Yeah, my understanding of what's going on with Chara, which is admittedly open to interpretation, is something like... they die, and then wake up lost and confused in Frisk's body, and are therefore in a very vulnerable state where they can easily be influenced by Frisk's (and/or the Player's) actions. A Pacifist playthrough calms them down and helps them remember how they used to love the monsters of the Underground, which in turn leads them to help Frisk in the final battle by offering up that memory of first meeting Asriel. Whereas a No Mercy playthrough feeds into their fear and anger, corrupting them into The Demon That Comes When You Call Its Name. Neutral runs, presumably, have a less dramatic influence one way or the other. So Chara definitely can be very malevolent, but also absolutely isn't inherently so. They just react to your actions accordingly.
Ok i looked into it again, i was misremembering about error. Cq's rehashing the concept of error in an original work shes starting called lucidia, he'll no longer be a sans or in any way related to sans and undertale. She's just gotten kinda disillusioned with only fanworks and is trying to do more original content. Edit: i may be wrong again with the "not related to undertale in any way" part, its kinda confusing actually
I found this on cqs tumblr when looking for error stuff, according to them this is their canon fresh voice if anyone's interested. I like it!
Haven't actually figured it out, since - well, the main perspective I've been following is Zeimah's, and she's not really equipped to sort that out (and really, really does not want to think about the whole matter more than she strictly has to, she's got a lot of guilt and self-loathing tied up in what she ended up doing to separate Frisk and Chara, and her primary method of dealing with it at this point is 'side-step and keep moving'). Confusedly haunting the underground seems the most interesting, though, especially since I can't quite figure out how "pry ghost away from living person" would end up with two live people. Hah, yeah. They might hang out with Asriel/Flowey a fair bit, once the Underground starts emptying (now that everyone can move up above ground).
i was talking about a story involving sky 'pirates' that are actually secretly privateers, going around stealing the tax money and then sneakily delivering it to the monarchy because the nobility was so corrupt that the monarchs couldn't actually use tax money for things that taxes are supposed to be used for (like roads, and public works, and so on) and then i figured: undertale AU that's like that! like, the monsters are on the surface, and there's magitech, and lots of airship trade (using some flight magic)...and the nobility is all-around horrifically corrupt so queen toriel and king asgore are like. what do help how did it get this bad and chara's like. i got this. i'm gonna be a sky pirate and you're getting a Big cut of the profits!
well maybe not quite like that more like chara: 'hey can i learn to fly an airship" toriel and asgore: sure chara: hey i met all these nice monsters and this human can we get an airship i'll pay you back toriel and asgore: sure chara like 5 days later: here's all your taxes for the previous year! and some sneaky underhanded trade from the nobles. and some stuff from that other country over there. by the way i'm a sky pirate now. toriel and asgore: *worried, confused appreciation*
also i am torn between the fallen humans all joining chara's sky pirate/privateer group, or them all being adopted by toriel and asgore and having to put up with chara's shenanigans either way, sky pirate alphys happens. and sky pirate frisk.
Okay, but how did Chara wind up doing the sky pirate thing before Undyne got the chance to? She even has an eyepatch already. :D
obviously, undyne was a royal guard trainee and didn't even think of becoming a sky pirate to save the monarchy from corrupt-nobility-induced bankruptcy
Time to overcomplicate some shit that is probably meant to be pretty simple! I watched this video ^ about the tenth dimension or whatever and while i can barely wrap my head around it because conceptual shit is hard, it would make sense for error and ink sans to both be trapped in one of the higher dimensions, and (error at least) cant perceive other timelines or dimensions, and instead has learned to travel to and from them instantaneously like the ant crawling across the folded newspaper example. Ink however can perceive other universes and timelines, but not necessarily interact or travel to them unless very specific conditions are met. So possibly he's a higher dimensional creature than usual, but also not quite as high as whatever dimension he's trapped in? Further musings, i get that we're always in every dimension but lack the ability to perceive this, so what im describing above is kinda bunk, but. Idk maybe they can see more dimensions than normal but their brains and bodies cant comprehend it so it just appears to be an endless white space? Ive always sucked at physics. Sans in general fucking with time or getting fucked with to the point he can move through the fourth dimension is all kinds of cool though, i wish i was sciencey enough to do fic for that. Like a fake research gone wrong thing a la project almanac sort of au