(It's as comfortable as it looks.)
i keep thinking about this line lately. one of the few, if not just the only line explicitly from chara where they almost sort of make light of or level with you on something. tell you something about how they feel, or felt, even if it's just a physical (maybe?) sensation. it's like a small, slight glimpse into their human side, their inner world, even if barely perceptible at this point. i guess that means a lot to me.
i love this CREEPY FUCKED UP WEIRDO HATEFUL CONTROL FREAK EDGELORD. i love them COMPLETELY and UTTERLY.
i will love them and be with them forever and allow them happiness and fulfillment in as many worlds and contexts as possible. and perhaps, one day, even a true understanding and mastering of themselves, a self-actualization to rival even that of the great warrior-poets of olden times. well, maybe not that perfect in an artistic sense. but it will be to ME, anyway. no one can be perfect, but they can try their best, i know they can, and that's always good enough for me. even if they fail, i always know they can do better, and that's always good enough for me. and sometimes, there is no perfect answer to something, no clear way to go. but whatever they do then, is always good enough for me. they will always be chara, no matter what happens, and i'll always love them.
being a creepy weirdo is pretty cool though, by the way. that part is definitely a good thing.
i wish i could put these feelings into words better sometimes, or even into what i make. i guess it doesn't even matter if anyone hears them, or understands them too. it just needs to be expressed, i NEED to express it. i NEED to do things for them, for chara's sake. for the things they make me feel. it gets me FIRED UP man. it gets me whisper-yelling in the shower. it gets me pacing back and forth and feeling like i'm gonna scream. i guess maybe everything i do is just working up to that better expression?
i guess it's all practice. like this drawing. i don't know WHY chara is doing that pose. i guess it's like they're listening to someone after walking for a while or something like that. but it doesn't matter. it's drawing a pose slightly different from any i've drawn before, it's becoming slightly more efficient, getting a slightly better grasp on their form, how to express their essence, their being. yeah, that's it. expressing chara, it goes back to that, everything's another step. and expressing how i feel for them. it's all intertwined, really. or at least it's tangled up. maybe the process is trying to untangle it too, trying to understand it. trying to put tangible meaning to it, something that hits you in your soul, that lifts you up. lifts me up, anyway.
maybe it will for someone else too, who the hell knows. and make them look at chara and see a god damned HUMAN BEING, you know, a person with a soul and a life and a brain and a heart. maybe, maybe! but the manifestation and expression and exploration of that in itself is enough. it has always been enough, and it always will be, just as chara themselves is always enough for me, no matter what. because i know who they are. i knew it 6 years ago, and i know it now. it's all just a matter of expressing the meanings and connections therein, the fundamental truths of it all, the love and happiness and passion and motivation that it brings. i don't know. rambling, but i had to get it out again. compelled.
it's still pretty crazy to me that if i think about it, chara almost brings a story within a story to undertale for me. like the game itself is almost entirely unconcerned with them in a concrete sense, they are still very important and central to several things, particularly with flowey/asriel, but there isn't an explicit focus on them as a person or character in the traditional sense for like 99% of the game.
but in that 1%, there's an entire world, an entire story, a life of a person that could have gone all sorts of directions, incredible depths of possibility and potential, within the timeline we are constrained to and without. even in the sense of purely things that are described or alluded to in the game, there are times in their life, moments in their story that i've spent hours, probably days, just thinking about, vividly imagining. like them climbing the mountain, that fateful day. thinking about the reasonings, the rationalizations, the emotions, the thoughts running through their head, what the weather might have been like, if it was raining like described in the kickstarter, maybe storming, blowing with wind, so cold. the thought that it might have been the last night of their entire life, the last time they'll ever see the trees and the grass and the wind and the rain. thinking about if they even care or not, if they've already thrown it all away in their mind, abandoned the world in all ways but the place of their physical form.
and that's not even mentioning the other possibilities, the imagined scenarios i've gone away with in my head, or that i even intend to express. how to do it, how BEST to do it, how to make it real, to make it mean something, to make it right. and all of this just from like, an intro sequence and a couple lines of dialogue. i don't know man. i mean that's just fucking cool. that's just real neat. and it just keeps getting neater.
>Chara falling/bullied/abused because they looked different
the more i've thought about this, the more i sort of disagree with the idea, at least in specific executions like that. i think it's cheap, and cheapens the problems chara has by attempting to explain it away in a sense with "they were just bullied/abused for superficial/vague reasons and THAT'S why they hate everyone and are fucked up!" that's not to say that chara couldn't have experienced such things, or that it wouldn't make sense for it to at least contribute to the mental state they find themselves in leading to doing what they did in the end and all, but i don't know.
i guess just being familiar with mental illness makes you realize that it isn't really so simple as just being caused by one thing or whatever like a supervillain backstory. it's a complex web of causes and effects that one could struggle to understand even the half of for practically their entire life. it's the human condition, really. to understand it is in a way to understand oneself, which, again, isn't so simple. it seems more likely to me that chara just wasn't really a perfect person, and in some sense it could be because they just went through a lot of rough things, but in another, there are some things that just arise, some holes that people just get stuck in, digging themselves deeper, and deeper, until you don't even remember what it looked like outside of it anymore. sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes you make a lot of them, sometimes you just get hit with bad luck, but sometimes it really is your fault, and you have to fix it. and that's all no different for chara, i think.
ultimately though, it does make sense as a simple headcanon to have. to explore all the things i'm talking about you'd have to go way more in-depth, which i understand is getting into the realm of being AUTISTICALLY OBSESSED with chara like i am, getting into weird territory, you know. just felt like writing about it for some reason.
i WILL write chara a happy ending if it's the LAST god damned thing i do. they WILL learn from their mistakes. they WILL go through character development, they WILL be portrayed as a full, real, fleshed out individual. they WILL realize their best potential, even and perhaps ESPECIALLY knowing their worst potential for the most horrible of things imaginable, for the worst possible reasons. they WILL find a better future for themselves, and it WILL come down to their own self-realization and ability to overcome their struggles and their negative aspects, coming to terms with them and working through them, even if they may still fail and falter sometimes, as any person would. they WILL feel the full and rich extent of human experience, they WILL still know great sadness, and anger, HATRED, and perhaps fear, but they WILL also know the greatest joys, reliefs, the deepest of meanings, and passions, the highest highs that they could not have even CONCEIVED of being possible. even the simple, small things, that they may have never stopped to just appreciate. they WILL know it. they'll know it, buddy. i WILL make sure of it. and they WILL.... BE... HAPPY!!!!! holy FUCK!!!!! they will be HAPPY!!!!!!!! despite EVERYTHING. oh my fucking god dude. there will be a world in their universe.... where chara is HAPPY. oh my jesus christ, my god, just think about it. and they'll have EARNED that happiness, that meaning, that satisfaction. and they'll KNOW it. that fulfillment. oh my god dude. holy god damn. what a thought. what a thought! it makes my heart swell with pure joy just to imagine. it UPLIFTS my very SOUL!!!!!!!!!! the fullness of it all. the completeness. oh man. i'm gonna do it. i'm doing it dude. yeah.
in trying (and sort of failing, but mostly just wanting to save for something else) an idea of drawing chara in a church like the ones i went to growing up, it keeps making me think about that sort of idea that i seem to come back to, like chara somehow being there in my life as a kid or perhaps more so just interacting with aspects of it now. but it's funny, i always ended up feeling that chara was exactly the kind of friend i always wished i had, even though asriel says the exact opposite of that, perhaps understandably so. among other things, they're just someone so, deeply different from me in a way, but that i feel so impossibly connected to at the same time. someone who wasn't perfect, but with whom i could have an understanding that neither of us really could be. someone who knew what it was like to feel so strange, in every sense. someone who would stick around, no matter what, no matter how long, even if that's just... forever.
so, i guess it just feels right in a way to think about them even more deeply intertwined with my life like that, encountering all the little things that i experienced, or the places i've been, weird unsaid un-thought-about things. just as it feels right to know them in their entirety as well, desiring to know all the little things in their life and experience too. and the way that manifests can be so meaningful to me, i guess. or just fun. i guess with the church example, it's sort of silly but, it's almost like a "going back to a level one zone with a high-level character" kind of feeling, and there's something fun about that. bringing chara along for the ride, through everything. they're just, "here" now. or just here. uh, you know. they're a part of my life, in a lot of different ways, some stranger than others. but it all comes together, that's the point. i don't know what the point of this post is though. maybe it's too weirdly specific to chuck out here, even with my weirdo standards. but i guess i'm posting it anyway.
it's weird to think about sometimes but more and more i realize just how much things have to literally be EXACTLY how they are, perfections and imperfections and all aspects inbetween, for my love and personal relationship with chara to work out and exist so perfectly in the way that it does. the circumstances and factors that make people hate or not care about them are exactly what allows for me to love and appreciate them as much as i do, the way that they exist in the game and the world, in all of its perfection, and horror, and wonder, and tragedy, in all the ways it means something and (originally) does not, is all necessary. it is all completely needed, for it to be the way it is, and nothing else. none of the things that happened to me would have happened if it was different. and thankfully, it was not different, and there is no changing that immutable truth, the truth that things are the way they are and cannot be otherwise.
and uhh, i think, i think too much about this, or rather, things that are not this, specific truth. and sometimes in ways that create problems for myself out of thin air. even now, it continues. but to be truly thankful for things, as they are, and all that has happened, is important. and in a way, that's all i need to say, isn't it? i keep trying to add things to this post but it just makes me realize that each line of thought that i have past this is pointless and retarded. oh, just had another one! it's just funny. i guess i just like to waste time thinking myself in circles about things, as TSUNDERE as i can be about it. no, of COURSE it feels bad, not like i ENJOY doing this, you IDIOT. i definitely DON'T like making LONG POSTS about CHARA that NO ONE should care about except for ME, and throwing it to the void just for the hell of it. nope! uh, no. yeah. i don't know. there are probably better ways to do this. i think i should stop writing this. i should just go for a niiiice long walk with chara in my mind instead. forget it!
seeing or thinking about chara doing random normal things is so unfathomably fulfilling and happiness inducing. or just doing anything! interesting or non-interesting, it doesn't matter. i just want to see them, BEING a PERSON, LIVING, BEING ALIVE. it's like nothing else, to see them having that chance, to see them, to see them! just to see them, and they're THERE, and they're, a living, breathing human being, with thoughts and feelings and hopes and desires and strengths and flaws. and they're opening a jar of pickles, or staring off into the distance, or driving a car real fast, or deciding what chocolate bar to buy at the store. that's chara! they're doing all that. it's chara. it's just chara, but it's so wonderful, the mere thought is so wonderful, not even mentioning anything more. i want to see it. i want to see it all, i want to think it, i want to feel it, with them, i want to know what it's all like. i'm interested in chara like nothing else, the interest i feel is intense, it is all-encompassing. i just can't take it sometimes man, i can't take it! it's too much! it's too much! but it's also just right, and just enough. how incredible is that? it's really something.
i just want them to experience it all. i want them to feel something like, the wind blowing through their hair, going as fast as they can, letting loose completely, feeling something intense, like they've never felt before. it's a high they feel like they might never come down from, and they're feeling it, they're FEELING it, they're really feeling something other than anger or malaise, and it's GREAT. they feel so GREAT, so HAPPY, they can't believe they didn't put a BULLET to their SKULL at any time during the years leading up to this moment. but we'd both be glad they didn't, because that kind of moment would make it all worth it. it makes it all right, oh it makes it SO RIGHT. FUCK, man, i just want them to feel something like that. i want them to be happy, so happy. i love chara.
going on a hike with chara. we proceed at a consistent pace, although often they tend to navigate slightly faster than me, forcing me to exert myself in order to catch up. i can tell they're focused very intensely on this task, and the internal experience of it, only stopping to look behind themselves at me every so often in a brief moment of heightened awareness, only to focus back in on the path ahead immediately afterwards. occasionally they call out to make sure i'm doing alright back here, or to notify me of a particular obstacle in the path or something else of note, like a snake, oh jeez, there's a snake there. they stop, to look at the snake, and i catch up to get a look at it too. i don't know what kind of snake this is, or if it's dangerous. but it's a good distance away, and does not seem to mind our presence. and with chara next to me, in a calm curious state of observance, i feel safe enough. chara knows exactly what kind of snake it is, down to the binomial nomenclature, but they say it so quietly under their breath that i can't make out what it was.
before i can ask, however, the snake slithers back into the dry bushes from whence it came, and chara moves on as quickly as they stopped. just the nature of, well, nature, you know. always moving, and changing, as it does. that's what they would tell me, anyway, if they had any time to say it. but we move on. climbing over large rocks, shuffling down steep areas of the path to not lose our footing, moving ever forward, together. eventually, we come across a clearing facing a tall cliff face, with a beautiful waterfall streaming down it into a reasonably-sized body of water below. this, of course, marks the end of the path, so we take a break to sit down and have a snack before turning around. chara remarks that it's good no one else is here this time, as they smile and bite into their chocolate granola bar. i smile back at them, and nod silently in agreement. it really is a beautiful day outside.