Undertale - Pet dogs and date a skeleton!

Spoiler: about narrator

NarraChara is apparent from the difference in mirror pronouns, and there's also stuff like... some of the narration weirdness talking to Snowdrake's mom, some home about a kid eating dirt.

And I love it! They're the character we get to name, and they could be the means by which we influence the game. Flowey's short talk after a true pacifist isn't to Frisk, it's to us/Chara.

 

Spoiler: post-Pacifist

Yeah, he even says "Let Frisk be happy" to urge you not to reset. Basically saying that you are not the character you control. You are you. And in a way that's really powerful.

 

Spoiler: post-Pacifist 2

It's really powerful because when you're in an RPG, the characters are talking to in-game!you. And while that's great, and it does lead to some emotional moments, it never really feels like they're talking to you, just to someone else. But in Undertale, after all the characters are gone and you're the only one there, Flowey is talking to you. Something about that is incredible to me. And it's part of the reason that I will always recommend this game. I will also always recommend it because the final, final boss is one of the best fights and it was one of the only times when a game has made me cry.

 

Spoiler: Also about narrator

Other narrachara evidence:
There is only one whitetext narrator. This is supported by the narrator setting up jokes in early parts of the game, and then finishing them later.
This narrator is also capable of using red text, as they do this in the flavour text for the Ball Game Hole when it has no flag.
This narrator is a character, not the universe or an interface abstraction. They are sometimes surprised by things, and in the True Lab, they narrate things that aren't happening and in some cases then express surprise that it didn't happen. They also become irritated if you check a lot of snow poffs, if you repeatedly check a pile of garbage, or if you check every Box Mettaton form.
This narrator is not Toby Fox, as he already has an author avatar in the Annoying Dog.
This narrator is not Temmie as she is Temmie.
This narrator is aware of 201x human culture, referencing things like Star Wars and the USDA. Or the USFA. It's been a few months since I played. (This list is entirely from memory.)
This narrator is audible to Napstablook, and interacted with by Mettaton and Mad Dummy-all ghosts. They're also possibly audible to Papyrus, who breaks the fourth wall and ignores physics frequently.
Chara, in the Kill-All route, uses first person and red text, but is also capable of talking in white text, especially in fights, doing things like quoting Kitchen in the check text of the double Royal Guard battle in Hotland.
The neutral and pacifist route narrator uses first-person in three-quarters of the flee texts.
The narration knows things that Frisk has no way of knowing, such as how to read ancient monster writing, Toriel's previous status as the Queen of Monsters, and the names of each type of monster.
The narrator refers to Frisk by second-person pronouns before they know Frisk's name, and by their name, once, after learning it.
The narrator is upset by fighting the Dreemurrs, but not by other fights.
The narrator thinks Frisk is cute. (Not really evidence but...)
The narrator does not seem to have been conscious for Frisk's fall into the Underground-narration only occurs after encountering Flowey for the first time, and inspecting the golden flowers after encountering Flowey nets the flavour text, "Golden flowers. They must have broken your fall." The narrator is speculating on what happened, rather than saying what happened-they don't know
Determination, which Frisk has a large enough amount of to time-travel with, can raise the dead. It brought back Asriel as Flowey, brought back the Amalgamates, and brings Frisk back if they die to Asriel.
Frisk landed on Chara's grave-in the kill-all route, it's revealed that Toriel took Chara back to the Ruins and buried them there, and the golden flower patch there grew from either seeds deliberately buried with Chara or seeds that had been stuck to Chara.
The narrator is capable of possessing Frisk. Sometimes when reading a book, they say, "You turn to a random page". Sometimes they instead say "Here's a random page," implying that they possessed Frisk to open the book to a random page.
Chara is present in all runs. Their name is on the menu and right by the narration in a fight. Their memories are seen at several points throughout the game, usually after a fall but once in a boss fight.
Chara's name is only present after encountering Flowey. While in the Flowey encounter, their name is not present, and neither is the flavour text or any options.
The SAVE file that's saved by the player at SAVE points, File0, is in Chara's name, but there is another SAVE file, File9, which does autosaves.
I literally realized this as I was writing this list but-if all the fallen humans, Chara included, had a save file when they fell into the Underground, then Chara would have been the first being in the Underground to have a save file, followed by Chasriel, the Six Souls, Flowey, and then Frisk-ten save files! Counting from file0!
Anyway.

TL;DR the narrator isn't Frisk, isn't a monster, is a character, and is almost certainly Chara in particular.

 

*vibrates from excitement*

Spoiler

Holy shit I never caught that all the hosts do. I remembered Napstablook and Papyrus doing so, but. Damn!

There is yet another save file that we use: File 8, the file created after you've fought Flowey before. If it exists, he skips fighting you. If you delete it, you can fight him again.

He uses other save files in his fight, the save files of the souls, and I would have to check but I'm pretty sure they use numbers like 3 and 4. I don't remember if he uses 1 or 2.

 

There's a drawer in Toriel's house that has broken crayons and golden flower seeds.

Spoiler: More Narrator Stuff

Chara likes art-they made a giant sweater, and drew golden flowers which got put up on the walls. They also really liked golden flowers, to the point that their dying wish was to see golden flowers again.
Monster funeral practices include spreading the dusty remains of the deceased on things they liked in life.
It's entirely possible that the contents of the drawer are things left over from Chara's funeral.

 

Spoiler

keep in mind, skeletons could also be considered undead, just like ghosts

 

Spoiler

a possibility, especially amusing in light of what Sans' check says

I was thinking of it in terms of ghosts being intangible, rather than in terms of ghosts being undead. Papyrus and Sans both display some fourth wall breaking abilities (attacking in the GUI and dodging, knowing what room you're in and clipping under the piano), which could be a different thing.

 

And spirits, which are presumably different things from ghosts in the Undertale universe because ghosts are monsters.

Unless

Spoiler

Chara turned into a monster upon dying.

 

Spoiler: Ghosts vs spirits

Man I sure hope not. Flowsriel missed his friend. If our fall woke them from death, so they only followed us, that's less painful than the idea that they were a ghost lingering around and aware of stuff but never making contact or reacting to his mentions of their name.

 

Spoiler: Ghosts vs Spirits response

I've seen interpretations saying that they were awake for every fallen human but not for Flowey, who seems to have only come into existence after the Sixth Soul died.
So like. Chara was woken up every time a human fell and stayed awake until they died.
However there's also the fact that they spent at least some time conscious in their coffin (it is apparently, quote, "as comfortable as it looks"). That could mean that they were conscious all the time but stuck near (or, worse, in) their body and unable to interact with Flowey, or that they were only conscious for a little bit and then fell asleep until Frisk woke them up, or anything in between.
Or maybe they were a weird kid who decided to climb into a coffin one day.

 

I'm down with weird kid theory

 

Spoiler

But yeah, Chara is a weird exception to how humans normally die in that universe.

They arranged for their soul to have been absorbed right after death, something that never happened in monsters' recorded history, and they remained conscious and willful enough to possess Asriel. They were part of a monster that has absorbed a human soul, a being of unthinkable power. And then their fused self died, and Chara lost awareness for an unknown time.

Geno run implies Frisk/us is the first to wake Chara:
"Your power awakened me from death."
"At first, I was so confused. Our plan had failed, hasn't it? Why was I brought back to life?"


Another nice touch: it takes 8 attacks for geno to kill Flowey.

 

Spoiler

I've been going with the idea that a fragment of Chara's soul got trapped in their body when it shattered upon Asriel's death, and something about the aftereffects of being absorbed by and fused with a magical being caused it to linger there in a sort of dormancy over the years, even once Toriel took their corpse from the palace and buried in the beginning of the Ruins. Each of the children falling onto the grave caused it to stir a little, but only Frisk was similar enough for Chara to wake up completely, fuse with them, and finally leave their grave, because they both had red souls.

 

Does anyone here want me to crosspost my wall of text undertale-related dream from the dreams thread?
It's in a spoiler because it's...very long.

 

I was reading a Homestuck crossover that had an in-universe Twitter tag of NYCSmallMediumAtLarge and.
Frisk as a Medium (with Chara's help).

Actually-Frisk with necromancy magic...and all they use it for is being a medium and making Chara able to tangible/visible.

EDIT: Frisk's tag would probably wind up being SmolMediumAtLarge. With an 'o'. And one less 'l'.

 

Sans is so proud of them

I can't believe it spells SMAL too.

 

I didn't even realize that!

EDIT: Frisk probably helps in murder cases where there's a spirit left! This is not all of them, because not every death results in a spirit.

 

I saw a hypothesis that all of the Underground was slightly in the void, with the Barrier keeping it there, and then, since my Void headcanons are strongly based on Scrollingdown's void headcanons, I figured...that would have to have some effect on the monsters.
Being in a place where the properties of the place can include "you are lost" or "you are travelling", where anything can warp and interact with anything including itself without any care for the laws of physics, logic or common sense, would be terrible for anyone long-term.

So I figured, what if one of the properties of the Underground is 'monsters and humans attack each other on sight'? Monsters that were lucky enough to get a lower Cuil level wouldn't have to, but they'd be tempted, and they'd be much more likely to not see other options-and if they did, the other options would tend to be utterly bizarre, very dumb, or sometimes completely impossible, as well as seeming less viable than they actually were.
It'd explain why monsters would be so friendly while attacking Frisk, and also why many of them seemed to be in denial about the possibility of Frisk being an Actual Human. Because if Frisk was human, they'd have to attack them. The money Frisk gets from sparing them is apology money-Frisk managed to either make them realize that not attacking the kid is an option, or to lower the Cuil level enough for them to realize it on their own, or a mixture.
(It also explains why every turn starts you off on the Fight button, and why the battles are turn-based. The Underground is abstracted away from in-universe reality in a way that includes artificially inducing human/monster conflict.)

It's probably not good for monster fertility either. Hardly any kids in the Underground, and it seems like there's only one school for the whole kingdom.

It even explains Frisk's motivation to leave, the bizarre geology, and all those houses etc that there's no paths to reach-the geography is distorted, and Frisk's low-Cuil presence is guiding it into a form that's semi-stable and leads to the Barrier, because they really want out of this weird reality-starved cave system.

 

Hmm. I'd argue that point about there being only one school; according to Onion-san and the horse in Grillby's, New Home is so crowded and full of folks that some of them are considering moving to the smaller areas. We go through Snowdin's center and pass three kids and a couple teens just in Snowdin. Waterfall and Hotland have the main road, but we don't see many of the houses that must be there for all the monstera who must, between the sampling we fight and the npcs after fighting the local boss (the human can't jump to reach the areas the houses are presumably in). And with New Home, we take an aloof and decorative sort of road directly to the castle's entrance, bypassing the whole area.

I am definitely down for the underground being slightly void-touched thanks to the barrier. If I remember right, Fun events don't get triggered once the barrier is down, which adds to that idea.
(Checks)
According to this the Gaster Followers won't show up once it's down, anyway. Gman himself can.