♥ application

[inconsequence]

A note, dear reader: Please be advised that the following contains discussion of suicide, self-harm, murder, and allusions to child abuse. This application also contains mentions of fictional genocide and mass amounts of self-loathing. Tread safely.



Player

Name & Pronouns: Zero, they/them
Age: 21+
Contact Details: arrpee, zero#8942 on discord
Referral: Claire, superorbital

Character

Character Name: Chara Dreemurr
Age: Unknown. I put them somewhere in the 8-12 range
Suitability: Chara is a very messed-up, troubled little kid. In spite of their youth, they've both received and relayed a great deal of incredibly fucked up shit. In the absolute darkest timeline imaginable, Chara becomes capable of such horrors as the mass genocide of an entire species that they once sacrificed everything for, the murder of their adoptive family, and the complete erasure of all of existence. Even in the kindest possible timelines, they get very little closure for their actions, which are responsible for a lot of the issues present in the characters of their canon. It's worth noting that Chara is both outwardly very mature (well-read, highly intelligent, does their best to appear as grown-up as possible), while simultaneously lacking a lot of emotional maturity due to being...you know, a literal child.

Canon: Undertale
Canon Point: Post-True Pacifist, with a lot of Neutral runs and at least one aborted No Mercy run under their belt

History:

Their wiki page , in addition to an in-depth, comprehensive analysis regarding their participation in the game as the narrator of all routes. I will be supplementing this with my own description, because to call this character contentious and speculative would be putting it lightly; personal interpretation will inevitably inform how I characterize them.

So. Who is Chara? Chara is...not exactly the greatest person. For what kind of child climbs a mountain from which it is rumored travelers do not return? For "not a happy reason," their adoptive brother Asriel says, knowing that they must not have wanted to return from said mountain. After all, Chara "hated humanity," Asriel claims, over their grave. "Why they did, they never talked about it. But they felt very strongly about that." This hints at some rather unfortunate implications for what their life was like prior to their fall.

I take it to mean that everything Chara is, good and bad, is a product of their circumstances.

* If you look cuter, monsters won't hit you as hard.

Falling down Mt. Ebott did not grant them the release they must have sought. Instead they were found by a family of monsters whose kindness seemingly knew no bounds. King Asgore Dreemurr, his wife Toriel, and their son, Asriel - they took this human child in without hesitation and treated them well. They told stories and ate butterscotch pie. The human came to be accepted as something of a member of this family. Even if they were different, even if they were a member of the race that sealed monsters beneath the mountain, even if they fell from above and didn't talk about why they hated humanity so, they were considered family, and Asriel was their best friend. Chara was more than just a Dreemurr, however: they were the future of humans and monsters. They were proof that peace could exist between the two species.

This was not a perfect transition. There were bumps in the road and hiccups as the child attempted to integrate into their new family. At one point, Asriel and Chara attempted to make a pie for their father, and in doing so swapped "cups of butter" for literal buttercups (if you know anything about what eating buttercups does to you, it's super fucking unpleasant). This made Asgore incredibly sick, and while Asriel expressed discomfort and regret, he later says the he "should have laughed it off," the way Chara did. For my money, I believe that the consequences there were purely accidental. But considering Chara's long-standing hatred of humanity and innately self-destructive qualities, that moment served as a brutal reminder of what they always believed: that they weren't capable of any good whatsoever, and that they ruined everything they touched.

Thanks to the incident with the buttercups, Chara came to devise a plan. Humans, they'd long since deduced, were irredeemably wicked beings, themself included. In the end, even serving as a figurehead of hope seemed like a cruel lie; how could they be anything but, when they belonged to the race of wretched creatures that trapped these kindly folk beneath the earth? This was a child that had decided that the happiest ending possible for everyone here was for them to essentially martyr themself. Only the power of a human SOUL and a monster SOUL would allow one to cross the barrier, and the species known as Boss Monsters (aka the species the Dreemurrs were) were the only ones with SOULs powerful enough for such a thing. But if Chara were to die, and allow Asriel to absorb their human SOUL, their combined might would allow them to cross the barrier. And from there, they could get six more human SOULs, as seven were necessary to break the magical barrier keeping monsters Underground. Their death could mean something, and they could free all of monsterkind, in one fell swoop.

This was precisely what they did. With Asriel's help, Chara commited to a painful and protracted suicide by self-poisoning under the pretense of illness. Once they were dead, Asriel absorbed their SOUL, which transformed him into what the history of the Underground calls "a being with incredible power." Neither child had any way of knowing that the control between this new, powerful body would be shared, as this phenomenon was something only spoken of in terms of uncharted potential. They had no way of knowing that the human's existence would be sustained after death, upon the absorption of their SOUL.

With the combined power of a human SOUL in a monster body, both children crossed the barrier trapping monsters Underground, planning to use their power to reap the six SOULs necessary to break the barrier. Asriel carried Chara's body to the surface, and back to their village.

So it happened that the humans that lived in said village only saw a nameless, horrible beast standing over the body of a child, and presumed it had killed them. They attacked, and together Asriel and Chara weathered each and every blow. This was their chance, Chara told their best friend. They only needed to get six. But Asriel wrested all control of their shared form into himself, and carried Chara's body back Underground. No sooner had he passed back through the barrier, he succumbed to his wounds. The King and Queen lost both children on the same night.

Chara's plan had left nothing but strife in its wake.

* Look at what you've done.

Years pass, after that. Six more humans fall - all children. And then, finally, an eighth human child from above falls down. They land atop a patch of golden flowers - unbeknownst to them, Chara's grave. Like Chara, this human has a SOUL that red with determination, and in that way Chara finds themself irrevocably joined with this human, shackled to their SOUL, helpless to do anything beyond advise them, inform them, and possibly even guide them. They offer insight into the lives of the monsters Underground, though they always grow quiet whenever the human faces the remnants of their old life - when Toriel blocks the way, or when Asgore inevitably confronts them.

But they're just a human. They can't possibly be worthy of anything Chara has to offer. In fact, in some cases, the human simply proves what Chara had known all along - that humans crave only power, and that Chara is no better simply by virtue of being one of them.

The human crosses through the Underground many times. They make their way through in a wide variety of iterations - killing some monsters, sparing others. RESET. Kill someone here, spare another here. RESET. But over time, they might learn and therefore prove to Chara that one can show MERCY, and that even the loneliest, cruelest SOUL can be SAVED, because everything and everyone is worth SAVING.

And who was that human, anyway?

Funny you should ask.

Personality:

To say Chara is an enigmatic character would be putting it lightly. Not much is truly known about them other than their early history, and what little that we as the players may glean from them during the game. Their status as the game's narrator expands upon their personality somewhat - revealing a level of casual wit, snark, sarcasm, a love of puns, and a rather morbid sense of humor. Their typical form of speech is dark and poetic, often mirroring their adoptive mother Toriel's formal, precise language. They also seem peculiarly well-read, for someone so young, unless you happen to know any other kids with a tendency to quote obscure Japanese literature mid-battle. Their speech at the end of the No Mercy route, when they confront the player directly, features very slow, deliberate words and grandiose language as they condemn the player for their "perverted sentimentality."

As one delves deeper into Chara's history, it becomes clear that they were not exactly a well-adjusted child. They did, after all, despise humanity with every fiber of their being. The depths of Chara's hatred for humans is best glimpsed from, first of all, their plan, which basically amounted to murder-suicide. This is also is evident from the way they viewed themself in life. As the player character explores the places Underground where Chara grew up, certain hints reveal a very sad and dark tale indeed. The gardening tools are blunted so that no one can hurt themselves on them. The fire in the hearth is magic, and therefore harmless. The knives are hidden from easy reach of a child.

And then, of course, there is the manner of Chara's own death. They first climbed Mt. Ebott for reasons they disclosed only to their best friend in the whole world. Whatever the...unhappy reason for that was, I believe that it was, to some extent, an attempt to end their own life. In their second attempt, Chara selects a manner of death that is incredibly cruel and painful; poisoning oneself with buttercups is not a calm or efficient means of death. It is intense, brutal, painful, and drawn-out. It is an unnecessarily lengthy death on top of it - unless, of course you'd want your adoptive family to believe that you're sick, and not accept the burden of guilt for a botched suicide.

While there is evidence Chara holds genuine affection for their adoptive family, they also went from an environment that cultivated their long-standing hatred of humanity to a pair of monsters who were the proud owners of a "Nose Nuzzles Champs of '98" trophy, who baked pies and dressed up as Santa Claus. The glimpses of the Dreemurr household we get are painfully idyllic. Asgore and Toriel were sickly sweet around one another and doted on their children. Asriel and Chara were inseparable best friends, perhaps to an unhealthy extent. That kind of mutual codependency, after all, led in part to their joint plan's tragic ending - Asriel refused to go back on Chara's plan despite his misgivings, and Chara refused to abandon said plan even once he started voicing his regrets.

The bottom line is that the Dreemurrs were not immediately in a position to understand the problems of a reticent human child with a boatload of repressed trauma. They did their best, all things considered, but the sad, unfortunate result is that Chara simply came away believing that the best ending they could give these kind people was one in which Chara no longer existed. As prickly and cagey as they are, Asriel is the one person in the entire world who can say that he knew them best. They told him things they told no one else - why they climbed the mountain, about their hatred of humanity. But despite that, they didn't tell him everything. They could never tell him why they hated humanity.

Thus, we can infer that getting Chara to open up is a bit of a trial in and of itself. They're prone to the same sort of tactics that are common among kids with troubled pasts, prone to stomping over the eggshells to avoid ever having to pick their way around them. A rampant paranoia lingering from their treatment on the surface leads them to assume that almost everyone is out to get them in some fashion, and so they bypass any courtesy of kindness by acting out, by deliberately winding people up and pushing their buttons. It's their one defense mechanism; trying to own control of a situation that they think is inevitable. And control, as it happens, is a big deal for them. Given how little control they've had over their life - on the surface, underground, and in the body they shared with Asriel - this is, perhaps, an understandable consequence of their past.

When control doesn't work, they settle for something a little more conventional. They throw up barrier after barrier, the most prominent of those being their most distinctive physical trait: their smile. Oh, and how they know how to smile. They wear that smile like an armor, as if welded to their features, and when that is not enough, they laugh. They laugh because they're cruel, or perhaps because they just don't have another instinct to default to when terrible things happen - when they inadvertently poison their adoptive father, for example. It made Asgore so very sick, and Chara laughed. Undertale is a game that addresses this sort of thing at length, as a large number of the core cast tends to laugh their problems away, paint smiles over a dark or sad interior (the most obvious and well-known example being Sans, who smiles constantly despite his seething apathy and existential depression). Chara is no exception. Their smile is most often a sign of distress, molded into something sharp, that they can use.

And yet, for all their tremendous self-loathing, Chara gradually comes to accept the name of Dreemurr into their title. And in doing so, they assume the burden of the title that their adoptive father and the king of all monsters has placed upon them: the future of humans and monsters. Despite the fact that their self-loathing often blinds them to their better qualities, they do possess those qualities. They are a deeply compassionate creature, particularly to those that they feel have been unfairly maligned. They possess a very strong sense of justice, albeit a skewed one that frequently boils things down to unnecessarily black-and-white morals (i.e., their experience with humanity is bad; therefore, all humans are bad, Chara included). This is best demonstrated by their relationship to all of monsterkind. Once their father calls them the future of humans and monsters, a plainly symbolic title meant to signify hope and a changing of a kingdom's attitude toward humanity, Chara essentially chooses to take the full burden of that title very literally, and very seriously. They take it upon themself to break the Barrier and allow all monsters to reach the surface, even if it costs their own life to do it. So, basically: if you combine a warped, childish view of justice, a vicious love and kindness for an adoptive family, and a profound sense of self-destruction that trends easily toward unnecessary self-sacrifice and martyrdom, and stir thoroughly? You get Chara.

However, because this child's canon material is so thready as it is and I believe that their future experiences more than inform their characterization at their present canon-point, I will also include an explanation of other significant traits in their future.

In this horrible child's horrible future, their self-loathing will only intensify following their reincarnation postmortem, for they will get to see fULL WELL how their plan affected the Underground, how they single-handedly killed the crown prince of the Underground, effectively catalyzed the King and Queen's divorce, and plunged the Underground into hopelessness. They're a killer, a murderer, and they ruin everything they touch! Wowie!

At that point, Chara's scorn for themself and for humans just like them only increases. They blame themself for the failure of their plan, for the ruination of monsterkind's chances for freedom. But that warped justice rears its head again, because the longer they dwell in the world they left behind, the more their spite and judgment for monsters starts to fester away inside them. They sacrificed everything for this species, and what came of it? Nothing. Nothing but six more dead children.

But whose fault is that, really?

Ultimately, it all boils down to how negatively Chara views themself. It was their mistake that made monsters this way, after all. They hold themself accountable for their sins, just as they hold the player accountable for theirs should they successfully complete a No Mercy run. If you commit to slaughtering every SOUL Underground, you had damn well better be willing to accept that this is what you've taught them. You took their world and burned it all, and you showed them that this was the right thing to do. That the only thing that matters is power. That this is their purpose. They kill their best friend, their family, and they do it all because you wanted to see what would happen. Should the player choose to back out at that point, in fact, Chara's reaction is nothing short of a stunned "No...?" They're simply unable to process that you would be so cruel simply because you could. They're firmly and coldly judgmental regarding humans, and they hold themself at the same standards as everyone else.

And perhaps that is why they linger so after their death, thanks to the unique attribute of human SOULs. That red tint of determination that allows them to persist after death, that allowed them to drag themself to their feet after they fell into the Underground, that causes them to take so horribly, unbearably long to just die upon consuming their floral poison. It's pathological, deep-seated, and spreads to everything they are. Chara is stubborn to an absolute fault. Even when it would be best for everyone to back down, it's practically hard-wired into them to never let things go. No one holds a grudge like this kid. They're just...plain determined to. And they remain filled with that awful, hateful determination, even as Toriel takes their body and buries it, planting on the grave a carpet of golden flowers.

* You tell a joke about a kid who slept in the soil.

Chara, similarly to Frisk, is quick to internalize any rhetoric thrown at them. As I mentioned before: if they are to be the future of humans and monsters, then they will take on the burden of the responsibility and attempt to solve the Underground's most dire problem, even if it requires them to be the sacrificial lamb to do so. In the No Mercy run: if the human SOUL they were conjoined with would strike down everything in their path, if they were to prove that humans were to be evil, cursed, awful things? Why, Chara will accept it with a serene smile. Their worldview will darken further with all the LOVE the human amasses, and they will smile their smile until it ossifies into their armor, sword, and shield. Their morbidity skews into a cruel, grim sense of humor. Monsters die, as all things do. Maybe they even deserve it. Destruction is all they seem capable of, and so that will be the purpose of their reincarnation.

Yet even in those dark, dark timelines where Chara tread through the dust of every monster, they will still glimpse the vestiges of their life. A sweater that they made for Asgore. Closets full of clothes they shared with their brother. A photograph in which everyone is smiling, something so painful for them to witness that they cannot even dispense their blunt commentary. Whatever they turned into down the road, there is more than enough evidence that Chara genuinely cared for the monsters that took them in. You just don't spend weeks and/or months knitting a sweater for a giant-ass goat man if you don't care about him, okay?

They loved their family. That might be why they end up feeling so betrayed by what happens after their death, and Asriel's. They watch their father turn himself into the same thing that Asriel had died refusing to become: someone willing to murder six innocent humans. They watch their mother replace the children she lost with every human child that passed through the Ruins, before inevitably driving them away. They watch Asriel turn into the apathetic, destructive Flowey the Flower.

All because of them.

Sin:

♥ Wrath: This is the most obvious one, and also the most fitting. Chara is a character who is more or less defined by their intense self-hatred. Their first instinct is to seek out their own self-destruction, and their plan to free all of monsterkind hinged on their own slow and painful death, as well of the deaths of at least six other humans. The first target of their negative emotions is always going to be themself, first and foremost, before they invariably turn those barbs outward and lash out and attack others simply because that's their first instinct. Chara, at their lowest point, is capable of murdering the only people in their life that were truly kind to them, the only people in their life that they unabashedly loved, and then exterminating the species that they gave up everything for. You don't do a thing like that without having a whole lotta wrath in your heart.

♥ Pride: Less obvious, but it's there nonetheless. This doesn't manifest so much in Chara having a high opinion of themself (they hate themself more than anyone, after all), but rather in how much they detest asking for help or appearing to be unknowledgeable. They have a constant, all-consuming need for control of any situation, and the best way to maintain that control is to appear to be untouchable. They loathe having to appear weak, and that includes seeking the aid of others; after all, they decided to solve a massive, species-wide problem with just themself, their best friend, and a handful of buttercups.

♥ Envy: Again, also less obvious, and it really only rears its head once you take a look at the wider implications of Chara's character in the context of the True Pacifist and No Mercy playthroughs of the game. There's a frustration that they're not good enough, that they weren't good enough for their family or for monsterkind, because they could never do what Frisk could. Given that the No Mercy playthrough is generally played last (and usually after achieving the True Pacifist ending, the best one in the game, in which Asriel outright states to Frisk that Chara "wasn't really the greatest person"), it's easy to see where some of that in-universe motivation for Chara to wreak absolute havoc might come from. It's a compulsion that, like much about their character, ultimately ties back to their self-hatred.

Memory Fragments: This is the big one! These are the aspects of themselves that your character will be regaining as they progress through Purgatory. Please list exactly fourteen Memory Fragments that you would like your character to regain during the game. These do not have to be full memories but can be aspects of your character's identity that would be important to them. For example, they can be the existence of an important person, a skill or hobby that your character had in their life or it can even be their name. It's up to you!

1. The Surface: Why did Chara climb the mountain? It wasn't for a very happy reason.

2. Kitchen: A book by Banana Yoshimoto.

14. Chara Dreemurr: The True Name.

Extra: yeah theyre my kid n i love em