so, the letter.
on the 15th, undertale's 9th anniversary, toby released another seasonal newsletter. and linked at the end of this newsletter was this, seemingly written by asriel, about... chara.
even now i almost don't know what to say. maybe i'm still trying to write about it too early. or even too late... i don't even know. but i still keep feeling the need to try.
when i first got to the letter and realized what it was, it hit me very hard. i mean, as i do with any of these official things, i hope a little bit in the back of my mind for something. some reference, or mention. i've jumped the gun even many times in my head, heart dropping for a moment as i think, what if, just what if, that's referring to... no. definitely not. or it's just a little joke in my head, you know. i know it's absurd, and it would never happen. this time i thought the same, although with the 9th anniversary, i did wonder if maybe that would be as likely of a time as any for something... but still. just an absurd fantasy, really. until it wasn't.
it's interesting really. i could spend a long time here just thinking about my own reaction. because there's a lot of weight to this, even in just the "self-analysis" layer of it all alone, the mountain of thoughts and imagined scenarios related to this subject i've had over the years, now coming to a point where, at least in some sense or part, it becomes a reality. and you're just looking at it, and it's real, it's "official", and that train running into the other train full of all your related mental and emotional baggage accumulated up until this point colliding at the speed of sight is something quite interesting to experience.
that interesting experience though, in its more concrete substance, was almost kind of just a near total speechlessness. overwhelmed by emotion, starting to tear up, but what emotions? maybe it's all of them. i suppose i don't need to wax extremely poetic. but it was a lot of that, and eventually just sort of.. breaking down crying, for a few minutes at least. and that especially, i don't know if i can tie to a single emotion. sadness, joy, relief, catharsis, i don't know. all of them and more, probably. i think it really was just being hit all at once by things that have built up and up over these 8-9 years.
but what does that consist of, really? maybe i can't get to every last corner of it, but some things start to arise in my mind. first, and perhaps most obvious, that it's an official (canon) and direct acknowledgement of chara, the character, the human being that asriel knew. something like this, we haven't gotten since the alarm clock dialogue, or to a somewhat lesser extent the sharing of that one set of concept art, the early flashback sequences of chara and asriel together (where toby uses their true name, chara). in some ways though this feels far beyond either of those, even the bit about revealing their glass-filling habit, since this is entirely focused on them and some implications about their deeper feelings about things at that. it's still a secondhand perspective, as it always is with chara (outside of the genocide route). but still, very significant even in itself.
and as i said before... i really never expected that. i've always hoped for it, wondered what it would be like... but i never thought it would actually happen, even to this small extent. just a little letter, a single page of dialogue. i figured toby would never do such a thing. which leads into another "weighty" element... what it illuminates about toby's intention or perspective, even if again, very small and still somewhat vague and left open. but for one, the fact it happened at all, means that he still thinks about chara. chara the person. that to at least some extent, they still aren't just some afterthought, or even mistake. and further, it actually shows us something, anything, about what they thought or felt, that they loved the number 9, and some idea of WHY they did. a reason, an internal conflict, one that can be understood.
and just that alone, i think quiets a lot of fears, perhaps silly, that i had in the past until now. that maybe toby doesn't really care and never did all that much, or that chara wasn't meant to be understood at all, or felt for, even with all they did... it's something i hated to think about, but that i couldn't help but wonder if it was true. toby was so vague about everything, it's hard to know. even now maybe you could still make certain arguments. but something about this puts me at ease about it, at least some small, final-ish sense of ease. that despite the person chara was or may have been, whatever the details are one way or another, there is an understanding and a certainty, in some sense, that they were human, and conflicted inside just as anyone else can be. and that was already clear for those who could see it, from the beginning, at least to my understanding. but something like this clears up a lot of the leftover doubts i had about a lot of things, particularly again, regarding toby's intention about things. and perhaps there is a lot of the relief...
but of course, there is also the sadness. which, i think i am used to in a lot of ways at this point, as strange as it is in some sense to say and realize that. but i've had my ways of dealing with things. ways to give them better than what they got. or even just to try and understand them, and keep them in my heart no matter what. stand by them, in the face of it all, even past the point where they are otherwise forgotten. but i won't forget. and i suppose something like this, just makes it even more certain... more intense. it's a thing that reminds me again, why i love them so, so much. and why i could never forget. and that has sadness and happiness to it. there's a grief over their fate in that world... but there's also a joy in being able to know them through it as well. and through that, to allow better worlds, without number, to spring forth from that understanding. or even just a moment, a moment considered, where things were wonderful and light, and they were happy. even if simply for that moment. something like that alone is worth it all.
and to analyze things more specifically...
the most immediate thing of note, confirming chara's favorite number as 9. already something you could infer before (as with just about everything here, really), but still special to have clearly stated there. even more interesting, the reasoning stated for why. this is opposed to asriel's implied feelings about it, which he discusses later in the letter in contrast. for chara, even while alive, that number represented the limit. ultimate power, ultimate strength... ultimate safety. those two lines...
"Nothing can hurt you anymore."
"Nothing can hurt anyone anymore."
perhaps obviously, i think these are the most important to me in this letter. this is the clearest and most direct indication (although still somewhat open) of chara's feelings about what 9 represents, this limit. there's a protection of the self. nothing can hurt them anymore. with that kind of power, they can finally be safe. they can finally be at peace. they can finally have control. and about the second line... while it could be more interpretable, there's some fundamental ideal to it which i think is clear... that it's at least something they'd like to happen, they would intend to achieve. even if how it is achieved, or by what terms it is defined, may be unreasonable by most rational consideration, let's say. erasing the entire world, for example, removes all suffering... through removing that which suffers entirely. wiping the slate clean, and never using it again. but it's an intriguing thought, isn't it?
well, it's still not very nice. but to me i think it makes the most sense at least. or something similar, like a state of total stagnation. actually, you could almost think of it like the stereotypical idea of heaven, no conflict, no drive, no challenge, just pure unending bliss in repetitive eternity. interesting, then, to think about it opposed to chara's monologue in genocide. at that point, only the purely selfish invincibility remains, and the idealization of it and its power for its own sake. and for the sake of continuing on, past 9, 99, 999, 9999, moving from this world onto the next, to do it all over again. the frankly very human desire for safety and control, even in chara's already extreme case, becomes something monstrous, something truly all-consuming and all-destructive. in a sort of funny way, you can think of that as a point towards the fan idea of there being a parallel between chara and asriel's "final form", their post-death reconstructions of themselves becoming an exaggerated version of their in-life imaginations. i suppose though you can also notice how maybe asriel's hyperdeath form is influenced at least in part by chara's ideas, with asriel's personal spin placed on top. an all powerful god, with the highest possible stats... but they're infinite. not just the limit, but BEYOND the limit! 99 plus one, chara, it's 99 plus one, so it beats you. this game doesn't have to end. these memories never have to end.
anyway. i also now consider how that second line applies to their plan, and their seeming desire to "go all the way" in the end, that asriel refused. i've always figured their hatred of humanity would have been quite intertwined with their discovery of the monsters, and that perhaps an end goal of their plan, whether they intended it all along or only felt themselves sure of it once filled with some kind of emotion or burning drive during the event itself, was to provide monsterkind with a human-free world, and therefore a relatively conflict-free one, at least to their perception. so in a way, i wonder if the idea that "nothing can hurt anyone anymore" is the more fundamental concept underlying this. perhaps something to think about, at least. i guess this is all a lot to think about...
but with that, perhaps that is all i have to say for now. i might add to this page if i think of more. maybe it's just getting too late. but i think that's a good amount of the important stuff as i see it.
actually... there is one more thing.
despite the amount i've written about a box of dialogue you can fit entirely on a single monitor, i have this strange feeling of... wondering if that's really it.
it's quite obvious of course how much this means to me. i'll surely be thinking about this even more for the years to come, just like everything else about them. but, over all this time, i've considered so much, and so deeply, to the point where i'm almost unsatisfied with even most of my own thoughts, or even my expressions, and depictions. unsatisfied, because it doesn't FULLY explore them, i need to go further, deeper... there are things they represent to me, meaning they have, ideas i want to explore or see explored that i just haven't been able to express yet. or see expressed by anyone... but the point is, i suppose i almost just wonder what this letter really means, or rather, what implications does it have for the future, if anything? will toby ever do something like this again? will he go further, will he explore deeper? will it be soon, will it take years? or is this just being thrown a bone, and that's pretty much the end of it? or if there was more... would i even want that? i'm not really sure what to think. and i'm not really sure how to feel about it, either way. i suppose in that way, it just leaves me a little... confused. in addition to everything else. a little cherry on top.
and i guess that's the cherry on top of this long-ass essay too. i think i'm really done this time... for now. for... now...
also, why was it called a "letter" anyway? it's almost more like a poem, or a journal entry, but it's called a letter. who is it intended for?