Undertale - Pet dogs and date a skeleton!

he needs a blanket and a cup of ketschup adn a hug so hard

 

"oh my god
not another mettaton"
is my favorite part of that art

 

@Mercury ty for

Spoiler

reblogging that chat on Tumblr about Chara

there are a lot of good words in this that get at many of the things that we've talked about in this thread already, but there's at least a couple of points i hadn't considered before

like that chara chose the slow and painful way where asriel did the thing, instead of doing it themselves

and that it's chara's memories that help you/frisk to save asriel

because fuck yes

i hope the fandom hears this stuff

 

Holy god I want one of those.

 

Spoiler: Agreement, but...

That being said, I personally do think it's important to remember that, at the very least, Chara had a lot of pretty maladaptive tendencies. They're canonically suicidal, that being the only reason they climbed the mountain in the first place and then later actually committing suicide in a very horrible way. And then, even though they were in a position where they were receiving the love and support it's implied they didn't receive from their village, they gave that all up to die and try to wipe out their village. Perhaps they didn't think they deserved to be loved. Perhaps they thought it was more important for the monsters to get free than for them to be happy. But, it's just...

...it's just really sad. And in that way, a pacifist Frisk is an excellent mirror of Chara. It's ALSO implied Frisk is suicidal, although people can read them coming up there as fate or whatever if they want. By the time Frisk falls down, the monsters are no longer accepting them the way they accepted and nutured Chara, with the exception of Toriel. Chara was giving support, love, adoration, admiration. Frisk had to fight for their life, although admittedly a lot of the monsters Frisk fights don't realize they're a human who can be hurt by things like singing or hugging. But at the end of a pacifist run, Frisk wins them over and makes the chance to stay - and then they don't have to, they can all be free.

 

Spoiler

To be fair, you more or less become the anomaly once your SAVE powers supersede Flowey's. Or something. The player is the anomaly? Flowey and the Player are both anomalies but the Frisk/Chara/Player's collective determination overrides Flowey's? Also, Flowey has some extra lines if you keep repeating the Asgore fight, and he implies that Sans kicks his ass in a few timelines.

Spoiler: Flowey's dialogue

So.
Did you start the Flowey Fan Club?
Ha. I'm just kidding.
I was watching. I know you didn't.
But I don't care. Really.
He [Papyrus] probably would have invited his garbage brother.
You know. Smiley Trashbag.
Say.
If I have ONE piece of advice for you...
DON'T.
Let his brother.
Find out ANYTHING about you.
He'll... well...
Let's just say.
He's caused me more than my fair share of resets.
Stay away from that guy.

 

Huh... How'd you make that? I might want to try some of the lines from the New Home scene, the one where Undertale is playing as we find out backstory stuff, or some of the lines from the big final boss fights.

 

So I just had a MAJOR REALIZATION that is probably actually kind of minor and might be a "well DUH" to some people, but I'm sharing anyway!!

Spoiler: The Chronolgy of Golden Flowers in the Underground

I solved the damn mystery of why there's flowers in the dump! Because the seeds of the flowers stick to Alphys (she says so in her notes) and she went to the dump after her research went south!! THAT'S BEEN BUGGING ME FOR AGES!!

So, the golden flowers were FIRST in the garden/throne room because that's where Asriel either turned to dust or his dust was scattered. (I forget which.)

Then at some point, someone, likely Toriel, took Chara's body and buried it in the ruins, causing that patch of flowers.

Presumably, the flowers in Home came from the ruins patch and the flowers in New Home came from the throne room/garden. Not sure when this happened.

Then, Alphys took the flowers from the throne room/garden to the true lab for experiments, Flowey became sentient and fucked off, and Alphys carried seeds stuck to her to the dump.

 

Also, regarding Chara's suicidality:

Spoiler

Chara pretty clearly tripped over a vine in the opening, so I'm not sure why people are so sure they intended to commit suicide? To me, the thing about the abandoned quiche suggests they were abandoned and wandering around lost. Whether or not they were abandoned with the hopes they'd climb the mountain and not come back also isn't clear, but it seems likely.

Spoiler: Consider some dumb metaphors.

Scenario 1: I walk into the street with the intent to commit suicide via getting hit by a car. Before any cars can hit me, fall into an open manhole and die. Is that still suicide? I would say no.

Scenario 2: You find me dead, at the bottom of a manhole. Witnesses say I walked into the street without looking and fell in. You know I was a misanthrope and probably had a bad home life. Do you know if I intended to commit suicide in a way that involved walking into the street without looking or not? I would say you don't.

Sorry if these seem condescending, I feel like it's hard to explain without examples.

The plan with Asriel to die and have Asriel absorb their soul is more apparent, though maybe they also planned to live in some way? But also, maybe they hoped they wouldn't, I can't say.

Also, that one post mentioned buttercups, is that a canon thing or a fanfic thing? I don't remember that coming up at all in the game.

 

Spoiler

Dunno, I feel like the abandoned quiche points to Frisk more than Chara. (Or, uh, Papyrus and Sans, but I haven't fleshed out that idea yet.) So, Frisk was abandoned, but Chara was actively running away? Not that I can properly defend that as an opinion, but it's my interpretation.

The buttercups are canon, they were mentioned in the tapes in True Lab.

 

Spoiler

The mountain is one from which no one returns, and Chara harbored a lot of anger/resentment/hatred against the people of their hometown. Suicide may not have been the intention, but never going back there seems to have been.

The abandoned quiche seems to have been a reference to an actual quiche that Toby Fox found, though it fits very well with Chara and Frisk's backstories.

But yeah, the buttercups is a real, canon thing. You only find out about it indirectly, in the true lab. In one of the rooms, there's a TV and a set of 5 labeled videos next to it. Alphys' entry next to the tv indicates that she stole the videos from the castle, and that she thinks Asgore shouldn't see them. There's a good reason for that.

Spoiler

All of the videos are actually audio files. Videos 2-5 had to do with Asriel and Chara. (They named Chara "Azz" in this.)



Start around 1:50.

Basically, one time Chara and Asriel tried to make butterscotch pie for Asgore. But they misread "cups of butter" as "buttercups," as in the flower, and Asgore got very, very sick.

It looks like Chara got an idea from that, and pressured Asriel into it. Asriel went in with the idea that they would "be strong" and "save everyone" by following the plan... and Asriel agrees to "get the flowers."

The last video appears to be Chara on their death bed, with Asgore and Toriel encouraging Chara to "stay determined." All the messages that play when you get a game over? Those were things that Asgore said to Chara, back then.

 

Spoiler: Buttercups

It's canonical the yellow flowers are buttercups, bc Chara and Asriel mixed them up with cups of butter and accidentally poisoned Asgore.

 

Those crazy kids, what'll they do next.

Spoiler

Put the entire underworld into mourning, accidentally ruin their parents' marriage, and possibly make way for the destruction of the entire world?

 

Spoiler

The idea, which Asriel touches on if you go back and talk to him in the Ruins at the end of a pacifist run, is that if there's a legend about a mountain that says that the people who climb it don't come back, why would you climb that mountain? This could potentially mean that Chara's desire was to leave their hometown and not come back... but given that Chara's plan re: buttercups did involve suicide (and it's hard to believe that they would have known they would stick around in some fashion when Asriel took their soul), their intentions when climbing Mt. Ebott to begin with may have been suicidal as well.

 

Spoiler: Buttercups

Checked an LP, I don't know why I didn't remember that...?

I must have been mixing up buttercups and the golden flowers, and somehow that messed with my understanding.

@swirlingflight

Spoiler: Climbing Mt. Ebott

How do we know they weren't just terribly lost?

Spoiler: The Abandoned Quiche

I took the tweet to be a sign that it started as a joke and then became more serious? Like I do believe it definitely references either Chara and/or Frisk.

EDIT: Typed meow instead of more.

 

Spoiler: relevant asriel dialog

"Travellers who climb Mt. Ebott are said to disappear."
...
Frisk.
Why would you ever climb a mountain like that?
Was it foolishness?
Was it fate?
Or was it...
Because you...?
Well.
Only you know the answer, don't you...?
I know why Chara climbed the mountain.
It wasn't for a very happy reason.

 

Spoiler: Climbing Mt. Ebott

We don't know they weren't just horribly lost, but we do know they hated humanity and their village in particular, they had suicidal tendencies (the buttercups plan), they had maladaptive anger issues, and they were miserable on the surface but apparently couldn't handle living in a happy family, either. Which paints a pretty dark picture. It's also a bit worrying that a child was apparently up on a mountain like that, although technically we don't know any of the fallen humans went up there ALONE. mountains are p big, the hole could just not have been found or they could have gone further into the underground by the time it was.