless Protagonist they name typical of RPG games, only to subvert expectations near the end of the Pacifist route by revealing Frisk is their own person despite the player controlling them but leaving it unclear how much of Frisk's actions were their own and how much, if any, were the player. If We Fall Down adopts the theory that Chara is the sassy, silly, slightly mocking narrator from the game, that all options presented by the game (Mercy AND Fight) are things Frisk would consider doing on their own but at heart they want to be the "good kid" everybody loves, and puts the focus on the relationship between Chara and Frisk, massively fleshing out the personalities, backstories, and motives for them both and developing them as fully rounded-out characters in their own right.
  • All the new lore and rules established for magic and souls, such as expanding on what different colors (or types) of magic can and can't do, and how soul traits work. For example, in the game, green bullets restore HP and Undyne turns Frisk's soul green to stop them from fleeing battle; in If We Fall Down, green magic is explained to be more akin to "binding magic", which can be used as demonstrated by Undyne or to help heal injuries by binding wounds closed (which is also why monsters didn't simply heal Chara when they were dying — healing magic can't heal illnesses or poison).
  • The series bases its portrayal of Chara on the Narrator Chara fan theory. To justify why Chara would be reading things out loud to Frisk, here Frisk can't read things themself because they have dyslexia.
  • Two for the Neutral endings. Frisk may be leaving the Underground in Neutral endings even though they haven't absorbed a boss monster soul and the barrier hasn't been destroyed, which the series explains as Chara using the last of their soul to power Frisk through the barrier as part of a Heroic Sacrifice, Chara's soul having been so diminished it registered as a monster soul. Photoshop Flowey also claims he deleted their Save File in the game, but you can still Load it after the fight: he reveals he lied to troll Frisk.
• Adoptive Name Change: In a weird, backwards way. When Undyne hears she'll need a last name, she decides she wants Gerson's out of the respect she has for him, so she wants him to adopt her to get it. He challenges her to a fight to make her prove she's worthy of it first.
• Adults Are Useless: Applies to Frisk's and Chara's backstories. Adults pretty consistently failed and rejected Frisk in the foster system and at school. When Carol put in an anonymous tip to Child Protective Services about what was happening to Chara, it did nothing — Child Services scheduled a visit with Those People, accepted the lies Those People gave about Chara's questionable conditions, didn't even bother to question Chara or Carol in private, and didn't return to the home for any kind of follow-up.
  • The sequel mitigates this by introducing a group of adult human Original Characters who work with monsters in pressing their cause forward, and help take care of Frisk. Frisk's social worker, Ms. Ashland, appears in-person as a recurring character, and though Frisk dislikes her, she genuinely wants Frisk to find their forever home, is regretful that she's failed to do better by them, and if nothing else saved them some time by helping them figure out they're non-binary. It is also revealed that Child Protective Services was in truth more suspicious of Those People than they let on, as they were in the process of assembling a case against them by the time Chara ran away, and at least one person from the agency suspected Those People had murdered Chara and staged the accident to avoid being charged (which was, to that person's credit, half-true).
• All of the Other Reindeer: Frisk. No matter how hard they tried, other kids either ignored them or bullied them for being different. When Frisk would retaliate, they would get in trouble and their foster family would send them back, Frisk would be sent to a new foster family in a new school district, the same things would happen, and the cycle would continue.
• Ambiguously Brown: Frisk is described as having "olive skin", but because they were abandoned by their birth family as a baby, they don't know their ethnicity. They are described later in The Munificent Seven as having an epicanthic fold, which is associated more with specific ethnic groups. The first story's appendix states that Frisk thinks they may be Latinx.
• Amicable Exes: Silas and Susan dated in high school, but he broke things off (by text message, no less!) over a fight about him leaving town to go to Harvard. But by present day, they're friends again, currently collaborating on helping monsters, and arguably closer to each other than to anyone else.
• Amoral Attorney: Subverted with Silas Pembrooke, a public defender who becomes the first ally to monsters and is essentially working as their attorney as they seek equal rights as humans. He is The Spock of the group, often cold, used to focusing on what is technically legal versus what other people would feel is immoral, willing to play a little dirty to present the best case for his clients, and he has defended legitimately reprehensible people as a defense attorney. At the same time, the monsters would've been in serious trouble without his help, he is unquestionably a good man even if he doesn't always have the best people skills, and he admits to Frisk that he became a public defender specifically to repay his own good fortune by helping people who ran into trouble and didn't have money to hire their own attorneys.
• Back from the Dead: Near the end of the first arc of The Munificent Seven, all six fallen humans are revealed to have been resurrected, with pre-planning from the late Dr. Gaster and the plan being executed by an unknown party after his death.
• Bad Liar: Chara, as pointed out by Frisk and Asriel. They overcompensate by trying too hard to look and sound innocent.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Ms. Ashland. The first story is told from the perspective of two hurt kids failed by Child Protective Services, contributing to their distrust of human adults, and it's easy to roll with the idea that Adults Are Useless. But Ms. Ashland's thoughts is a pretty accurate summary of how Child Protective Services can fail even with well-meaning social workers who want to help kids. It's true that she failed to do more to help Frisk and she acknowledges that, but her POV sums up how things like that happen:
  "It was not as though she intended to hurt them. She really, honestly wanted what was best for them, the same as any of the kids she was assigned to. There were just so many of them and only so much of her, that was the problem. New Hampshire was better than a lot of other states, but there were still too many kids for too few workers. There had always been hiring freezes, or budget cuts, or some scandal in another state breathing down their necks and making it impossible to fire lazy people and hire better ones, or pay the good people what they were worth. Understaffed, underbudgeted, and overworked was a bad combination but that was the reality of life working for the public sector in a state so fearful of taxes. Frisk did not stand out. They were not being abused, they were not getting involved with gangs or drugs, they were not disintegrating rapidly. True, they would not talk about what their problems were and they kept getting sent back by foster families, but it was not a situation which needed imminent attention. She could afford to put them off for a little bit while she dealt with other kids."
• Beware the Nice Ones: Frisk. They have a Love soul, they're a friendly and good-natured kid when they open up, and they DO want to get the best ending for everyone… but that doesn't mean you should cross them. They have a violent temper, they take pleasure in beating down on bullies, and they REALLY don't like being attacked and antagonized nonstop. When under serious pressure and anger, they were fully willing to write the highly antagonistic Undyne and Flowey off as bad people and leave them Killed Off for Real, if not for Chara.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Skye Harris, a fourth-grader, seems to have a bit of this going on towards Frisk, who's in second grade. When a group of bullies gang up on Frisk and try to start a fight, he sticks up for Frisk, suggests they take the fight off school-grounds so Frisk won't get in trouble, goes with them so they won't be outnumbered if the bully brings his friends again, and bonds with them a little.
  • Marijane seems to have had Big Sister Instinct for Chara. A flashback of the two of them has her try to shield Chara's eyes from a kiss the same way Toriel does to Frisk in the game, and it seems that her "babying" Chara happened enough to both exasperate and amuse them.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Chapter 19 of The Munificent Seven, anti-human monsters take a monster school hostage to try to force Asgore to either declare war again on humanity or step down. Asgore, Undyne, Papyrus, Grillby, and (reluctantly) Burgerpants storm the building and wipe the floor with the hostage-takers without any casualties on either side.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The life cycle and reproduction of monsters compared to humans.
  • Monsters are established to age like humans until the age of around 20, but because of what monster souls are made of and how attuned monsters are to their souls, their emotions influence how they age from there. When attacked by someone who feels hatred, cruelty, or savagery, it can kill monsters; but if monsters feel the absence of love, compassion, and hope themselves, it is equally harmful, making them grow old and die. For this reason, Sans is said to have continued to age like a human would or even faster. Monsters who hold onto their love, compassion, and hope, like Gerson and the Dogi, seem effectively immortal. The exception is boss monsters, who are strong enough to feel hatred, cruelty, savagery, and hopelessness without being physically affected.
  • In the appendix for the first story, the author notes that monsters technically have No Biological Sex, so when monsters have children, they can choose who will carry the child, regardless of gender. It's revealed in passing that Sans is the biological son of two husbands and Camille is the biological daughter of two wives.
• Black and Nerdy: The Perseverance soul, Tyrone Eaton. Alphys discovers through her research that his social workers had been trying to get him enrolled at a school for gifted youth, and it's later revealed that he'd used his experiments with Resets to dig into the history of monsters and magic, which had led to him realizing that Chara can use magic. That becomes relevant in the sequel.
• Boisterous Bruiser: The way the Bravery soul, Skye Harris, is described, he fit this to a tee. He was energetic, confident, and climbed Mt Ebott on a dare. He beat up a large number of monsters on the way to New Home, but refused to kill anyone, leaving all his opponents alive. It's even said that he Loaded when he did accidentally kill some.
• Book Dumb: Frisk. They get bad grades at school regular as clockwork because they can't even read the work they're given, and sound especially bad compared to Chara, who likes to show off how smart they are with their wide vocabulary and literary quotes. However, as Chara points out, Frisk isn't dumb despite what other humans have said, in fact they proved to be pretty perceptive, quick on their feet, and good at out-of-the-box problem-solving in their handling of the Underground. Susan also points out that Frisk is good at retaining information when taught to them. This is the final confirmation she needs that Frisk can't read: when asked verbally, Frisk correctly answers a question that they got wrong on a written test. When Susan adjusts how they are taught and tested for information, they do way better.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Weaponized by Sans. His POV reveals that he can read the game file name of whatever room he's in, then teleports by reaching into his "file" and editing his location to be that room. No "seeing through the curtain" though, he never suggests it means his world is a video game, which implies that's how reality works in this series or at least that's what he's assuming. He mentions that he has had this power since the accident that erased Gaster, who is suggested by Deltarune to be a Fourth-Wall Observer in canon.
  • Chapter 34 in the sequel stops juuuuust short of smashing the fourth wall with a hammer. Basically, the player and Toby Fox appear, the player realizes Frisk wasn't just their Featureless Protagonist and that their narrator was Chara, Toby claims credit for creating the experience, and the player does what many players do and sets the True Pacifist data aside in a separate folder to preserve it, before playing other routes of the game. Toby basically admits to Papyrus the Surface world shouldn't exist because he didn't make it, and leaves because he doesn't belong in this world anymore. What stops it juuuuust short of smashing the fourth wall is that these figures aren't one-to-one real-life versions of "some person playing a video game" and "The Toby Fox, dude who made the game", but rather inhuman, otherworldly analogues playing similar roles in treating this world as a game.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Burgerpants, who invented a spell combining cyan, red, and gray magic to create an illusionary copy of himself… but deems it a failure since he only made it to make a fake him to stand at the register while he took a break under the counter on slow days, and the copy doesn't look quite realistic enough to work.
• Brought Down to Normal: Frisk has lost their power to Save, Load, and Reset by the start of the second story. Whether they like it or not, whatever happens from that point on will stick.
• Character Tics: Chara has a habit of rubbing or fiddling with their heart locket when anxious or deep in thought.
• Child Mage: Though Chara couldn't use magic in life, Tyrone figures out that Chara in fact is capable of magic, specifically a form of yellow magic; that's why their memories would keep being projected to the other fallen humans. Later, Frisk is able to use basic magic by extending a magic field on Toriel, making them the first human known to be capable of magic since the seven magicians.
• Child Prodigy: Whereas most monsters only learn a couple types of magic in their lives, 10-year-old Asriel had already mastered fire magic and could use both healing magic and gravity magic. Boss monsters are uniquely capable of mastering all types of magic, but Asriel was said to be powerful even for a boss monster: it was thought that he could turn out to be the strongest boss monster since before the war.
• Cool Teacher: Susan. She is competent, caring, and goes out of her way to help her students. Especially applies to her relationship with Frisk, since they got to know her as a person before she became their teacher, and who she helps take care of after work like a Cool Big Sis.
• Creator Provincialism: The author admits he had all eight fallen humans hail from the fictional Weymouth, New Hampshire, because he himself is from New Hampshire. Mt Ebott is placed in the real-life White Mountain range, which is part of the Appalachians.
• Damaged Soul: In Chapter 8, Chara finds out that they only have a tiny piece of their soul left. While they largely seem like the same person they were before death, it's suggested by Napstablook that they could be missing memories, personality traits, feelings, or the virtues associated with human souls. It's suggested this is the reason Chara's ghost is so vulnerable to Death by Despair — their soul too fragile to withstand it. At the end of Chapter 21, the ghosts of the six fallen humans give Chara back the pieces of their soul they've had with them, restoring most of Chara's soul.
• Deadpan Snarker: Chara, to the surprise of nobody familiar with the Narrator Chara theory.
• Death by Despair: Frisk finds out the hard way that Chara can die again as a ghost if they feel too much self-hatred or too strong a desire to die. Frisk reloads to undo it several times and steers around the trigger for Chara's death in previous timelines. On their journeys with the other six fallen humans, Chara kept dying in the same spot on the New Home balcony each time they learn what happened after they died and were overwhelmed by the guilt of what their plan did. The other six, unable (and in Avery's case, unwilling) to help them, had to give them up for dead and press on. Frisk is the first one who manages to save Chara by convincing them to stay.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Frisk. Chara first notices it when they see how Frisk is soaking up the crowd's adoration during the concert with Shyren. Frisk later admits that they climbed Mt Ebott so that people would worry and miss them, and intended to climb back down after so that people would be happy to see them and finally say they loved them. They latch on to Chara as strongly and swiftly as they do because of Chara trying to protect them from Flowey, and the reason they leave Toriel's care to go break the barrier is because they want Chara's approval. When it appears that their biological parents have shown up to claim them in the sequel, Frisk is absolutely ecstatic: in a way, it would be the ultimate validation that the people who originally abandoned them wanted them after all.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Byron Rickford, who pushes racist-style rhetoric but insists he's not racist. He acts confident as long as he thinks he's in control of the situation, but anytime he overplays his hand and someone stands up to him, he balks and starts backpedaling wildly. He only comes as far as he does because too many people fall for his lies and manipulation and end up supporting him.
  • Unsurprisingly, the monster terrorists who hid in the shadows and took a group of schoolchildren hostage to try to force Asgore's hand turn out to be this, folding like wet paper at the Big Damn Heroes moment described above. When the last one is face-to-face with Asgore himself, he completely goes to pieces and begs for mercy.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • When living with Those People, Chara had tried to kill themself by cutting their wrist with a steak knife. They got scared and Those People were able to save them, only to immediately punish them for trying to kill themself. Their plan with Asriel was also this as much as a Heroic Suicide: they wanted to free monsters, yes, but punishing themself for poisoning Asgore factored into it too and they were also flat-out trying to take themself out of the picture to protect the Dreemurrs from getting hurt by Chara again. They fully expected that "they" would cease to exist when they died and Asriel would just be getting their power when he absorbed their soul. They're shocked and upset when they wake up inside his body instead.
    "So that was four times now they had failed to die. They tried not to let their disappointment show."
  • The soul from the seventh fallen human, Avery, was collected after he shot himself in the head and killed himself in the Judgement Hall. Part of it was probably guilt from accidentally shooting his dad and it's implied he believed he deserved to die for being a killer, but it's also strongly implied that he killed himself so Sans wouldn't have to kill him and be burdened by the murder.
  • Rebecca Troy attempts to kill herself after being resurrected, unable to live with what she'd done, having only done it because she didn't think it would matter since she would be dead anyway. She's talked out of it by Avery Campton, not that it improves her mental health any.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Chad is disgusted by Byron implying he planned to use the mystery behind the first fallen human to damage the monsters' reputation, given that he'd be exploiting a dead child. From the same conversation, it's revealed that after the story of Asriel became public knowledge in the human world, the cryptid enthusiasts who'd circulated the legend of the White Beast of Weymouth pulled the plug on the website and avoided contact with Humans First, now that they knew "the White Beast" had only been a 10-year-old boy murdered by humans.
  • Compared to the game, which doesn't address how Frisk would feel about getting attacked and killed by monsters no matter how funny and likable they may be. Frisk does not just shake off their deaths or instantly forgive their attackers, and they get pissed at Chara for trying to protect monsters and make excuses for monsters trying to murder human children. Brought up again in the sequel as humans discover what happened in the Underground.

Tropes F - K

• Family Theme Naming: Chara and Carol. Invoked by the sequel, which reveals that Chara noticed the similarity between Carol's name and the star Cor Caroli, and took their name from the Chara star because its connection with Cor Caroli reminded them of their bond with Carol. As an adult, Carol changed her legal name to Carol Caroli in hopes Chara was still alive and would recognize it as proof she loved them.
• Fantastic Racism: Cuts both ways.
  • Some monsters nurse a powerful grudge against humanity from their imprisonment, Prince Asriel's murder, and Rebecca Troy's massacre in New Home. Even back when Chara was alive, they found letters to Asgore by monsters who wanted him to kill Chara and take their soul, and Gaster made it clear he would have killed them himself if Asgore hadn't made it clear he wouldn't tolerate it. When Asgore ends his call for war against humanity and it is revealed that Rebecca has been revived while her victims have not, an unknown monster only known as Black Cloak tries to put together a coup against Asgore and reignite the war against humans for the sake of vengeance. The "coup" fizzles out spectacularly when the Black Cloak is kicked out of their own group for their refusal to go along with the plan the group wanted, arguing that it would backfire by turning the rest of monsterkind against them, and then the remaining members are defeated and arrested when they try to enact said plan.
  • Also quickly begins surfacing among humans as anti-monster sentiment, first out of simple fear and then resentment as everything changes in their town and their world. Byron spouts off propaganda to stir up these feelings and whip the affected into a frenzy, forming a hate group called Humans First. Ironically, for all the hate he sows among humans towards monsters and how his talking points smack of racism, it's revealed in his debut that Byron himself doesn't fear or resent monsters at all, he just sees an opportunity to use the people who do to get money and power for himself. He takes a moment before everything to give "a silent apology to the monsters, the only one he would ever offer". Arguably makes him an even bigger scumbag for inciting hate without having the excuse of ignorance.
• Fictional Disability: Chronic consilicytosis, AKA C3, AKA meltdown. Sans and Undyne both have it. Monsters with C3 have more determination than is safe for their bodies, which can lead to them accidentally overexerting themself without realizing it and begin melting as a result.
  Sans: let me be clear, it’s not a superpower that lets me go ‘beyond my limits’ like in cartoons, it means i can’t tell where my limits are until i literally fall apart. imagine if you were completely unable to feel pain; in no time at all you’d get banged up and possibly dead from fatal wounds you never knew you had. it’s like that. if i get in a real battle i’ll probably die afterward even if i win.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Chara with the six fallen humans. They remember all the time they spent with Chara, but the most Chara seems to remember about them is the traumatic half-memory of their repeat deaths on the balcony, with the six blending together into one indistinct human figure to them. Marijane is especially notable here, since they were with her the whole six years she spent with Toriel, a flashback shows them as being friends with her, and yet now they know nothing about her.
• Foster Kid: Frisk. Abandoned at birth, fostered, and never adopted, they've been sent to multiple families and inevitably sent back, often because Frisk fought back against bullies at school and the foster parents didn't want to deal with them anymore (it's suggested in Frisk's POV that them being a non-binary, non-white kid with red eyes and bad grades are other factors, especially since most families want to adopt white babies). Foster families consistently giving up on them and/or rejecting them makes up the bulk of their trauma. It's mentioned in passing that the family they HAD been staying with before climbing Mt Ebott said some incredibly cruel things about what Frisk did and didn't "deserve." Currently, they are Silas' foster kid, with plans to have them be officially adopted by Toriel.
  • This was also Chara's relationship to the Dreemurr family, to explain why Chara was only said to be "like" siblings with Asriel and only said to be treated "like" they were Asgore and Toriel's own in canon: they lived with them without ever being formally adopted. It's made clear that Asgore and Toriel would have been happy to make it official, but Chara was struggling with baggage left over from their life on the Surface. They were finally about to accept the Dreemurrs' offer when the pie incident happened, after which they permanently gave up on the idea.
• Ghost Memory: Due to Chara's piece of soul being stuck to Frisk's body, Frisk experiences Chara's memories whenever Chara does. When Chara finds out they've secretly been seeing parts of Chara's past, they are NOT happy about it.
• Good Is Not Dumb:
  • Papyrus, who is exactly as cheerful, zany, and nice as his canon counterpart, but he's also a Pop-Cultured Badass who references video games, excels at complicated strategy games, and proves to be wiser and more perceptive than he might seem, serving as The Confidant for Frisk and Chara.
  • Downplayed with Asgore. Though a lovable goofball, he was shown to be an adequately competent and perceptive king even without the brainier Toriel and couldn't honestly be considered "dumb" before; his biggest problem was that he took people's words at face value due to being a Nice Guy and doesn't quite know how to deal with deceitful and/or bad people. Part of his Character Development in The Munificent Seven is realizing that the situation has changed for monsters, that he must adapt to better keep his people safe and prosperous, and learning from Silas and Beatrice how to handle more treacherous scenarios.
• Happily Married: Grillby and his wife Homura, an oni type monster, who have Fuku Fire as their daughter. They lived apart for a time in the Underground not because of any marital troubles, but they wanted Fuku to go to Slightly Bigger School (in Hotland) for a good education, so Homura and Fuku moved to Hotland temporarily while Grillby stayed in Hotland. When monsters are freed, Homura and Grillby live together again and work together at their new bar. A flashback reveals that when Grillby was hired to kill Marijane, she hooked him up with Homura and he agreed to spare her, not unlike how Frisk pacifies Royal Guard 01 and 02 in the game.
• Hates Being Touched: Chara, which was revealed to be true even before they landed in the care of Those People. The Dreemurrs, being a huggy, touchy family, had to learn to be careful, ask before touching, and not overdo it. Flowey also seems to be an example when he pops up again in the sequel.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Chara realizes that since their soul piece is only about as strong as a monster's, Frisk can use it to cross the barrier... but as Chara suspected, they don't go with Frisk and fade away again without having a body to attach themself to. The effects of this on the one who receive the "sacrifice" are deconstructed when Frisk is shown to be devastated by losing Chara. When they manage to reload, they're angry with Chara for sacrificing themself yet again without regard for how the people who care about them would feel, in this case basically tricking Frisk into killing them when they knew Frisk wouldn't have wanted it.
  • To return Asriel to himself, Frisk plans to find seven compassionate "volunteer" humans who accept monsters, would be understanding of Asriel's situation, and would be willing to give him their souls once they die (meaning they'd also have to be willing to exist as part of him indefinitely and not try to take control from him). As of this writing, they haven't decided on ANY of the hypothetical seven, much less convinced them of it or collected their soul.
• Holier Than Thou: Those People are described this way by Chara.
  Chara: They were holy so they were allowed to dictate what was profane, and they knew they were holy because they never committed a profane act. Everything Those People were was exalted, everyone not like them was Damned. The very worst sins were circumstances; being born different in the body or different in the mind than what Those People were. To want something different than what they did or succumb to temptations they would never need to resist, were the greatest sins. That was the final proof of how righteous they were; they were never tempted at all, so how could they be evil? But a disobedient, willful child who would not respect the authority of their guardians, who had strange ideas and would not listen to reason, who had sinful urges and a distorted view of themself to the point where they would not even call themself a girl? Of course that was evil.
  • The author states that Those People were simply controlling and malicious people who used religion to rationalize their abuse of Chara to themselves. The Munificent Seven has a scene from Carol's POV depicting Those People failing to live up to what their religion preached (helping the needy) when it didn't suit them and justifying it to themselves. Other scenes imply Those People did not truly think Chara was a demon who'd killed and possessed their real grandchild, but that they kept up the act that they did to knowingly inflict more fear and anguish on Chara and punish them for being opinionated and different.
• I Have No Son!: The excuse Those People used to justify their emotional, psychological, and physical torture of Chara was that it WASN'T their grandchild, but a demon that had killed their "granddaughter" and possessed "her"; they tried to convince Carol to think this way too, and forced Chara to call them "Mr. and Mrs. Pelham" instead of "Grandpa and Grandma." Chara returns the favor by only ever referring to them (with dripping contempt) as "Those People". Chara also disowned Carol as their sister, referring to her as "my former sister", when Mrs. Pelham threatened to do the same to Carol until Carol finally agreed to blame "the demon" for breaking a vase, in desperation to avoid getting put through the same hell she'd seen Chara be put through. There are hints in Carol's retelling in the sequel that Those People might not have ever truly believed Chara was a demon, but used it as part of a calculated system of abuse to isolate Chara, dehumanize them, and break their spirit for being willful.
• I See Dead People: Almost no one can see or hear Chara as a ghost. Frisk only started being able to after Flowey attacked them. In Chapter 16, it's revealed the six fallen humans had the same connection allowing them to see and communicate with Chara as Frisk has, though in the sequel they all lose this ability when they're resurrected, since they'd all given back the pieces of Chara's soul that connected them to Chara.
• I See Them, Too: Ghost monsters, like Napstablook, can see and hear Chara by default. It is revealed that Papyrus can too for reasons yet to be explained, and in Chapter 19 Sans reveals he's been able to see and hear Chara since the accident that killed Gaster.
• Inexplicably Awesome: The Great Papyrus himself!
  "Chara reached up with trembling fingers and grabbed Papyrus’s hand. “H-How are you doing this? Even Frisk can’t touch me...”
  “Oh? Perhaps I can touch you because I don’t know I shouldn’t be able to.”
  Did he actually believe real life worked on cartoon logic or was he trying to dodge the question? Chara was usually pretty good about reading people, but for how expressive their face could be Papyrus was a cipher."
• Innocently Insensitive: A recurring flaw of Chara's:
  • Chara complains that they like Papyrus and all, but he's doing a poor job of trying to capture Frisk. Frisk, who is later revealed to have already been murdered once by Glyde and yelled at Chara for not taking their job keeping Frisk safe seriously in two undone timelines, bitterly replies they think it's a good thing fewer people are trying to kill them.
  • When they hear Frisk say "paskemi" instead of "spaghetti", Chara can't hold back their amusement and laughingly tells Frisk that they aren't even close, but Frisk seems genuinely upset and angry. The next chapter, Chara finds out that Frisk has a ton of insecurities about thinking they really are stupid, and has a Jerkass Realization.
  • Chara's Squeeing over Undyne at the start of the fight every time Frisk Loads against her. Chara doesn't know Frisk is being killed by her over and over again, but that doesn't make Frisk feel better.
  • While Chara is honestly alarmed and worried for Undyne when they realize she has C3 and is fighting Frisk anyway (with their only point of comparison for C3 being Sans, who has a more severe case), the author points out that their reaction could be considered ableist. Undyne is a grown adult who lives with her condition and manages it, and doesn't need someone (especially a random little kid) calling her an idiot or telling her what she "should" do.
  • Chara can't quite accept that they are loved and keeps downplaying how much they mean to their loved ones due to their self-esteem being practically non-existent, which leads to them rationalizing how said loved ones are better off without them and unintentionally hurting them by killing themself (and in Toriel's and Asgore's case, refusing to let Frisk tell them that Chara isn't gone).
  • Undyne asks Susan if she's related to Frisk, since Frisk has closed eyes, Susan's eyes are "kinda small", and their skin colors are similar (and to monsters, who come in all shapes and sizes, in general humans look like they could all be related). Susan has to take a couple moments to hold herself back from tearing into Undyne from how unbelievably racist she sounds.
  • Papyrus gets a moment of this when telling the story of Asriel and Chara to Silas with his usual enthusiasm, with Toriel and Asgore both present, completely failing to read the room. He does realize halfway through that it might not be a story he should tell.
• Ironic Hell: How Chara sees their current situation as a ghost in Chapter 1.
  "So that was it. No one could see them, no one could hear them. They could not affect anything. They could not even get more than a few feet away from this human invader. They were powerless and helpless. This was one of those deeply cruel hells, they decided, one specifically tailored to the worst fears and weaknesses of its prisoner. You finally have what you wanted, Chara, they mentally berated. You are perfectly safe and nothing in the world can hurt you ever again. Is it everything you imagined?"''
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Hinted at in Chapter 17 when, after dying to Asgore many times in a row and failing to get anywhere with mercy or trying to fight him, Frisk briefly considers Resetting so they can kill monsters from the start and get strong enough to fight him at the end. Pairing what we know from canon of how LV works with the more unattractive aspects of Frisk's personality here, it's strongly implied Frisk and Chara both would've gone plunging off the slippery slope if they'd really tried this, possibly resulting in a Genocide run. It's implied something similar previously happened with Tyrone (the Perseverance soul) in a Reset timeline in a failed attempt to get past Gaster (who's implied to be as tough or possibly even tougher than Sans in an Undertale Genocide boss fight).
• Kid Hero: Frisk is all of eight years old, and Chara isn't much more mature, only being about 10.

Tropes L - P

• "L" Is for "Dyslexia": It's revealed that Frisk can't read, an idea inspired by the Narrator Chara fan theory for Undertale portraying Chara as reading all the books, signs, and plaques in the game out loud to Frisk. The author states that the reason why Frisk can't read and has a Speech Impediment is that they have undiagnosed and unrecognized dyslexia. As of Chapter 17 in The Munificent Seven, it's finally been recognized, and Susan and Toriel start modifying how Frisk is being taught so that they can start doing better in school.
• Laughing Mad: Chara has a tendency to go into fits of hysterical laughter whenever they have a particularly horrible realization.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Frisk's fights with them in the first story demonstrates that, goofy and nice they may be, but Papyrus and Asgore are terrifyingly strong and skilled when they get in a fight.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Carol was Chara's when they were living with Those People. Her betrayal was the final blow that caused them to climb Mt Ebott, but the author points out their situation would have been even worse if she hadn't been there for them in the first place.
• Love Hungry: Frisk is a sympathetic example. They were abandoned at birth, spent their entire life being shuffled around the foster care system, and were friendless and often bullied. What they want most is to win Chara's affection and approval by making their wish of monsters being set free come true, and their strong attachment to Chara and desire to be their friend prompts Frisk to do genuinely good deeds. But their obsession with learning more about their mysterious, tight-lipped friend has them roll right over Chara's boundaries without thinking, they exploit Loads to keep Chara from seeing their faults, and they show signs of jealousy that could easily have led to vindictiveness, towards monsters in general and Asriel specifically for having Chara care more about them than Frisk. Luckily, they have a Heel Realization, and in the sequel they're (mostly) in a better situation, surrounded by people who love them and finally starting to have their emotional needs met. Between this, not being enabled by the power to Load anymore, and a good dose of Character Development from the end of the first story, they've gotten far better.
• Mama Bear:
  • As in the game, Toriel is one for Frisk, saving them from Flowey and Asgore and trying to keep them safe from all monsters, and their safety remains her number one priority in The Munificent Seven. Also applies to Chara. Even with Chara long dead and gone (as far as she knows), she's angry when it becomes apparent Those People didn't look for them and is determined to find out where Chara came from so she can make them answer for the damage they'd done to Chara. After finding out just how horrifically they were abused by their grandparents, she asks where the grandparents are now with poorly contained rage.
  • Beatrice Lincoln for her niece Lilly Randolph (the Patience soul). Best showcased with how brutally she dealt with the girl's scummy parents for the incident that made Lilly climb Mt Ebott: in response to the evidence Lilly left her that her father had been recording Lilly inappropriately, Beatrice blackmails the father — her brother-in-law — into killing himself to avoid public backlash. Having figured out that Lilly must have gone to her mother first and been ignored to avoid a scandal with her political campaign, Beatrice then also forces Lilly's mother — her own sister — to drop out of the race, give up on ever becoming a public figure, give up all legal rights to Lilly, and never approach either Beatrice or Lilly again.
  • Likewise, Mary Campton for her son Avery (the Justice soul). She blames Asgore for her son's death and is hellbent on killing him for it, no matter what anyone says about it. Only Avery coming back alive and pleading for Asgore's life convinces her to spare him.
• Men Don't Cry: Toriel has a flashback revealing that Skye (the Bravery soul) mentioned he'd been told this by his father (who Skye's mother says wasn't abusive per se and loved his son but did want to make Skye "tough"). When Skye got wet-eyed saying goodbye to Toriel, Toriel hugged him and firmly told him he should never be ashamed to show how he feels.
  "Indeed, in the good days Asgore cried a lot. She never thought of him as weak for it. It was rather the opposite: It was when he refused to cry, when he gave in to anger, that everything fell apart."
• Mirror Character: Suggested by the author in the first story's appendix, comparing Carol and Chara as people who had made one awful mistake that seriously hurt their loved one (Chara, Asriel), that one mistake redefined their entire relationship with that person in that loved one's mind, and Carol and Chara are sincerely remorseful and want to make amends.
• Morality Chain: Frisk isn't a villain or even a bad person, but when they're in the midst of Slowly Slipping Into Evil, keeping Chara's hope alive is the reason why they Load away Undyne's death since they believe Undyne is a bad person who deserves to stay dead at this point. When Frisk fully intends to kill Flowey and leave him dead, Chara pulls a Go Through Me to try to deter them from killing Flowey (who they've privately recognized is Asriel, though they won't remember it). Even angry and knowing that stabbing through Chara won't hurt them and that Chara is using Frisk's affection for them to shield Flowey, Frisk can't bring themself to "stab" Chara and reluctantly lets Flowey go. Later, having finally seen first-hand how volatile their temper can be without a Load to wipe the memory away, Chara tells Frisk point-blank they cannot keep losing it on people because if they get angry like that and hit a monster, it'd kill them and Frisk wouldn't be able to bring them back this time.
• Morality Pet:
  • However cruel and manipulative Beatrice can be with other people, it's indisputable that she deeply and genuinely cares for her niece, Lilly Randolph, still 25 years after the girl vanished. Lilly knew she could count on her to deal with Lilly's parents for her, and Beatrice took custody of Lilly from them and took extra steps to protect Lilly from the mother ever making contact with her. She is currently helping Lilly with her mysterious plan.
  • Despite his Heel–Face Turn, Flowey is back to being soulless and as a result, still not exactly friendly or kind. He does care about Frisk enough to confide in them about his suspicion that Chara is still around, and when he thinks Frisk's plan to restore him is to kill people or steal souls, he immediately tries to shut it down to save Frisk from going down that path.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Gaster, emphasis on the "Morally Ambiguous". He might have meant well for his race and appears to have engineered the resurrections of the fallen humans despite how much he dislikes their species (though the reason for why hasn't been revealed), but he was fully willing to murder the fallen human children and was displeased with Asgore sparing their lives, refused to show 13-year-old Rebecca mercy even though it's implied that she didn't kill anyone before he made her snap, he is suspected In-Universe to have some involvement in the other fallen humans' mysterious, convenient deaths that happened behind Asgore's back, and comes off as a Jerkass overall with Sans admitting Gaster wasn't someone he wanted to be.
• Never Mess with Granny: 79-year-old Beatrice Lincoln is The Dreaded to those who know her. Once she starts appearing in the story in person, it very quickly becomes apparent why to the characters and the readers: the woman's got ice in her veins.
  "Her face was gaunt but a tiny smile graced it. She would have appeared matronly were it not for the palpable aura of danger around her. Toriel needed none of Doctor Gaster’s equipment to know what it was: LOVE, low but not 1. This woman had killed before."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: For Chara. It actually WASN'T in theirs and Asriel's plan to kill humans to collect the remaining six souls to break the barrier. They expected Chara to not wake up again when they died and their soul went to Asriel, then Asriel was supposed to use his people skills to make contact with humans, show them there was nothing to fear from monsters, and peacefully collect the remaining six souls. That way, they believed monsters could be free and the much-stronger humans wouldn't have any reason to attack monsters again — and judging from how humans react to monsters in the second story, it's very possible this could've worked. But when Chara woke up inside Asriel, they decided to take their body to lay it to rest in the golden flowers, thinking it would show Asriel's compassion to the humans; instead, the humans mistook Asriel as their murderer and ruined their plan before he could do anything. The fusion decided to run and might have lived, if Chara hadn't seen Those People look at their body and then turn away, causing their hatred to boil over and make a snap decision to just kill the humans and take their souls in order to Kill All Humans, deciding there could never be peace between humans and monsters after all because of humans are too evil. As a result, Asriel is killed, reincarnated as the soulless Flowey, and both he and Sans stopped considering Chara their friend; the Dreemurr family is broken with Toriel and Asgore divorced and mourning their son; and Chara ruined the Underground they'd known, turning kind monsters into killers and causing the seven human children who fell in after them to be attacked and murdered.
• Noble Top Enforcer: From the sequel, Chad Nelson for Byron and Humans First. He is not a bad person and doesn't want to harm monsters, but Byron found him at his lowest and he bought into Byron's sugar-coated Fantastic Racism. He calls Byron out whenever it slips from what Chad still thinks is Humans First's goal (making sure someone is out there making sure humans don't get screwed over from pro-monster causes, like he was) to blatant evil, and is in fact longtime friends with Silas, Susan, and Marty and still cares about them.
• Once More, with Clarity: As Chara can't remember Loads, the Interlude chapters — told from Frisk's perspective — fill us in on what's really been happening and show us the reasons for Frisk's weird behavior.
• Only Friend:
  • Chara was Asriel's in the past (Sans was more their friend than his), according to Toriel because of his status as the prince, and in the present is Frisk's only company at school (at least at first).
  • Ozzy was Frisk's first friend at school, with Susan arranging them to meet because she worried both children were lonely and didn't have any friends in the class. Ozzy also unknowingly functions as one of the few people Chara can and will talk to via Frisk, though of course he still thinks he's just talking to Frisk.
• Original Character: The Munificent Seven introduces multiple new human characters, including several viewpoint characters living and working with Frisk and the monsters, and relatives of all eight fallen humans. It also introduces several original monster characters.
• Our Souls Are Different:
  • For starters, breaking with Undertale fanon, the red human soul is stated to mean love. Human souls are made up of varying levels of all seven virtues,^note Patience is "the ability to self-motivate and maintain hope", Bravery is "the confidence to act decisively", Integrity is "the strength of your moral compass", Perseverance is "the power to withstand hardship", Kindness is "respect for those you don’t know", Justice is "the drive to protect others", and Love is "the depth of the connections you form with others" with the virtue the human has most of giving their soul its color. The dominant trait can also change over time, either naturally and as positive growth (Marijane is stated to have first had an integrity soul before time with Toriel caused Marijane's kindness to grow past her integrity) or negatively (the author states Chara was initially a perseverance soul, but the abuse from Those People wore down their perseverance too low; Gaster's analysis revealed it had dropped to their third-lowest trait by the time they reached the Underground).
  • In The Munificent Seven, it's explained that monsters do in fact have colored souls like humans and at least some of the human soul colors and their associated traits also apply to monster souls, such as green meaning kindness. Monster souls appear white by default to outside observers, but someone extending their magic to a monster's soul would be able to see the true color of their soul. Grillby and Toriel both have dark blue souls, Papyrus has an orange soul, Undyne has a yellow soul, and Burgerpants has a purple soul.
• Out of Focus: Downplayed with Chara and Frisk in the sequel. They were the only viewpoint characters of the first story and they still have major storylines of their own in the second, but the story's POV is no longer restricted to the two of them and begins rotating through multiple viewpoint characters even in a single chapter, giving them less screentime; they went from "the main characters", to "main characters".
• Papa Wolf:
  • Silas admittedly isn't a perfect foster father for Frisk, but he is understandably furious that in eight years of foster care, NO ONE realized Frisk couldn't read or bothered to look deeper at their bad grades at school, when Susan figured it out in just a week. He tears into Frisk's social worker offscreen for it.
  • When Asgore realizes that anti-human terrorists have taken schoolchildren hostage, he gets pissed and goes in himself to shut it down.
    Asgore: No. There will be no negotiations. What they have done is horrible, what they threaten to do is worse. The time has come, I think, to put on the crown and remind people who they are dealing with.
  • Grillby is a stoic variant, inviting himself on the rescue mission at Slightly Bigger School because his daughter Fuku is in there. When he encounters her after busting some heads together, Fuku is just-plain embarrassed he's doing this where her friends can see.
    Fuku: Dad, what are you doing here?
    Grillby: Rescuing you, and everyone else at this school as an incidental effect.
• Parental Abandonment: Frisk was abandoned at a hospital as a baby by their birth parents without being given a name. Being unwanted remains a sore spot for them to this day. And when they've got their hopes up, they're abandoned by them again in the sequel.
• Player and Protagonist Integration: The author's version on the highly-debated relationship between Frisk, Chara, and the player makes the player's relationship with Frisk in the series a Controller type. In the game, all options for what Frisk can do are things they are capable of and might do on their own, but the player prods Frisk in a certain direction and Frisk acts it out without realizing there is anything guiding them; the closest they get in the series to realizing this is lamenting how in fights in the Underground, it always seemed so obvious what to do that they'd just act without even thinking, but back on the Surface they have no idea of what to do in a fight without defaulting to fighting back and being a "bad kid" again. Though the author believes Chara is aware of the player and the control they have of Frisk in the game, he portrays both Frisk and Chara as oblivious to the player in this series to focus instead on the relationship between Frisk and Chara. The "player" does appear In-Universe in one chapter, but rather than a straight-up person from our world playing a video game, it seems to be a sort of disembodied Eldritch Abomination Reality Warper filling in the role a player would, who is called only "the darkness" and who Flowey mistakes for Chara and gives his speech pleading with them not to Reset; the darkness muses on how it hadn't realized it, Frisk, and Chara WEREN'T the same person until the end, and leaves this timeline behind to let this version of the world be happy while it continues to "play" with alternate versions of the world.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Marty is a lighthearted jokester and plays the eternal Wise Guy to his friends' Straight Man.
• Posthumous Character: Gaster, who is stated to have been killed in an accident with his experiment before the seventh human fell. He only appears in one flashback in the first story, but his presence is still felt in the story. He becomes an even more significant character in the sequel with it implied that he was responsible for setting the resurrection of the six fallen humans in motion... and it's implied he was at least connected to their mysterious murders in the first place, both shaping up to be major subplots.
• Promotion to Parent: In an incredibly bizarre example, the now-adult Shakira Eaton is implied to become her preteen "older" brother Tyrone's legal guardian when he comes Back from the Dead after being dead for 14 years.
• Pungeon Master: Chara, enough to win a punning war with Sans in a flashback. Frisk isn't nearly as appreciative.

Tropes R - Z

• Reasonable Authority Figure: Silas Pembrooke, a public defender monsters lucked into running into first on the Surface who proves an invaluable asset in navigating legal and political matters. When he becomes Frisk's foster father, he becomes Frisk's first foster parent to not only not send them back when they get into a fight at school, but actually sticks up for them.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Chara has dark red eyes, Frisk has light red eyes, and their unusual, "evil" eye colors has only made life harder for both of them. The worst of it was that it contributed to Those People's belief that Chara was a literal demon possessing their grandchild, and it was the sole reason why Frisk was abandoned in the first place.
• Revenge by Proxy: The sixth fallen human, Rebecca Troy, slaughtered 40 monsters in New Home (including other children), even though she was an Integrity soul. It's revealed that she did this purely to punish Gaster because he wouldn't stop murdering her.
  Gaster: She claimed I killed her many times over, in that hallway. Of course I have no memory of doing anything of the sort. Each time she died she returned to the start of the hallway, and only she remembered what happened. Even after dozens of attempts she could not keep me from killing her. So she... turned around. She came here, she did all this, to get revenge on me. Something like, “I won’t come back this time, and all these people will be dead because you’re such a bastard.”
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Surprisingly averted with Chara. The standard in Undertale fanworks is that Chara remembers past timelines, like how Flowey and Frisk can in canon. In this series however, Chara is as oblivious to loads and resets as most characters.
• Saying Too Much: In the first story, several times Frisk slips up and Chara puts together that Frisk somehow knows things about them that they absolutely should not. How quickly Chara puts it together actually works AGAINST Chara, as they keep instantly figuring it out and confronting Frisk, who immediately Loads away their mistake in the same conversation to redo the conversation without slipping up again. It's only in Hotland, when Frisk says something that's more subtly suspicious and then has enough of a breather to Save, that Chara slowly realizes a number of small things Frisk seems to know connected to their past that they shouldn't, Frisk isn't able to Load to a point before the conversation they made the slip-up, and they're finally forced to reveal to Chara that they've been seeing all their memories.
• Ship Tease: Chara and Frisk gradually become close friends and confidants to each other over the course of the series. During Mettatons' quiz though, Chara gets extremely flustered at the idea that Frisk might want to kiss them... and then Frisk, oblivious to what they're thinking about, calls them cute and sets them off again.^note The author admits he does ship them, but in this story they're too young and have more important things than to start that right now.
  • Toriel and Silas get a moment of this on New Year's Eve when she straightens his tie for him and gives him a "kiss" in case he doesn't have anyone to kiss at midnight. The author admits in the chapter notes that he's considering the idea of giving them a Relationship Upgrade, though he also might want to keep their friendship platonic since that's rare in media between a man and woman.
• Significant Reference Date: Frisk arrives in the Underground on September 15, 204X, in reference to Undertale being released on September 15, 2015. The day that Chara came to the Underground was June 24, 201X, and Chara and Asriel died about two years later on May 23rd; the Undertale demo was released on May 23, 2013 and the Kickstarter campaign that helped fund Undertale was started on June 24, 2013.
• Slice of Life: The Munificent Seven includes this as an Archive of Our Own tag. While it does have more plot than your average slice of life, it's spaced out to give the characters' day-to-days and personal drama more attention. Especially Frisk, considering they were the protagonist of the very plot-heavy How to Save a Life; here, they're mostly just hanging out with their friends and preoccupied with school.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Depicted in the first story. Once they realize they have the power to Load away mistakes and consequences, Frisk follows in Flowey's footsteps. They first Load to undo their own death, and them lashing out at Chara for downplaying the danger they were in causes Chara's Death by Despair. Frisk is panicked and remorseful, and Loads a second time to undo it and bring Chara back. However, this causes Frisk to realize they can Load away any mistakes they make and no one will know, which is when they start abusing Loads to pry more of Chara's secrets out of them. When frustrated by how many times Undyne has killed them, Frisk attacks her in retaliation and beats her to death. They Load again to spare her, but only because now Chara has lost hope and doesn't want them to keep their promise to free monsters. After learning Alphys had betrayed them and getting murdered by Mettaton, Frisk hits a Rage Breaking Point and takes their anger out on Chara by deliberately using their guilt to murder them. Frisk feels guilty and Loads again to undo it, but rationalizes it to themself and believes what they did doesn't count because now it never happened. Near the end of the story they have a Heel Realization and break down into tears while coming clean about everything.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The six fallen humans come Back from the Dead in the sequel.
• Speech Impediment: Frisk's dyslexia causes them to occasionally mispronounce or mix up words, especially longer words. Since no one, Frisk included, realizes they have the condition, it just makes Frisk's insecurities worse. They are mentioned several times as being careful to enunciate, and sometimes switch mid-sentence to a word that's easier to say.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Toriel is described as acting this way in the Ruins from the stress of trying desperately to keep Frisk from leaving and getting killed, without letting them know anything is wrong.
    "On the outside Toriel seemed as fine as ever. She had always been generally pleasant and friendly, eager to offer food, and, yes, was a little bit of a control freak. Yet, it seemed like she was hiding something. Even as Toriel said, “Is something burning? Oh, make yourself at home while I check on something!” and ran off, she still had a plastic smile that did not fit her words. There was also something manic in her demeanor, the way she babbled from topic to topic without actually giving Frisk a chance to respond and kept active from one chore to the next. She never would have been so overworked as to burn a pie before."
  • Chara qualifies as well, often smiling even when angry, uneasy, or upset, and (initially) unwilling to confide in Frisk. They're traumatized by their early childhood and guilt-ridden by what they did to the Dreemurrs and the Underground, but still try to hide it from Frisk and keep up their unconcerned, snarky narrator act.
• Supporting Protagonist: The result of adapting the theory that Chara is our narrator in the game to a text-based story. Our primary POV character in the first story is Chara, but they're a powerless ghost and Frisk is the only one who can see them. The one who travels the Underground and drives the story forward is Frisk, the Player Character in the game.
• Talking the Monster to Death: How Papyrus neutralizes the Parsnik he faces in the school raid, making her have a Heel Realization.
• Take a Third Option: How Frisk handles their rematch against Papyrus, who's way stronger than they had expected. Instead of trying to fight him head-on again, they use a stick to have the Royal Guard dogs clear away his bone attacks, then pacify him by fishing him out of the river.
• Team Dad: Unsurprisingly, Asgore, who is described as treating and thinking of all his subjects like family, in particular with Undyne and Chara being like his children to him. The way he talks to Flappy even sounds like a dad talking to a son who's disappointed him.
• Team Mom: Also unsurprisingly, Toriel, though in her case this only extends to her household and not to the entire kingdom.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Silas. He was born with heart defects that would have killed him before he turned 2, but he was lucky enough to be born to a wealthy family who could afford his life-saving heart surgery. Realizing the only reason he survived whereas another baby born to poorer parents might've died was sheer luck, he decided to dedicate his life to becoming a public defender and helping people in trouble who weren't born lucky.
• The Atoner:
  • Rebecca post-resurrection. An Integrity soul, she is horrified by her actions and fully willing to accept any punishment monsters will give her for her massacre in New Home.
  • Subtly implied with Tyrone Eaton (the Perseverance soul). It is revealed that he had committed the equivalent of a Genocide run in a previous timeline in an attempt to get strong enough to defeat Gaster, who had been killing him without mercy as he later would with Rebecca pre-massacre. The fact that he Reset and is confirmed to have had zero kills in the current timeline before his capture and death might suggest he was not a killer at heart. He's kind of offputting and the "apology" he gives Marijane is half-assed, but he IS also working with the other resurrected fallen towards a mysterious goal implied to benefit monsters.
• The Chessmaster: Beatrice Lincoln, as Chapter 13 of The Munificent Seven makes clear with her manipulation of the other fallen humans' families and Asgore realizing she'd staged it all.
• Token Evil Teammate: Downplayed with Beatrice, who is not evil-evil (especially compared to other characters in the series), but does show up as an antagonist and remains a VERY dark gray. She still becomes an ally and advisor to Asgore.
• Tranquil Fury: Chara tends to slip into these when angry, due to being a Stepford Smiler.
• We Used to Be Friends: Chara doesn't consider Sans their friend anymore because they don't like liars and he's broken the promise he made them, it's mutual with Sans who feels bitter towards Chara because of what they did 30 years ago, and near the end of How to Save a Soul Asriel doesn't forgive Chara for what they did, now doubting they were ever the person he'd thought they were.
• Working with the Ex: Toriel and Asgore in the sequel. It helps that in this series, Asgore's crimes against the fallen humans were not quite as serious as they initially appeared. She doesn't forgive him for the responsibility he bears for the children's deaths, but they understand each other and still work well together from years of experience. Even masterfully coordinating a win as the villains in Resistance. Even better, they eventually apologize to each other for the wrongs they both did after Chara and Asriel died, and become friends again.