[ SECRET POST #4334 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4334 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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07. [repeat]









Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 08 secrets from Secret Submission Post #620.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/61E97BC.png

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's a known thing that many abusers were abused themselves, so it's not like this is implausible. I can see why the character's past might cause some people to feel for them, but I can see why you have the reaction you do.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm only buttmad because there's this strong narrative in fandom that if you call any of what Chara did remotely abusive or abusive-adjacent, you're a horrible person 5ever because Chara just meant well and really wanted to help everyone (even though they isolated and talked Asriel into a dumb plan).

[feotakahari]

I recently saw a breathtakingly terrible Tumblr take on Undertale. It argued that every character in Undertale already is what the fandom of a conventional story would misunderstand them to be. (E.g. the fandom of the average comical incompetent antagonist would misunderstand him to be like Papyrus.) If Undertale fandom misunderstands Chara as a woobie, then that take was wronger than I thought, because he’s definitely not a woobie in the game itself.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I feel for Chara. They were clearly abused pretty badly, even if we have no idea what their home life was actually like. But "Chara isn't a demon and the player is the cause of all things bad in the game." While, yeah, we create the monster Chara becomes in Genocide route, we ultimately are not the source of Chara isolating and manipulating Asriel into doing things he's explicitly not okay with. Chara was a fucked up kid, and had learned some abusive behaviors! And that needs to be acknowledged!!!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm curious about this take on Undertale but I honestly can't understand what you're trying to say here.

[(Anonymous)]

Like anon above, I'm having a hard time understanding what you meant. I feel like it's an interesting take (if I understood it correctly) and I'd love links if you can find the post again.

[feotakahari]

This take is bad enough that I don’t want to leave it on its own, so here’s one of the more varied response chains I found: http://storitellerb.tumblr.com/post/144172199770/a-remake-without-an-original

[(Anonymous)]

That is the most awful Hot Take I've ever seen.

Undertale was made as a commentary about how we mindlessly slaughter enemy monsters because we're supposed to, and they're never given stories because, "Well, they're monsters!" So it gave monsters a story of oppression, because that's largely what they are in a lot of stories. Hell, orcs began as racist stereotypes of black people, IIRC (and they do resemble the racist caricature of tribal Africa), and it's kind of telling that drow are dark-skinned and evil to their Inherently Good fair-skinned cousins (and are also matriarchal).

Undertale had the audacity to go, "But why does it have to be this way? Why can't there be a route that explores monsters as oppressed groups striking back out of fear and wariness because humans have been so awful to them? And then give you the option to work peacefully through things?" It's noted to me that in this Hot Take, the idea of forgiveness, which is touted anywhere and everywhere (especially by a large number of people who fall in very -ist categories) is no longer valid when we're talking about Lesser People.

I'm reminded of the pilot episode of Medium.

[(Anonymous)]

The main character could see and talk to ghosts and she was trying to get this guy to confess what he did to a boy and she tells him about the man in the corner who molested the guy and the other man who molested that man and the three who molested him and so on. Cycles of abuse are known things. Not everybody who was abused will abuse, of course. But being abused does not excuse abusing others.

Re: I'm reminded of the pilot episode of Medium.

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty much this is exactly my feelings. I just want to be able to talk about the fucked up behaviors Chara inherited and how it led to the tragic events of Undertale's backstory, but thinking they're anything other than a poor baby who just wanted to help and made a mistake is a one-way street to tons of hate.

[(Anonymous)]

it's possible to have sympathy for someone who had a traumatic past but still hold them accountable for their own bad actions. too bad tumblr doesn't realize this.

that sad, i wonder if these fans would have the same sympathy for a real life person as they do for a fictional blob of pixels.

[(Anonymous)]

Was Chara's backstory explored a little more in the new game? From my understanding (based on my memory of when Undertale first came out) Chara was just a straight up sociopath and always had been. Did I miss something? When was it implied they had an abusive childhood?

[soldatsasha]

All of Undertale's backstory seems to be a lot of implied implications implying things. I don't remember the game ever saying much about Chara's background, but a lot of people (myself included) assumed Frisk was abused and possibly many of the other human children. We know that Chara went up the mountain to commit suicide, and then after finding a family and home they still decided to use Asriel to attack the humans. It's not too much of a stretch to assume that something was done to Chara to make them hate humans so much.

[(Anonymous)]

We don't actually know they went to commit suicide, we just know they went up the mountain for a "not happy" reason. Which could very well be wanting to kill everyone in the world, for all we know. You don't have to be abused by a group of people to want those people dead. Sometimes you're just an asshole.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, it was more in some of the tapes it comes across a textbook abuse situation, nevermind that the implications of "no one comes back" would lead one to believe that everyone who went there died. Sooooo... That pretty heavily implies suicide attempt. Like, how the fuck would going up a mountain where the people who go disappear lead to them being able to kill everoyne?

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe they wanted to scare their family because they were an asshole, or make their village freak out about them out of spite by going to a supposedly "deadly" mountain to hide for a few days before they fell by accident. They were sure happy enough to want to kill everyone in their village when given the chance. Maybe they wanted to go up the mountain to find animals to torture and kill, didn't take the warnings seriously because they were arrogant, and then fell by accident. Those could also be "not happy" reasons to do it.

What exactly in the tapes comes across as a textbook abuse situation? Unless you mean them abusing Asriel. I've seen people bending over backwards to try and explain why them laughing off nearly killing Asgore with the flowers as a sign that they were REALLY SCARED, HONEST which I just don't find believable, especially considering what else we know about them. If the whole idea that they were abused comes from the assumption that they went up the mountain to kill themselves, even though we don't even know if that was the case, then it's all just speculation built on speculation.

[(Anonymous)]

Wait what happened to the fandom? I was into Undertale for a while and I remember Chara being this adorably crazy evil person who holds a knife in a lot of fan art. Like, no one hates Chara, but everyone agrees you wouldn't want to be near them.

[(Anonymous)]

It's been like this from the beginning. You, the player, make Chara into a monster, because you exist in relation to the game. Instead of being separate, the player is not Chara is not Frisk. So it's not Chara making Frisk to bad things, it's you.

You just influence Chara to become even worse in their soulless state.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not talking about in game portrayal of the characters, which I'll let you have your own intepretation and keep my own. I'm talking about fandom potrayal. The hundreds of Chara fanart I saw definitely had no "you" involved, and still involved looking pretty darn crazy and obviously evil (for a kid, but still).

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, it's not even an interpretation given that Chara will directly talk to YOU, THE PLAYER at the end of genocide runs, and you, the player, are talked to by Flowey, too.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe because that would make Chara problematic and then we can't like them any more because we're not supposed to like 'bad' characters?

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I think this cuts to the heart of it.

[(Anonymous)]

SA
Actually, though, I wonder if another big part of it is so the Chara defenders, many of whom may have been abused themselves, don't have to consider that maybe abuse victims can do harm, act shitty, and/or be abusive themselves. It's the abdication of personal responsibility that bothers me most here, not the woobiefication.

[(Anonymous)]

Aww, OP, I'm sorry that people were shitty to you over this. The least they could do was leave you alone.