Undertale Analysis: Chara Was A Bad Person But Not Because They Were An "evil Serial Killer Child" Like

Undertale analysis: Chara was a bad person but not because they were an "evil serial killer child" like the fandom portrays.

TW: mentions of mental illness, self harm, and suicide. SPOILER FOR UNDERTALE. yes this game is 8 years old and scarily popular, but its still worth playing! its 10 bucks on steam! get it! Post also contains stupid edits I made to ENHANCE your experience by at least 50% guaranteed or your money back (post cost $0)

first: some backstory. I played Undertale way back in like, 2016 when the game was still fresh yet gaining popularity quickly. The fandom soon after became criminally insane and went on a moral panic where people were harassed for "playing the game wrong". I remember stories of youtubers cancelling Undertale let's plays because they would kill a character and people would get upset. other than AUs, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was the strange obsession with claiming Chara is an evil demon child who is the root of all evil and eats puppies and enjoys drinking the blood of the innocent. and then counter-culture made it so that chara is actually innocent and that the PLAYER is the horrible evil monster eating puppies etc etc.

two extremes that i half-agree with, but mostly disagree with. There was an INSANE black and white mentality that flooded the Undertale space with no breathing room for mistakes. nowadays people have matured and the fandom calmed down, so now would be a great time to explain why i think Chara is a more complex character than people give them credit for. please don't hurt me.

1- Chara very much had mental health issues.

and not in the horror movie way where they were a caraaazay evil serial murderer

a huge misconception is that people assumed the garden tools in toriel's house being dulled was somehow "proof" that Chara was an evil serial murder or something.

though... I think people also forget Chara heavily hinted at struggling with serious depression and misanthropic tendencies.

Chara climbed the mountain to end their own life. the reason the garden tools were dulled wasn't because the Dreemurs were trying to protect other people from Chara, they were trying to protect Chara from themself. it baffles me how a lot of people didn't catch onto that. It could be that we were young teens and didn't know better... but i digress! "but kat? how is Chara a bad person ? are you saying people with depression are-" get that objectively wrong idea out of your head. Having a mental illness does not make you a bad person. If you struggle with suicidal thoughts please get help from loved ones and don't EVER think you are a bad person for struggling. no. chara is a bad person because...

2- Chara was a bitter misanthrope that didn't care about anyone else or their feelings.

there are several lines of dialogue that point to the fact Chara did not like humans. There is a high probability that Chara had a hard home life before falling to the underground and that is possibly why Chara was the way they were. I am not going to send you a million screenshots as to every single bit of evidence of this, I am not made of time and jpegs. (besides i spent the entire budget on photoshop edits) I am however, going to send you the most damning evidence on my side: the true lab tapes. In the pacifist run, you can visit the true lab and find Asgore and Toriel's old home videos. The tapes basically showcase Chara's plan to Asriel where they were to eat the butterscotch flowers, and then Asriel will absorb their soul when they died.

you can watch this youtube video on all of the true lab tapes. to recap the story, Chara died, Asriel absorbed the soul, took Chara's body to the human village and then the humans thought Asriel killed Chara. Asriel refused to fight, walked back to their home and died in the flowerbed. Later on if you talk to Asriel, He mentions he wasn't the one who went to the human village, but it was Chara that was controlling him. He refused to hurt the humans and fight back and essentially they were both taken down. so here are my thoughts (please remember this is my interpretation you are OK to disagree with me)

-Chara probably just used the freedom of the monsters as an excuse to off themselves, Then put that emotional responsibility on Asriel. -They then USED Asriel's body to try and enact revenge on the humans in their death as some kind of messed up murder-suicide but in the wrong order -This ends up Killing Asriel, then he later became a bitter misanthropic husk after being reincarnated by Flowey. Possibly due to the trauma. -This ends up putting the ENTIRE underground in a depressed state with no hope and causing a massive war with the humans -their adopted parents are now divorced due to this tragedy and both Toriel and Asgore started to have conflicting issues on the topic of humans -Asgore basically trapping everyone with him in his own grief because he didn't want to actually face what happened and played the long game collecting souls one by one. -Toriel struggling to move on and essentially trying to mother any human that falls down without facing her demons. -Litterally all of undertale happened. essentially Chara was not a bad person because they were a child version of Jason Voorhees Chara was a bad person because they manipulated their family into having emotional responsibility for their self-inflicted death and hatred of humanity. They made their issues everyone else's problem and didn't consider how their horrible actions would affect others. and in a way, that is one of the morals of Undertale If you don't care about others and how your actions will affect others, then you would be making the world a shitty place in the end. Lets get back to that thing I said earlier about fans harassing other players for little mistakes. killed Toriel on your first play through ? congratulations! you are a horrible irredeemable person who deserves to get death threats ! /s God forbid we have nuance and acknowledge that most players at this point feel BAD about what happened since this is their first play through! And that they CARE about what they did to their new friend! These kind of people ignore the fact that the issue with the genocide run wasn't just the deaths, but that the player didn't consider how the monsters felt after you just ripped away their happy ending. which is the mentality that both Chara and Flowey had.

here is a video i recommend. to quote this video about the sans fight: "They call out the player not for acting immorally but for acting with no moral guidance whatsoever. Flipping back and forth between good and evil for no real reason except that they want to see what happens. In the boss’s own words, committing genocide “because you think you can, and because you can, you have to.” " Chara offed themself and made Asriel emotionally responsible for Chara's fucked up revenge fantasy without considering others feelings The player restarted the timeline (more than likely the good ending) to kill everyone all for the reason of curiosity without considering others feelings. the reason why Chara goes after you at the end of the genocide run is because you basically VALIDATED the deep dark desires of a mentally damaged person and made them watch their loved ones get ritualistically murdered. meanwhile in the pacifist run (with no history of the genocide path on your file), you simply let Chara remain as they were when they passed away. You didn't validate their dark mentally unstable desires, you simply shown Chara that the world isn't a horrible place and that actually caring about other people leads to a better life. If you HAVE played genocide before the pacifist ending, then the lesson does not sit because you still basically led them down a dark path in the end. By caring about how others feel and the impact you leave on people, you are helping retain hope for a better future for everyone, and that is one of the many reasons why i love Undertale.

thank you for reading this massively long analysis, it took me a lot of time and effort to get this put together.

people who go out of their way to dig for decade-old dirt on people to cancel them are a bunch of vultures with no life. imagine being that shallow and personality-less that your hobbies consist of harassment and defamation.

Aurora

To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:

A post in 2023:

A post in 2014:

A zoom out of the same post:

This is what a community looks like.

See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.

It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.

Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.

If you want more of something, reblog it.

An ode to the lovely things that grow off of stalks!🍃

Reminders for the Anxious/Depressed Creatives

You’re more than what you make.

Your productivity does not determine your value.

It’s okay to do nothing sometimes.

Not everything you do has to result in a product.

Not everything you make has to be important, significant, or even good.

You can make things just for yourself.

You can keep secrets for yourself, whether it’s not posting some of your projects or not sharing your techniques.

You’re allowed to say no.

You’re allowed to rest.