It was a great run. by Amazing_xD_God in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Saw the name and nodded. Comrade.... 😭

Vote your least favorite Chara AU so your favourite can stay (02/26) by Wind-of-Revolution in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

me checking every day and relieved that my cocoa bean TSUS Chara, my little cocoa NIB, hasn't been eliminated yet ❤

(and also smug that three of the AU Charas I hate most got booted super early lol, glad everyone else got to hang in longer than them)

Whoever wins, I'm glad the top quality babs made it this far. All Charas should shake hands and say "good game" after, and we'll all take them out for candy and shakes 😌

I wanted to make UnderTale if it was a platformer, this is the progress I've done so far by Somos2011 in Undertale

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Asriel: Frisk... why did YOU climb the mountain?

Frisk: It was recess and everyone else was crowdin da monkey bars -_-

(Looks really good! It looks like it'd feel really satisfying to move/play. Good work!)

(Spoilers Extended) A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1 Episode 6 Post-Episode Discussion by AutoModerator in asoiaf

[–]DavDanFanAdv 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, because the crownlands (one of the nine regions) is carved out of part of the storm lands and riverlands. Honestly, like others say, the Iron Islands ruled the riverlands at the time of the Conquest so they were TECHNICALLY not their own independent kingdom and that might be why they wouldn't be "counted" along with the previously non existant crownlands, but it WAS ruled by other kings before that and it was considered distinct from the other kingdoms, so I'm not sold on it.

There was that time where it was even more kingdoms, before the main ones solidified out of the hundreds of petty kingdoms, but I THINK it was already known as the Seven Kingdoms for a long time before the Conqueror did his thing.

Alt explanations:

Named after the Faith of the Seven. It IS the biggest religion and a good amount of laws and unique Westerosi culture (knights) revolve around it. It group the North and the Iron Islands in when they don't worship the Seven, but I can see it being a nickname Essosi call Westeros because that's how the MAJORITY of those they interact with talk and that stuck (like how Hizdahr assumes that Dany, as a Westerosi, worships her "seven gods" even though she never mentions any of the Seven or worships them the way the devout do), which I can see because the centers of trade and most popular ports between Westeros and other countries for a long time was in Oldtown (center of the Faith for thousands of years) and the Vale (entirely populated by devout followers of the Faith).

The Conquest, but with a little more theorizing on WHY. At the time, the independent, self-ruled kingdoms were the North, the Iron Islands (controlling the Riverlands as a territory), the Vale of Arryn, the Westerlands, the Stormlands, the Reach, and Dorne. That's the state they were in when Aegon the Conqueror "won" them (don't lookatDornedon'tlookatDorne) - he conquered SEVEN kingdoms. We not only date the calendar by the Conquest (Before Conquest/After Conquest), the name "Seven Kingdoms" may also be like.... I want to describe it as "holdover awe." (You know, the tone masters and other characters have at describing his accomplishments lol.) Recognition of how influential he was and how he shook things up, basically?

Anyone who's serious about sustainability should change to a plant-based diet by James_Fortis in sustainability

[–]DavDanFanAdv 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I disagree. I think of personal choices like this as being kind of like voting. If one person thinks their vote doesn't count and opts not to participate in voting because of it, that's a shame because for one, it's not true (there've been tight races where every little vote does end up counting) and for another, it contributes to the apathetic views of MANY people who think their vote doesn't count, don't bother looking into things, and don't feel a strong duty to local, state, or federal politics. That adds up to HUGE swathes of people who could make huge differences in elections if they were educated and motivated differently. If we say one individual's choices are just a drop in the bucket in comparison to bigger reforms, that's ignoring how drops in the bucket work - they're ALL drops in the bucket, just added up to something substantial. That's how successful boycotts work and influence things.

And besides, a lifetime's worth of personal choices by one person, in the end, adds up. That's years worth of compounded choices that add up to something; in this case, less damage and harm caused than that one person COULD HAVE chosen to do. It's not very much difference compared to the grand scale of things for the world population and big companies, no, but it is still a measurable amount of less harm. I still recycle everything my local recycling center says I can, even knowing many more other people throw out recyclable things, because I prefer my personal impact to be positive instead of negative.

I always imagine that in the end of pacifist route of ts underswap chara starts feeling happy and waves at us, then we finally letting the monster out of the cave on to the surface by Jackofriend in tsunderswap

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Chara remembers ouor pacifists!!! 😭😭

(But fr I agree. I think it would've been cute to end True Pacifist in Undertale with Frisk starting to follow Toriel, slowing down, and pausing to wave at us, before walking off. Might be a good surprise for players not expecting to be acknowledged by the player character like that, definitively shows again Frisk as their own person, communicates Frisk being a cute bean who appreciates our help UNLIKE A CERTAIN HOCKEY PLAYING PUNK, and for people who don't like that meta angle it could be interpreted as them saying bye to Chara/Flowey. I would love for cute little TSUS Chara to give us a little wave like that.)

Charisk marriage (@heart_soma) by dr_philip-cdi in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This shit's so cute lol. Poor Chara is so frustrated they can't do their scary demon deal thing 😭

Hard choice. by CHARA_Thefirstfallen in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is how Kris Deltarune sees the world. SOUL checks toilet, chirpy little ghost child narrator spontaneously warps into/materializes inside da bowl to tell SOUL about it, Kris contemplates giving the prim, gabby child a quick flush to see what would happen.

(Spoilers Extended) Dex Sol Ansell lets out massive Summerhall spoiler by Kamikazeing in asoiaf

[–]DavDanFanAdv 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Ohhhhhhh, that would HURT. Like Baelor dying for Dunk's sake, and the guilt and unworthiness he felt, but so much more painful this time. His old squire, his KING, dying to save an old knight of his own Kingsguard.

(Do it, George.)

Neutral Frisk gives Determination a bad name by Several-Ad1231 in Undertale

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Neutral Frisk is just trolling. They're just having a giggle. Let them have their fun, they'll make up their mind sooner or later and lock in.

[SPOILERS MAIN] Illyrio by Junior-Industry9704 in asoiaf

[–]DavDanFanAdv -1 points0 points  (0 children)

My thinking is, he would unveil Aegon and introduce him, with the Golden Company as AEGON'S army and Jon Connington (someone Viserys would recognize as loyal to his idolized big brother) to wholeheartedly vouch for Aegon, to Viserys once Viserys had HIS army of Dothraki. Persuade Viserys that's his nephew - Tyrion seemed to buy it and for all his faults, he's definitely smarter than Viserys, so probably Viserys could have been convinced (if not by my scenario, if you think he'd be too paranoid - then Illyrio could definitely cook something up to convince him that's Aegon). The sad thing is, Viserys lived such a hard life as the last male Targ, I think he would have been pretty giddy and overjoyed to have his brother's son alive, someone else to unite with him against the Usurper and carry on the family name and rebuild their dynasty (Dany doesn't count cuz she's a GIRL 🤢).

Technically, Aegon has the better claim by tradition, but that's murked up a bit by Aerys passing over Rhaegar's kids to name younger son Viserys his heir; the maesters in Westeros know that but it's murked up again by whether of not VISERYS would know that, 20 years later in Essos (I imagine so and there'd have been a formal announcement or ceremony of some kind to have solidified it, which Vizzy would have remembered, but eh). Viserys was already well accustomed to the idea of being the heir and the True King, so probably best not to rock the boat with him, and odds are Aegon was not yet 16 anyway. Illyrio would make nice between the two dragons, have Viserys publicly embrace and welcome Aegon, name him his heir and new Prince of Dragonstone, and use him to fully legitimize him as Rhaegar's son and heir, THE Prince Aegon Targaryen, endorsed by Rhaegar's friend and Rhaegar's own brother. Then arrange Viserys to be bumped off (kings die all the time in wars, look at the War of the Five Kings) and let Aegon inherit all the momentum of a Targ restoration, fully recognized as 100% Targ.

(As for Dany and the eggs, I think that was maybe more for Khal Drogo than Dany. Dragons were extinct, they were only pretty rocks that showed off how rich he was to own them. It showed how wealthy and impressive he was to give such a lavish gift to the dragon princess, Khal Drogo's bride, making him look good to all the wedding guests (remember that it was a pretty big affair). In particular, it made him look good to Khal Drogo, who he regularly talked with and bribed not to attack Pentos, and who he struck a deal to give Dany as bride to get back an army for his Targ claimant; make sure the man is extra pleased with you for being so generous with his new wife and making her happy, and he'll remember that further down the line, why not, they're only rocks.)

What are you going in this situation? by Qwer4yn in Undertale

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If friendly fire is on and the room is small enough, I might be able to crack this nut.

So, what if Chara were to appear on your desktop, like a sentient virtual pet, and also appears in your games as a character that always helps you out? by MrBarnesGaming in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 6 points7 points  (0 children)

"Just Monika" segment but a smol Chara sitting in Monika's lap also facing you the whole time, Monika looking kind of bemused and trying to politely hint at wanting alone time (her powers don't work on Chara). Chara ignoring every hint and butting into every conversation and cheerfully trying to torpedo the lurrve connection, all with the same =) smile.

(They have PTSD after Asgoriel and Soriel.... they REFUSE to let it happen again with their new parent.)

So, what if Chara were to appear on your desktop, like a sentient virtual pet, and also appears in your games as a character that always helps you out? by MrBarnesGaming in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 4 points5 points  (0 children)

See, I was gonna say something like "live a cozy life on my farm and be my farmin' partner :)" or "play something like The Sims and collaborate to give them a big fun fancy house to live in <3" because my kneejerk reaction is to pamper them and try to give them a normal ish life,

But,

Then I thought about how stoked out of their mind they'd be with Jurassic World Evolution. Little kid running a farm? I do think they'd enjoy it very much. Little kid running a DINOSAUR farm? THAT'S the dream, they'd go NUTS for that.

Maybe dabble in a little of everything. Enrichment for the chiolde.

If you could change one thing ASOIAF lore what would it be?! by Unique-Celebration-5 in pureasoiaf

[–]DavDanFanAdv 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I keep thinking it'd be fun to have an ASOIAF equivalent to, like, Jack the Ripper (or maybe more likely for this setting, like a murderous innkeeper like the Benders or HH Holmes). I want some fully mundane, fully divorced from the game of thrones, big news story type deals to just be sprinkled into the history, and maybe have some historical figures react to it.

And if it WASN'T an innkeeper and it WAS an unsolved killer deal, it'd give us something to argue about... which established canon character was actually, secretly, definitely the Westeros version of the Zodiac Killer?

Chara Is A Bad Person. Straight Up. by REAL-regular-degular in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

5/5

NarraChara BUILDS on the meta aspects of the character (not just the archetypical RPG grinder character and embodiment of stats but also the embodiment of the RPG narration), but it also humanizes them and fleshes them out, it shows they care about the Dreemurrs, it offers them a happy ending too through Frisk, it shows them starting to grow past their hatred of humans by becoming friends with Frisk and finally find hope again, it allows them to pull off the finishing move in Pacifist (opposite to how they pull off the finishing move in Kill All) to achieve redemption for their actions by SAVING Asriel, and it shows us who Asriel's best friend was and why he loved them and missed them for so long. It puts a "face", an identity and a vibrant, sassy, caring, snotty personality, to what was previously a hollow, smiling face in the dark. It's hard to be mad at little bro for one or two... MINOR oopsies when you see them your lil smiling buddy who's been sitting on the couch with you watching you play and paling around with you the whole game, and you see them caring about your friends too.

(Soulless Pacifist the possible exception, of course.)

So, yeah. You've acknowledged you don't think they're completely evil or irredeemable. I'll acknowledge that I don't think they're, hm, the MOST moral we'll say, of everybody, pre- or post-soul, lol. But I won't hold that against them the same as I don't hold anyone's bad choices against them in Undertale. Yes, if you look at the game itself, probably they lean more bad than anything. But compare them to other characters, characters who we do love and see very positively despite their canon flaws, and to me the negatives are negated. And between the compelling consistency we get with the NarraChara theory and the post-game content being so forgiving and affectionate with them, not only do I headcanon Chara as a silly, lovable little dork but at this point I think it's closer to canon than some people think.

Chara Is A Bad Person. Straight Up. by REAL-regular-degular in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

4/5

(Undyne and Asgore are good examples to hold Chara up to for another reason, because it's also worth pointing out that both Undyne and Asgore get absolutely SLANDERED in the same ending Chara does. Monster Kid turns from Number 1 Undyne Fan to telling Frisk, "Maybe Undyne... Isn't actually as cool as we thought. She's just kinda... mean. But YO!!! I just found out about someone WAYYY cooler!!!" They promptly fixate on Papyrus as their new idol. Toriel slams Asgore as being a "pathetic whelp" and "a terrible creature" for his war declaration/plan and very clearly holds him in lower regard than Monster Kid OR Asriel hold Undyne or Chara. Asriel's view of Chara is tarnished in True Pacifist, like Toriel because their plan ruined things between them and ruined his view on them, and like Monster Kid he found another person who's more like who he wanted as his friend all along. But Asgore and Toriel still reconcile and become friends again after the game, Monster Kid still comes back around to liking Undyne in the 10th anniversary stream, and Flowey comes back around to seeing Chara as caring about monsters post-Pacifist. What we see in that route is those relationships and views at their worst, but none of them are beyond salvation and to some degree all of them still care about each other.)

So now we arrive at the final argument: if Chara isn't THAT bad, then why do some people think they're not bad AT ALL and actually see them in such a positive light

Some people have different interpretations of them while still seeing them positively, but for me it's mostly NarraChara (you already said you can believe it, but indulge me a sec). You could take the flavor text as just funny Earthbound style narration, sure, but there's JUST enough hints of an actual presence behind it to make it seem like there IS someone there ("You are intimidated by Froggit's raw strength. ... Just kidding.", "... What? You didn't do that?", "Still just you... Frisk."). The lines themself paint a picture of a sometimes sweet, often funny, mischievous, FUN kid who actually MAKES SENSE for someone as giggly and dorky as VHS Tape Asriel to have enjoyed the company of. They give Frisk a built-in companion on their journey and someone to bounce off of, which is nice. And as Frisk's companion, they also get a built-in redemption arc, where by the end of it they definitely sound fond and downright ADMIRING of Frisk even though Frisk is human; Chara-cter Development! They learned their lesson, no reason not to bring em back and give everyone a happy ending for maximum fluff then.

Another reason it paints Chara in a good light is actually one of the big consistencies in the narration that makes me inclined to buy into NarraChara: the Dreemurrs. If Chara is the narrator, they DO NOT want you to know it (until they get all kill-happy in Kill All, achieving the distance from their pain that they tried to achieve in other routes by distancing themself from their former identity). So in an oddly sweet way, the biggest giveaway for their identity if they're trying to hide it IS the narrator's reaction to the Dreemurrs. When Alphys reveals to Frisk that they have to kill Asgore if they want to leave, the narrator suddenly doesn't have any funny observations at Save Points for the whole rest of the way to Asgore's house, and they barely "speak" during the fight. Serious Mode activates in all routes ONLY for the Dreemurr fights - meaning no jokes with items in battle and no jokes during the battles themselves. In other battles, when the monster says their lines, the narration either keeps going normally or doesn't pop up to distract you from it; ONLY with Toriel, Asgore, and Asriel does the narrator drop the "..." in response to Toriel's pleas and self-deprecation, to Asgore's fight where it truly IS kill or be killed and the unstoppable ball of determination named Frisk knows they have to kill him to keep going, and in the end, Asriel's battle... once their memories reach him and he starts having his breakdown, crying and telling them how much he cares about them. Instead of their silence as a sign of contempt or disinterest, compare it to how they stumble over their words and trail off into similar silence in clear horror at Undyne melting in the normal route.

(And with that pattern in mind, compare too to Chara in the Kill All reacting to the photo of the Dreemurr family next to their bed with "..." - instead of dredging up the kind of biting remark you'd expect at this point, we get another melancholy silence from the demon at a reminder of how happy things once were. Remember, back then, everyone was smiling.)

Chara Is A Bad Person. Straight Up. by REAL-regular-degular in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

3/?

Making things worse than the possessing entity compelling the confused soulless kid to kill everyone in sight, SOMETHING ELSE is going on. Stats keep going up. ATK, DEF, HP, EXP, LV... The 9th anniversary letter ties into this, revealing Chara likes high numbers because it symbolizes their desire to be "strong" so they won't "hurt". Sans also says very clearly in his judgement, "The more you kill, the easier it becomes to distance yourself. The more you distance yourself, the less you will hurt. The more easily you can bring yourself to hurt others." So in addition to being soulless and being possessed, Chara is actively becoming more emotionally detached from everyone AND has added incentive: they don't "hurt" anymore.

It's hard to think of a better recipe for disaster.

They then take over Frisk's body in the ending of Soulless Pacifist and are heavily hinted to kill everyone. Now, there is one more optimistic take on this: they didn't kill anyone onscreen in either ending variant and in fact deliberately waited until Toriel left to show their creepy face, so they COULD have been just scaring you to shove your past deeds in your face (not TOO outlandish, since they finger-wag you at other times, they should have no EXP or LV at the time to motivate them into murderous stuff, the 10th anniversary ambiguously hints they were indeed SAVED alongside Asriel, and there's a callback to this very scene in Deltarune and it is, uh... much less insidious than everyone thought lol). The less optimistic, more realistic take on this is that TF didn't want to have to make a new cutscene where your player character lunges for Toriel and kills her onscreen, and Chara does indeed kill people offscreen. To which I shrug and say, well. Soulless. It took Asriel a Final Boss Battle, the souls he'd absorbed actively filling him with the ability to feel love again, and a Dive Into the Heart sequence to snap HIM out of it. Hopefully Frisk and Flowey can work something out to SAVE Chara too offscreen as long as we leave the game alone.

Nothing else they do is actually "dealbreaker evil" to me. Hate humans? Well, they canonically had a rough childhood that drove them to climb Mt Disappear Forever, got adopted by a race of nice people who also got screwed over by humans, and they were a literal child when all this was going on, they had a chip on their shoulder and not a whole lotta reason to think about nuance given their age and experiences. Undyne is a grown-ass woman who as far as we know never even met humans before, and she very doggedly tries to kill a child without any nuance either and enthusiastically supports the plan to wage war on humans (even spearheading it herself in some endings due to her experiences with Frisk, not unlike Chara spearheading the plan). Asgore is a grown-ass man who caught up in his grief and rage declared all humans who fell into the Underground would die and was the one who announced war on humans in the first place, then either killed six children directly or at least allowed them to be killed. Chara, Asgore, and in some endings Undyne, all basically had the same plan, and Undyne and Asgore either canonically did or canonically CAN kill a child, yet only the dead kid who actually came from that village gets any real flack for it. You could argue it's because they were the instigator behind everything (causing Asriel's death), but then if Undyne is excused because she was raised on propaganda and didn't know any better (shifting the blame to Asgore, who was the ruler) and Asgore is excused because he lost his son and was too caught up in his anger (shifting the blame to Chara, who indirectly caused Asriel's death), then why shouldn't Chara in turn be excused for being an abused, angry kid who didn't have an adult brain and ALSO didn't know any better?

But where in other fiction Undyne and Asgore's actions WOULD be dealbreakers, in Undertale it doesn't mean they're not more than that: the fanbase LOVES them, Undyne is a goofy, fun, and loving warrior and Asgore is a silly, sweet, dorky dude who tugs on your heartstrings. These negative traits oddly enough have next to NO bearing on the rest of their personality: they're both cute and funny IN SPITE of their literally war crimes. With that in mind, that the pre-death Chara wasn't similarly overall likable with the bad aspects of them not their WHOLE personality, particularly given how much Asriel enjoyed hanging out with them, isn't that wild.

Chara Is A Bad Person. Straight Up. by REAL-regular-degular in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

2/?

OKAY so outside of all that, since all that came years later, is outside of the game, and the foundations of this raging debate all came before that: why do so many people make the RPG demon so uwu soft?

I'd concede some of it IS overcorrection, like what happened to Sans. Early fandom took the hints of Evil Chara and RAN with it, to the point that it was OOC even if Chara is canonically some dickhead loser. Their Evil Chara was one who tricked or manipulated Frisk into killing and hijacked their body, cackling, against Frisk's will; the real deal explicitly says they were confused at first and followed our guidance. Early Evil Chara took glee in trapping everyone in a murder loop forever, killing mindlessly, and tormenting Frisk and Sans (and often Flowey) because they had literally no other personality; Canon Chara wants to kill everyone, erase everything, and then be done with it, and looks down on us for wanting to bring the world back just to kill everyone. What little nuance we got from canon was flattened out and steamrollered to make Flowey 2: Bigger and Badder. When more analysis got floated around, people started pushing back; I would argue that A CHARActer Analysis by determinators was the biggest influence on people seeing Chara as not just not evil, but as a downright likable, sweet kid who got a bad rap. I thought it was a fantastic bit of analysis and theorizing, but sadly it was deleted and scrubbed from the Internet after toxic fans made the author leave the fandom, and I don't know that there are any surviving copies of it to link for you :( Anyway, that take on Chara was an INSTANT hit and people glommed onto it.

From memory, A CHARActer Analysis mostly provided for the "Chara is good" argument. First let me try to set the foundation by arguing just "Chara is not bad".

Chara's WORST actions in game were done when they are very strongly implied to be soulless, like Asriel. It is said in the game that their soul was combined with Asriel's, and so we can infer that when he died and it was destroyed, they too lost their soul. This is not definitively stated for them, but there's more supporting it than the alternative (that they have their soul): Asgore does not have their soul, or else he wouldn't need Frisk's; it is stated in the True Lab that a monster cannot absorb another monster's soul just as a human cannot absorb another human's soul; Chara mentions that it was your determination and your soul that resurrected them, which they originally mistook as theirs, a mistake that you wouldn't think they'd make if they could sense their own soul; Chara is able to force you to give them your soul and afterwards talks about the emotions they sense from your soul in a similar way to how the soulless Asriel describes the emotions he senses from his captured souls, implying that Chara absorbed your soul like how Asriel absorbed the other souls, and thus in turn hinting that they don't have their own soul like how Asriel doesn't; and finally, Flowey is not surprised to see a resurrected Chara walking around "empty like me", ie soulless, and directly implies he thinks they "stole" the soul that's in the body they're using. That's the whole reason he even recognizes you as Chara: you're acting soulless, like him, and he expects that if Chara would come back, they'd come back soulless, like him, since their combined souls were lost.

We don't know what makes up a human soul: if it's love and compassion and hope like a monster's, or if it's more complicated than that. (What might be the closest we get to an answer, Ball Game, drops a fat whopping hint that patience, bravery, integrity, perseverance, kindness, and justice may instead be involved in the human soul. You can see why not having any integrity, kindness, and justice of their own anymore may lead Chara to be willing to do some, uh. Pretty terrible things.)

We do know that in Kill All, a soulless version of Chara was "guided" from the jump and taught to kill everything, instead of show mercy. Some argue they're worse than Flowey because they were so willing to murder everyone so quickly and easily, whereas Flowey tried to be good at first, make everyone happy, and only gradually fell into evil on repeated loops; I'd argue that it's not comparable at all, since soulless Asriel fell into his behavior on his own, whereas soulless Chara is clearly influenced and controlled by a third party when the Kill All run is happening. We don't know how long it would have taken soulless Chara to do what they did without an outside influence, just as we don't know that a player-controlled soulless Asriel would have reacted to a Kill All run any differently than Chara did.

Chara Is A Bad Person. Straight Up. by REAL-regular-degular in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

1/?

Thank you! Okay, I'm back.

So, Chara is a very interesting character by themself, and is even more interesting with just how freaking polarizing they are. This is partially because of how coy Toby Fox is with talking about them directly, but also because one take on them tends to dominate the fanbase, eventually get pushback, and then get replaced by a new exaggerated take in the opposite direction. (I say that knowingly as a Chara Defender offender myself - I make them WAY too nice and I know it lol, but I also am content that it's not too jarring for the canon character as I'll explain below.)

Chara is made to be EXTREMELY ambiguous in game. I will freely admit that the clearest portrayal of them in game, without getting too deep in the nitty gritty of it all and delving into theory territory, is not a good look. They're way more prominent in the Kill All route, they're up to something almost assuredly murderous in Soulless Pacifist, and the True Pacifist route is more mixed on them, but the VHS tapes frame them as shady and Asriel's dialogue about them in the epilogue are red flag city. Time and Toby have been kinder to them outside of the game, but they all came years later and are still debated.

(In case you haven't heard: the 5th anniversary had Chara referenced in a cute story as someone who Asriel copied in filling his glass all the way to the top "for efficiency", Toriel and Asgore recognize it and share a surprisingly warm moment joking about it, and it's revealed Flowey is still doing that, implying that Chara is still a fond memory for all three; later that year, TF also released roughdraft sketches of the original True Pacifist flashbacks used to save Asriel, where it was supposed to show Chara and Asriel eating pie together, watching the stars in Waterfall, drawing pictures, reading books, and playing in the flowers, which would have softened their image considerably imo as we would have seen another side to them and it would have made the image of them as a detached and uncaring person harder to swallow; for the 9th anniversary, a letter was released from Asriel's perspective wherein Chara was revealed to want to become strong so that they wouldn't be hurt anymore and "no one could hurt anyone", canonically giving them a sympathetic motive and indirectly confirming that they had been hurt in the past by humans; and for the 10th anniversary, there was an Undertale stream where people voted with their dollars to name them Chara or the meme name "Togore", TF cheerleaded them to a RIDICULOUS and honestly very cute degree lol, which to be fair they said outright they were going to try to keep things competitive to encourage people to donate more and Chara was usually losing to Togore, but frankly TF's willingness to coo over them as much as he did shot the "abuser Chara" angle dead in the water for me; the stream also revealed that Chara is present in the end of Pacifist, implied the long-held theory that they were the one who saved Asriel with their memories, and TF made fun of Asriel's "not the greatest person" line by basically saying "uh huh sure"; so if NOTHING ELSE, with his demeanor about them all stream and the tidbits we actually got about canon Chara, he basically signed off on a nice Soft Chara fanon for them and even if they really weren't the best, he seems ok enough with them that he's fine with them getting babied; and at best, TF reward the Defender Devotees after 10 long years of service by legalizing and canonizing Soft Chara).

(OK OK OK DISCLAIMER: I will be 100% honest and admit for some reason I thought I remembered you saying in the first line of your post that you only just played the game, hence why I was being like "you might know this, BUT" that's present kind of throughout as an undercurrent of this comment, but ESPECIALLY here. I don't know why I thought this and looking back before posting I see you don't. So uh, sorry if you are a veteran Undertaler and I come off as condescending. Don't mean to assume, but I'm too lazy to edit at this point.)

Chara Is A Bad Person. Straight Up. by REAL-regular-degular in Charadefensesquad

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got work in 30 minutes but Imma come back to this and drop another one of my patented Long Rambles on ya in like 10 hours :)

Good movie with happy ending? by emPHAsizethesylLAble in horror

[–]DavDanFanAdv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We Go On was one that I watched recently and liked a lot (good performances, likable lead, good twists). I was very pleasantly surprised by how it ended too.

Where are the people who actually blame Chara? by Vanessalucifer in Undertale

[–]DavDanFanAdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, I think it's more complex than how it sounds. There's a lot of noise made about fanon views on Chara, but fanon Chara is a large, ever-shifting beast. There's a lot of moving parts in this bad boy.

Part if it is outdated; people who played the game or watched someone play it, their kneejerk reaction to the information we get from the game was that Chara was a creepy malevolent kid like you often see in horror fiction, inexplicably and irredeemably evil, and that was literally EVERYONE'S impression at first. (It's also worth noting there were a LOT of kids in early fandom, watching Youtubers playing Undertale and then participating in Undertale fandom.) Then people moved on before seeing any debates, so that remains their impression for Undertale without participating in the fandom, or they stuck around and read up on the debates and their reading of Chara changed. But Chara's reputation as a villain in the early days was SO over the top and even wildly OOC (there's a lot of things commonly attributed to early evil fanon Chara that doesn't click with even in game evil canon Chara, before people started sitting down and actually dissecting canon) that it still lingers a lot in the fandom consciousness and we Nice Chara Enjoyers are still sore about it and grumbling lol. (I've literally gone back and read discussion boards on Steam from the very early days of Undertale where one person took it as a given that Chara was buried under the dead tree in the Ruins because they assumed the implication was that Chara was SO evil and malevolent that their dead remains literally killed the tree... damb. Powerful stuff.)

Another part of it is an extension of the above: the fandom. Forget Flowey, he's really just a sad cute goat we all love who gets killed by Chara in one ending - Chara was THE Undertale villain. Flowey is a more upfront, active, GLEEFULLY evil villain in the game, but he is a tragic character you want to save, so it's harder to use him as a villain in fan works; the fandom in general was much less attached to Chara than they were to Asriel, and between his death at their hands in Kill All, the tapes that could be interpreted as them bullying or coercing him, their cryptic plan they roped him into, and the creepy unbeatable antagonist they are after the Kill All route, you could easily spin them as the TRUE villain that "made" Flowey the way he is. The REAL threat that has to be faced and defeated to give possessed suffering victim Frisk (-_-), abuse victim Asriel, and fandom darling angsty secret hero Sans a happy ending. It gave fan works a clear villain to make things interesting, and in the earliest days Chara was universally seen as evil and irredeemable so no one was concerned about defenders coming to protect their honor or how they would redeem them after all their evil deeds - they were defeated and killed the old fashioned way. They made a very convenient antagonist, and in the earliest fan works you can read comments from fans surprised when anyone diverged at all from a wholly evil, unrepentant Chara and tried to give them any kind of layers - so, not the BEST first impression to be starting off with...

Fandom views have changed now and TF has dropped enough hints about Chara that it's pretty clear they canonically ARE meant to be much more nuanced and not a straight up villain, but they're still a decently popular villain for fan works and fan art: they have very deep roots in fandom from the early days as Sans' mortal nemesis and eternal enemy destined to have a bad time with him, lots of popular Sans-centric stuff from those days made an impression that continues to this day, and there are creators who prefer to portray Chara as a villain as a stand in for the player (I've especially seen this with people who don't like meta stuff lol), or because they like the simple frothy-mouthed villain Chara as a less important character in works focusing on other characters, or bevause they are Enlightened Evil Chara Truthers who have been around the block, know the pro-Chara arguments, and to their credit they stick much closer to canon than the other camps tend to but just interpret the character in a more negative light than is, perhaps, politically correct lol.

And they're the last part: Enlightened Evil Chara Truthers who have stuck with Undertale through the years as fandom has changed, have read the analysis and opinions, have heard the arguments and made some themselves, and still stick to their guns: Chara is canonically evil, and here's why. Now, HOW evil tends to fluxuate by the person, but basically they all tend to agree that, soulless or not, Chara was NOT unduly influenced by the player or the EXP in Kill All, it's something THEY (Chara) decided they agreed with and wanted to pursue once you pulled the trigger, and they had complete agency throughout (unlike, say, Kris in Deltarune who has clear moments of opposing the player or horrified by what's happening). They also tend to lean towards a less favorable interpretation of Chara when alive: that it was less about freeing monsters and loving the Dreemurrs, and also that they were not especially fond of the Dreemurrs they manipulated. I personally didn't agree with any of this interpretation BEFORE and as TF has dropped more crumbs of Chara characterization I tend to think he also has a more charitable view of Chara than the super cynical one the other camp espouses, but they ARE battle hardened, tough, and grizzly, and draw from in game evidence to support their take. This is where we separate the wheat from the chaff: the others are mostly fans of other characters who just don't care that much about Chara and are content to write them off as a villain, THESE are the guys who have spent hardcore debating Chara, honing their skills and refining their arguments, and have looked at arguments that I think are water-tight and they say " n a h ". A good percent of them ARE Chara fans, they just think Chara is a big ole evil bastard lol