au where frisk is actually a confused short babyfaced 20 year old it takes them until waterfall to figure out that all the monsters think they're 12
thinking of underfell: it's quite easy to make an underfell that makes sense, except...where is chara? flowey is helping frisk through the underground and there's typically no mention of chara at all so consider the following: uf!toriel doesn't visit chara's grave at all. chara's trapped in an area of the underground where nobody goes anymore. without anyone to talk to their language skills atrophy until they basically can't talk. frisk falls down and chara latches onto them and bodyshares with them. they try to be helpful! really, they are. unfortunately they can't really get many concepts across-mostly just feelings and so on. also friendly!flowey is also pretty easy: he woke up in the dark, thinking that chara was right and the surface world was kill or be killed and the underground was a naive exception...and then when he figured out how to move he discovered that the surface wasn't kill or be killed at all; chara was wrong...and kill or be killed was horrible
au where instead of coming back as a bodysharing ghost when frisk lands, chara comes back as a boss monster due to the surge of frisk's determination flowey sees, instead of a lone human, a human and a young boss monster, so his attempt to get frisk's soul right away is interrupted by chara thinking it's a prank and telling frisk about it frisk shoves chara into a waterway in the ruins because chara had to dig their way out of their grave and so are completely covered in dirt they are Very Offended and also it turns out that they're a sort of creamy colour with brown 'points'/extremities like a siamese cat...or a burmese cat, really, since htey have long fur that proceeds to flood out ridiculously (no lop ears either) toriel has no idea where this boss monster child came from but assumes the answer is 'the Void'. chara proceeds to assume that the thing that made them from 'semi-aware ghost' to 'alive boss monster' was 'the void' i don't have all the plot for this but: chara attempts to eat weird things like stale cheese (and then regrets it) and also maybe flirts with a few random monsters, given that flowey doesn't consider frisk flirting with people out of character for chara their health isn't all that good-there's a few times where they nearly become fallen down-but they make it out alive, help frisk out, and they both save each other's life at least once. they like snowdin. they've got thick fur, snowdin and other cold to cool places are good for them. frisk on the other hand does Not like the cold as much. frisk's solution to this: in snowdin they frequently ask to hug chara, because chara is warm. chara is touchstarved and really enjoys hugs so this works out. hotland, on the other hand...chara Does Not Like Hotland. it is Too Hot. not sure if they go for cooling spells or just trying to use alphys's scissors to give themself a trim this au involves charisk
another AU, this one kind of darker: several years post-pacifist, chara's revealed themself and learnt from napstablook how to actually move things around without possessing people. monster/human relations are, mostly, going well. toriel has had more kids, like, triplets, and the other kids adore their little baby siblings. one day, chara and frisk are babysitting their siblings while everyone else is out for a little bit. then, abruptly, armed home invader. frisk is killed protecting their little siblings, but still has their resurrective immortality thing from the asriel fight. however they don't realize they still have it, or think it's too slow or something, and force themself out of their own body to become a poltergiest...and then they revive. so now there are two frisks, and one of them is a ghost. nobody has any idea what to do with this situation. the police arrive to find: a home invader, pinned down by a ghost frisk and an alive (but injured) frisk; three terrified boss monster babies; and chara frantically trying to sooth the babies. neither frisk knows what the hell to do about names or anything. they decide between them that if one of them has to be considered the clone it's alive!frisk because they have a hole in their memories corresponding to between about 30 seconds before dying and when they revived, but also, this is largely irrelevant.
(i am basically tracking down the AUs i posted to discord and crossposting them here) another AU: instead of being unconscious for a few days after the asriel fight, the overload of determination causes frisk to melt like a monster-although they have enough physical matter to survive result: melty frisk. they figure out keeping their face in a face shape quickly, and arms are relatively easy (hands are hard) but legs are very hard and so is trying to walk so they mostly. ooze around. they sleep in like a tub because they just...melt into a puddle when asleep.
AU where Alphys can transform into a Huge dragon she does not do this very often, because her dragon form knocks things over really easily and can't speak english and doesn't have opposable thumbs alphys values having thumbs and not being a 10-foot-at-the-shoulder quadruped
crossposted from discord i had a...weird dream it was all normal and stuff, utter weirdness, you know the type, except the random 'fanart' of an undertale au that doesn't actually exist it was like, a dark AU? there was this drug thing called 'merlin' that gave humans powers, made them more aggressive while on it and frequent use turned the user into a monster (this was irreversable and where monsters came from in this AU) also one of the components was DT all the fallen humans had used it at least once? the Six were all in like...some illegal thing, a fighting ring or something, and they were all in the 'lineup' 'fanart' looking...they had sort of anime hair and they looked cold and angry and they'd clearly started the transformation as well frisk and chara meanwhile were on the floor crackling with red 'electricity'-their souls were out, they appeared to be in pain, this was apparently because unlike the Six they'd gone off merlin and random electrically crackling not-quite-seizures (they were conscious) was a symptom and then later frisk was a boss monster? their mind-control powers were based around eye contact and also they were blind-they could see light and dark but that was it, so they just kept their eyes closed most of the time to avoid accidental eye contact. chara on the other hand was human-passing (still a monster) and could phase through things Wingheart-Last Saturday at 3:13 PM iirc the Yellow soul had like, arm plating that looked metallic i think the light blue soul had sprouted insectoid wings Green had claws and a few small patches of scales i can't rememebr the others frisk had apparently been coerced or something into a deal which involved them being a DT source, and getting free food and some of the merlin made from their DT if they used the powers they got for the dealer they escaped with chara and were living...somewhere i think maybe they got recaptured or something? and that's why they were still human-passing in the group picture but also off away from the others except for chara if that's true, frisk could do a lot less the second time they escaped, because they were no longer human-passing more stuff i came up when awake this time: chara learnt how to read in braille and then taught themself how to read the latin alphabet, they still mostly read braille books that they share with frisk chara knows how to sew, this is how the two get clothes, they don't bother to buy them, chara gets sewing supplies in ways ranging from dumpster diving to buying them to theft, and the two go dumpster diving for the fabric and/or the clothes to alter frisk is also capable of removing mind control, this is sometimes helpful frisk knows how to cook...with fire magic. do not ask them how to use the oven or anything like that. especially do not try to get them to use the microwave. the dreemurrs are human, their breakup was caused by differences in their political stance on monsters after asriel was kidnapped by a group that included at least one (months later, he was found when the group that kidnapped him tried to hide out in the same place as frisk and chara, to their misfortune; asriel was one of ten kidnapped they had with them, all heavily mind controlled, and five of them had been turned into monsters, including asriel) (the kidnappers greatly regretted trying to hide out there) chara is legally dead and frisk doesn't legally exist at all-they're an escapee from a dt trading/extracting ring who proceeded to end up part of, basically, the mob the mob in this universe is like 60% mind controlled people, including almost all the mind control artists themselves, who are all mind controlling each other; it works just fine until you get something ridiculous like someone possessing a mind control artist to avoid being mind controlled and proceeding to receive their mind control for the week and therefore accidentally free them
i saw an undertale dating sim concept thing that was basically just the original undertale stat screen with a lowercase love count thing added in (at 6) and an image of sans, with a caption of "dating sim au where you have to gather lowercase love to break the barrier" (paraphrased) au where instead of the whole asriel fight thing, it's frisk strengthening their soul with lowercase love throughout the game (all kinds) to get strong enough to be the 7th human soul and not die from the effort
instead of being a dating sim it's like 90% found family and friendship but...this is frisk they Absolutely go on the riduculous papyrus date. they Absolutely try to date MK and Chara.
lowercase lv is raised via AP (affection points) chara can track how many of those other people have, which is an Extremely rare ability that is basically only accurate at touching range by snowdin they're using this as an excuse to be cuddly with frisk
also i'm imagining chara, having no idea how to Do A Complement, decides that checking frisk's AP every time they do something cute or impressive or anything and announcing it to them whenever they get an increase is an appropriate substitute this leads to things like, frisk does something ridiculous and they're just starting to go "oh no what does chara think of this oh no i must've upset them" when chara interrupts their beginning freakout with "you earnt 1 AP!"
au where the monsters don't know as much about the barrier-they don't realize that the barrier can be broken, they think it's 1 way in, no way out the humans living near the mountain who believe in the barrier also don't know much about it, and a weird cult springs up where they think that the barrier needs human sacrifices to keep it (and the monsters) there end result: frisk is one of the sacrifices, and falls into an underground with a small but definitely there human population chara is about frisk's age and was sent there really young alphys discovers how to break the barrier after frisk's been living there for a few weeks (consisting mainly of running away from the many, many people trying to adopt them to Explore instead)
I had a fuzzy half dream half idea last night about the barrier and like, what if monsters used to do a similar thing during the war? Like i was imagining an au where monsters used to make "barriers" around things like houses or other places to keep humans out, and the mages came up with an idea to use that to trick monsters into fleeing to a new "safe haven" underground, only for them to realize they couldnt leave once they entered because it was a trap. Mostly the dream turned into humans exploring the old houses years later after the magic faded because the feeling of being slightly repelled/ like they didnt belong there made everyone think the houses were haunted and basically haunted houses and churches and asylums etc are all just old barrier holders. Less an au and more just a fun headcanon i guess, but its reaching enough i didnt want to put it in the headcanons thread. But yeah, ghost hunter au with no ghosts
an au that i came up with ages ago and just remembered monsters were not sealed in mt ebott. rather, they were sealed behind mt ebott-there's land behind it, and the Barrier just sort of...sealed off a patch of land and ocean. It's dome-shaped in this AU. there are a few gaps in the barrier-a sea gap, near the bottom, in an area with many sharp rocks, allows water to leave, and Mt Ebott sort of clips through it at one area. Everyone is too scared of climbing Mt Ebott to notice that second one. In fact the humans are so scared of it that they just declare the area around it to be a no man's land and just...refuse to go near it. Many centuries later, some humans and monsters are willing to brave Mt Ebott. (The monsters, by that point, are quite willing to go under Mt Ebott. the caves under Mt Ebott are settled, and there's even a magma tap taking advantage of Ebott's lava bubble to supply power to monsterkind...and also raw materials.) some humans set up in the no-man's-land around mt ebott, to do highly illegal soul-related experiments. they run into a few very brave monsters that were coming from mt ebott, and decide that hey, free research material. unsurprisingly this secret soul research group gets some...weird ideas. they basically end up deciding that humanity's lack of easy magic use is a Tragedy that Must Be Fixed...by creating human-monster hybrids. they use the monsters they found trying to leave Mt Ebott and humans they found trying to climb Mt Ebott to create a bunch of human-monster hybrids. these hybrids basically start out as amnesiac and confused kids. frisk and chara are among them. chara escaped first, and then seven others got the idea and escaped too. i can't remember the plot beyond that.
another au from ages ago iirc these two are like...i was still using either skype or steam for brainstorming these with a friend old it's a species-swap AU, where a group of human scientists including human!alphys and the human!skelebros are doing soul research. they discover a way to take soul samples from living people that is no more harmful than taking blood samples. this is a major breakthrough for many reasons, including the one that this allows for ethical experimentation on soul samples. one of the following inventions is a machine that can prevent degradation in many soul samples at once. this is helpful! it allows for experiments that take more than a few days, without having to worry about the sample just kinda...fading away to nothing. one experiment they did before inventing that had the Interesting result of causing odd changes in the structure of the soul samples via application of magic. it doesn't seem to affect intact souls unless you do something incredibly dumb like drink some of the liquid magic (something that Sans actually did...once...by accident), but even slight changes in the way the liquid magic is applied resulted in very different patterns of change, and each individual also had different patterns of change in their samples. wanting to see how the experiment carried out over longer timescales, like say a week, the scientists set it up again with the soul sample preservation machine. this time around, rather than just several samples from each scientist who volunteered theirs, they got hundreds of samples from many, many volunteers. they would later regret this a bit. in the middle of the night on day six, when hardly anyone was at the lab, all the samples involved in the experiment turned into weird baby creatures that were definitely not human. fast forward several years, and the creatures ended up stuck with the group name 'monsters'. again i cannot remember all of the plot? iirc frisk and chara had been adopted by someone who turned out to be abusive and toriel ended up taking them in?
look at this AU i found: http://doge-w-a-bloge.tumblr.com/post/168906274300/doge-w-a-bloge-doge-w-a-bloge-au-where-asriel chara is animate black goop
it should be noted that i cannot go and check what i'd originally had for the AUs that were originally posted to skype and/or steam steam just doesn't save the logs at all, and i no longer have skype ...there was also an AU that involved frisk and chara falling down together, possibly a cult or something, and intense prejudice against red-eyed people which had resulted in frisk and chara living in a garbage dump before falling into the underground. also frisk was like...painfully optimistic. consistently. it was a major character trait for that frisk. and another one involving a boss monster frisk whose parents had died, resulting in them no longer aging, and they went feral for quite a long time before toriel took them in? there were. many.
another AU ghosts are a thing. there's several kinds of ghosts: there's ones made from the dead, which are sometimes reasonable and quite like how they were when alive, sometimes obsessed with just endlessly repeating the same thing over and over and over (the same motions, usually, every time) like a recording, and sometimes violent-often homicidially so. only the first type has any concern for the living. it is also possible to get animal ghosts if in an area that is already haunted, which are...generally nasty. there are often like a gazillion small ones in major hauntings, you have to deal with ghost bugs and ghost mice and ugh and they all hurt to touch and they can even sometimes reproduce (sorta) and produce...like a monstrous version of the parent ghost animals, sometimes, or just more ghost animals. the final and most common type of ghost is in essence just a bunch of ectoplasm that came together like a hostile flying slime mold. again these can only form in areas that are already haunted, but once they start to form they very quickly become an infestation. they generally look like just a sort of...there is a very simple face, and arms, and everything else is kinda a blob. but sometimes they take on forms somewhat like blank smooth versions of whatever species the local ex-alive ghosts there are. with like. a vastly simplified 'face' that's just...eyes and a mouth. also they come in many colours. it's freaky. nobody likes to deal with these. they're called blanks. ghosts can all go to this...eldritch place that is kinda like the distortion world from pokemon except also a glitch city. gravity is inconsistent, there are mashups of just...houses and water and bits of road, and there's huge gaps down to swirling void. it is Horrible. ghosts, especially powerful ghosts, can take things into or out of this morass of chaos. the stronger a haunting is, the weaker the minimum strength to do that is, and the more any given ghost can move. for as long as ghosts have existed, there have been monsters to hunt them. monsters, unlike humans, can easily use magic-and while ghosts are totally immune to any sort of physical harm, magic attacks can actually hurt them. however, it's a dangerous job. alphys is a scientist who studies ghosts. she invents a way to trap ghosts in a pocket dimension with the aid of two reasonable ghosts, Mettaton and Napstablook, who volunteered. well, mettaton demands a robot body as payment. it's very expensive making it, so far he has ruined four. ghosts and electronics do not tend to mix well. she thinks she's invented a way to allow humans to ghost-hunt: a proof-of-concept machine, made largely out of things she'd acquired via dumpster-diving due to budget concerns, that can be worn like a backpack and can stun and trap ghosts. she puts out an ad in the paper for someone to test it. Frisk, hoping to get out of their abusive household, discovers that a nice old lady recently inherited a huge, heavily haunted house. like, a manor out in the countryside. one of her distant relatives who Hated her spent like all their money on it+failed attempts at clearing the ghosts out that just resulted in dead ghosthunters, and decided that if they couldn't clear it out, she'd have to deal with it. they also discover Alphys's ad and decide to sign up. the proof-of-concept testing goes well and frisk is like. hey alphys. can i go to this manor over there and use this. and alphys, who is not up to date on the news, is like, sure, okay. so frisk goes up to this freaky manor that is...basically a mashup of many other places. it's awful. the ghosts have clearly been just adding Bits of House etc from the ghost dimension. this is an architecture-shift grade haunting. the old lady, a woman named toriel whose ex is the mayor, says that frisk would get a big cut of whatever valuable things they find in there that she isn't keeping. she's very concerned about letting someone barely old enough to legally be ghost-hunting go into this manor, as well as letting a human ghost-hunt, but, well, they claim they have a special magitech device that lets them easily stun and capture ghosts and can manage a few weak magic attacks, so she...might as well...especially given that by this point the only other ghost-hunter she can contact that's willing to go onto the property at all is asking for far more up-front payment than she can afford while Frisk is perfectly fine with, basically, ghosthunting with a side of treasure-hunting. they enter the manor and find it dark and forbidding. ghosts can see in far less light than humans, after all, and every ghost can glow. lights are irrelevant to them. after...several close calls, frisk falls into a basement. they land directly on a ghost. the ghost is extremely confused, and appears to have been...hibernating or something before Frisk woke them up. they can talk. also they won't let go of frisk but they're not hostile just...very clingy. after quite a lot of confusion, frisk eventually manages to get the story from them. the family that used to live in the manor were...rather fanatically religious. when their kid-who, as a red-eyed person, was considered in their religion to be either strongly holy or strongly unholy with no way to tell at that point-started to doubt their religious beliefs, they decided that the kid was, well, Bad. they locked the kid in the basement and left them there, although with food and water and so on, with the idea that solitude could cause the kid to 'flip'. the kid died, and became the ghost frisk had woken up. frisk agrees to let the ghost go with them, and after climbing out of the (locked) basement, they find that their ghosthunting goes easier with a friendly ghost on their side. after almost two hours, they have to leave to empty their ghosthunting machine-it only has a small pocket dimension, due to power concerns, and it running partially off of frisk's DT reserves and so is effectively a very strange artificial inventory addon to frisk's small inventory. toriel at first thinks that they're giving up (they have to explain). when they get back to alphys's place, she's like, oh, you have ghosts already? okay! ...oh hell where were you getting these there's so many aaaa" frisk tells their parents that their injuries are from exploring the weird manor, but they also imply that it's no longer haunted and never state that the ghosthunter is them. it takes them many, many trips to clear the manor out-but they manage it. toriel ends up taking them in, alongside the kid ghost, who decides to change their name and picks the name "chara".
so yeah, ghosthunter!frisk and their companion ghost!chara, hunting hostile ghosts with the aid of alphys's inventions ETA: and also dealing with prejudice against human ghosthunters
