@Nine I've attempted btw to enter Flowey's headspace, using the music (along with drugs, I admit) to see if I could find anything in myself that would let me understand Flowey better. I found some help in comparing his situation to that of Wentworth at the end of Charles Williams's "Descent into Hell"--I realize that's an obscure reference. Wentworth's not "lost" his soul, exactly, but he has damaged it fatally, and now nothing that happens to him or that he sees makes any sense. People are blobs of color to him that make sounds he can barely understand. It's an extremely chilling depiction of a hellish state of mind>

@Nine >and I found myself thinking of it, when listening to "Your Best Nightmare". Flowey's music is dominated by noise, noise almost without structure, even descending into pure white noise at times--but interrupted by discordant bursts of melody. Basically I think that not having a SOUL, for Flowey, means having Asriel's memories (and his own) but without any of the emotional associations with those memories that would enable Flowey to make sense of them or place them into a meaningful context. That interpretation even if faulty, at any rate, enabled me to see Flowey as something other than a mere villain.

@kara_dreamer despite not knowing the material you referenced, I came to the same conclusions myself from playing through Undertale on neutral and pacifist, and then reading about the genocide route, and I think even at just playing it blind on the Neutral route, even after everything, even with how angry I was, I couldn't even bring myself to kill Flowey. At first it was just stubborn refusal to let him "win", but then it became true sorrow for him.

@kara_dreamer as his speech at me made me realise just how broken and tragic he was. "I just don't understand!" just...it broke my heart. I think I resolved at that point to help heal him, to help him understand. I'm glad I did, but it was still tragic seeing how it all ended.

@kara_dreamer but yeah I run with the idea that Chara is narrator in ALL runs, that Frisk's actions either confirm Chara's twisted world view and continue their path towards demonhood (Genocide), or help Chara realise that humanity, and by extention, themselves, are not corrupt and evil and awful and don't deserve to be wiped out (True Pacifist), and the True Pacifist run is Chara's way of redeeming themselves by helping Frisk repair the situation they created.

@Nine Wentworth at the end of "Descent into Hell", too, has the chaos that has surrounded him interrupted by bursts of meaning--by seeing shapes that he still dimly recognizes, by hearing voices uttering things he can still dimly understand, such as his own name. But amid the chaos these bursts of meaning are now _painful_ to him. He only wishes them to stop, to be let alone. So it is with Flowey getting jabbed with, well, _feelings_ for the first time in ages. Being abruptly reminded of pleasant things now _hurts_ Flowey, which is why he wants only to wipe Frisk out.

@kara_dreamer Yep! This also feeds into when in a genocide run he realises Chara can kill him. It strikes him full of abject terror to the point he tries to curry favour with Chara at the end...which fails, ending with Chara /taking their time killing him/ even as he pleads for "his best friend" to spare him D: D: D: It's...really really chilling and quite scary. I barely can stomach watching it.

@kara_dreamer I think honestly, given what you said, and Chara's Genocide run personality, I suspect Chara's going through the same thing. So mired in self-hate and nihilism, they want to wipe out EVERYTHING, and with Frisk's help gain the strength (ExP and LOVE) and Determination to literally tear reality asunder as The Demon Chara, rendering it into Oblivion where they can be alone and not exist. :(

@Nine I think Chara ends up deciding what to do based on how the player inhabits them. If they are kindly, Chara's faith in humanity (damaged almost irreparably by what happened when they and Asriel went to the surface) is restored, and they realize there's still a point in going on and being hopeful. If the player is a murder, Chara turns into an avenging angel, and they _despise_ you (the player) for having turned them into that. And at the very end, they punish you for it. At least, that's how I like to read it.

@kara_dreamer That's also possible and valid, but it also stands to reason that they want to punish themselves and all humanity, given the Post-Genocide Pacifist Endings. (staying with Toriel grants that creepy epilogue scene with Chara's eyes opening with that smile at the end, and leaving on other business shows the photos with everyone's faces crossed out and Chara's smile and red eyes)

@Nine tell me more about this "post-genocide pacifist" run. I know about the picture at the end being different...are there any other differences?

@kara_dreamer I don't think there is any difference other than the endings on a post-genocide pacifist run. Basically to get any "soulless" as they're called runs, first you gotta do a genocide run, then relaunch the game and wait 10 minutes on a pitch black screen. Chara then reminds you that you destroyed the world, and asks if you think you're above the consequences. Selecting yes causes them to reply "Exactly"

@kara_dreamer else Chara asks "So what are you looking for?" , They then offer to recreate the world in exchagne for your soul. Saying no makes Chara just leave with "Then stay here for all eternity", before returning in 10 minutes again. Yes makes you give Chara your soul, then the True Reset option appears. A "Soulless" Genocide run does have some interesting results though.

@kara_dreamer Basically doing more than one genocide run has Chara refer to themselves as "The demon that comes when people call its name." No matter where or when, Chara will kill the enemy and become strong. They then list the stats off like normal, then say they don't understand the player's SOUL's "Twisted feelings"; why they destroyed everything, then went back and did it again.

@kara_dreamer Chara even suggests maybe taking a different course of action next time after accusing the player of a "perverted sentimentality" wrt recreating and destroying the world again. Choosing to not give your soul this time results in Chara saying "this is what I was talking about", then reminding you that you already "made your choice long ago". followed by a reset anyway after a jumpscare.

@Nine This is fascinating! I don't think there's anything here that contradicts the rather elaborate interpretation of Chara that I came up with on multiple replays and a lot of meditation. I should interject here that Undertale has a virtually religious significance with me now, and playing the game and listening to the music has now triggered multiple mystical experiences, some of them of extreme intensity. Chara Dreemurr ended up being my human voice for a while, my "ambassador" (q.v. @chara).

@Nine in any case I decided on this backstory for Chara, very broadly sketched: they fled a deeply abusive childhood and found themselves in a loving family, but for multiple reasons still could not be happy. I feel that the breaking point for them was learning that Asgore regarded him not merely as an adoptive child but as "the future of monsters and humans". I can think of few things that would have galled Chara more than being asked without their permission to act as the representative for a species they had come to despise

@Nine So in my interpretation Chara's reckless "plan" wasn't part of any grand scheme; they just wanted, _a la_ Huck Finn, to run away with the only friend they had, making up whatever lie they needed to get their friend to go along with them. I don't think they intended to kill anyone, but when they (in Asriel) were attacked I think they realized in a flash that there was no running away, they would never find peace anywhere, and then they simply lost their rag and wanted to go on a murderous rampage until Asriel stopped them. So I don't think it was intentional genocide.

@kara_dreamer I actually like this interpretation a lot! This is good stuff! :D

@Nine *smiles* so, another set of questions...have you given much thought to how magic works in the Undertale universe? for the purpose of playing the game it hardly matters but I'm writing some fiction in which I feel I need to come up with a working explanation, even if it's a very sketchy one.

@kara_dreamer Hmm, I.... haven't really? I just sort of accepted it as "yeah it's magic it just happens" but considering each monster has its own specific attacks and it's implied all of them are magical (there's a book in the library in snowdin that says humans don't HAVE magic innately, so will never know the joy of a bullet curtain birthday card which seems like a throwaway joke but really it's fascinating), that because their soul is suffused

@kara_dreamer with magic, they are literally attacking you/defending themselves with their very soul and expressions thereof... But also it could be inferred, especially from some fights, that they aren't aware you're human (nobody's seen one in generations, decades, centuries maybe), so they're not ATTACKING, exactly. They're expressing emotions and greetings in the only way they know how to you for the most part, but in a very overt way.

@Nine that seemed especially clear to me on my last playthrough of the game. The monsters are generally extremely friendly, and many seem to think they're doing something good and friendly with their "attacks". so I interpreted a lot of the "fights" as merely Frisk learning how to negotiate being around a lot of very curious and very friendly critters who happen inconveniently to spew lava or whatever.

@kara_dreamer and it's like an extreme extrovert seeming like they're obnoxious or too energetic for others and being super lively, so their magical 'attacks' which are really greetings and such hurt because they're too exuberant, hence why a lot of them will talk to you after a fight, realising your personal boundaries?

@kara_dreamer at least, that's my take on it at any rate. The monsters that will talk to you first and foremost are all either more introverted, maybe a bit more worldly, or more reserved and saving their exuberant passionate displays of emotion for more intimate encounters... or in the case of Shyren, actually a sort of defense mechanism, and in Napstablook's case, just an unfortunate side effect of their emotional state.

@kara_dreamer (Also Napstablook is one of my favourite characters in all of UT just because I want to hug the ghost and I just love how after you befriend them they don't cry any more around you and just ....open up fully and they're just so good and nice and I love them to bits ;w; )

@kara_dreamer ((actually that's a lie i have no characters in UT that I don't love.))

((... except 𝘫𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘺 ))

@Nine oh wow yeah. I want to put more Napstablook into my writing...partly because I want to get some better idea in my headcanon of just what _ghosts_ are, so I can write Mettaton better.

@kara_dreamer It sort of seems that skeletons and ghosts are all.. like a SPECIES of monsters? like, Napstablook, Mettaton, Training Dummy and Mad/Glad Dummy are all related, and are all ghosts. Training Dummy is a ghost possessing a training mannequin, Mad Dummy is also possessing a mannequin and attacks you because of your interactions with their cousin, and both Napstablook and Mettaton reference Mad/Glad Dummy as THEIR cousin, so...

@kara_dreamer Maybe monsters, being so suffused with magic as part of their integral being, fit into these strangely archetypal species, such as ghosts, or skeletons, or goat-like creatures like Toriel, and fish people and lizardfolk and cats and sphynxes and suchlike because that's just the forms magic takes, hence human legends about similar creatures, because humankind dimly remembers such things being real and around once?

@Nine one idea I had was that monsters started out as magical copies of humans, but then in successive generations they depart further and further from a human shape they no longer really need

@kara_dreamer That's a hecka cool idea. I'd say go with that one, it puts your own unique spin on things :D

@Nine it's either that or trot out my big guns: the Human-Monster War is actually a garbled recollection of the war between humans and a society of the most functional corrupted gems that was able to put itself together after they were abandoned on Earth after the Gem War. Yep, the "monsters" are simply corrupted Gems who most closely approximate neurotypicality

(kidding, kidding)

@kara_dreamer I went to bed and missed this and now I must admit sadly that I haven't watched Steven Universe and I feel I should but I have a hard time getting into any new media because I keep forgetting to do so or can't muster the energy to get into things often ^^;

@kara_dreamer (((( ᵃˡˢᵒ ᵃ ˡⁱᵉ ⁱ ᶜᵃⁿ'ᵗ ᵉᵛᵉⁿ ʰᵃᵗᵉ ʲᵉʳʳʸ ))))

@kara_dreamer Though it does still absolutely fit either way with the statement of "you think you're above the consequences of your actions?" from Chara.