“I Should Have Laughed it Off”

In the True Lab tapes we hear Asriel recount the time he and Chara put buttercups in Asgore’s pie and made him sick. Asriel ends his account by telling Chara

I’ve seen seen fans interpret this line in two ways: either Chara was laughing at Asgore’s suffering or they were laughing nervously as a defense mechanism. I’ve never fully accepted either interpretation, and after giving it a lot of thought I’ve come up with a third way to interpret this scene that I feel is much more plausible.

The main reason I don’t accept the two “main” interpretations is that they don’t really make sense in the full context of the pie incident. It’s important to remember everything Asriel said about the aftermath of the incident and how it made everyone feel.

There are 3 facts I want you to keep in mind about the pie incident: 1. Asriel felt bad for getting his dad sick, 2. Toriel was really upset as a result of Chara and Asriel’s actions, 3. Asriel, in hindsight, felt that he should have “laughed it off” like Chara did.

If we accept the common interpretation that Chara found amusement in Asgore’s suffering and it made them laugh, then I find it very hard to believe that Asriel would later regret not reacting the same way. While Chara laughing in this way would explain why Toriel would be very upset, I doubt that Chara “laughed it off” in front of Toriel. For one thing there’s no way that Toriel would’ve let something like that slide, secondly it’s implied that Toriel was upset with both of her children equally (which likely wouldn’t be the case if one was genuinely repentant and the other found the situation hilarious), and finally I sincerely doubt that Asriel would feel that he should’ve laughed the incident off if he saw how Toriel would have reacted to Chara’s genuine laughter.

Asriel idolized Chara, true, but he felt the same way about his parents so I can’t imagine he’d stick by Chara without question if they turned against Toriel or Asgore. Remember that, until reality proved him wrong, Flowey pinned his hopes of redemption on his parents in much the same way that he later did with Frisk/Chara.

That doesn’t sound like a kid who would cast aside his parents easily. Even someone as starstruck as Asriel would’ve seen Chara’s cruel laughter as a huge red flag, regardless of whether he thought the pie incident was an accident or not. And even if Asriel was willing to look past that, he would likely hope that Chara learned their lesson—he wouldn’t regret that he didn’t do the same thing that they did, especially when he says right before this that he felt bad about the what happened.

Another factor to point out is that if Chara had the foresight to hide their laughter from their parents then I imagine they probably wouldn’t want to laugh in front of Asriel either. Some fans really love to play up Chara’s intellect and planning abilities to an absurd degree, in which case it would be pretty boneheaded for Chara to show their “true” feelings in such a careless way.

As an aside, I find it a bit dismissive of the Dreemurrs when fans assume Chara was some obvious wolf-in-sheep’s clothing who abused Asriel, gleefully mocked/harmed Asgore, and somehow never got caught (especially when Toriel is said to be the brains of the family and clearly has a stricter side to her personality). Even ignoring the disservice it does to Chara as a character, it makes Asriel look all too eager to throw his own parents under the bus and it makes Toriel and Asgore comically negligent to not see this obvious bully tormenting their son.

Having said all that, I’m not going to go easy on the traditional pro-Chara interpretation of the pie incident either. I’m not against the idea that Chara might have a tendency to laugh nervously and they use that as a defense mechanism or a means to dissociate, but I don’t think that really came into play here (or at least it wasn’t the only reason why Chara would’ve “laughed it off”). Asriel’s comment about how he “should have” laughed it off makes even less sense in this context because he either assumed the laughter was genuine (in which case, see the paragraphs above) or he knew it was a sign of Chara’s nervousness/dissociation, in which case I can’t see him wanting to imitate that kind of behavior. If anything you’d think Asriel would try to reassure Chara and he’d be more concerned over their guilty feelings than his own.

So, what do I think happened here? First off we need to understand what it means to laugh something off:

Note that laughing something off doesn’t necessarily involve laughing out loud at it, and I’m inclined to think that Chara wasn’t laughing at all when Asgore was poisoned, either. More importantly, people laugh things off in order to dismiss a problem or deal with it by minimizing the seriousness of it–they don’t do it to take pleasure in someone else’s suffering. Now, one could easily interpret this to mean that Chara thought nothing of the pie incident and was simply apathetic rather than grinning with glee, which would still paint a fairly bad picture of Chara. I can’t fully latch onto that interpretation, however, because it would still conflict with Toriel’s reaction and Asriel’s desire to emulate Chara’s feelings, though those issues are nowhere near as egregious as they would be if Chara was laughing with delight at their father’s suffering.

Consider what Asriel says right before he mentions Chara laughing it off:

What I think was happening was that Chara was trying to downplay the incident for Asriel’s sake, not their own. It’s clear that Asriel was shaken up by this event and it’s likely that he got a firm rebuke from Toriel for his efforts. I imagine that once Chara and Asriel were sent to their room, Chara tried to assure Asriel that Asgore would bounce right back from this. I could easily see them saying something like “your dad is the strongest monster in the world. There’s no way a few little flowers could hurt him.”

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve had many experiences where my brother and I would get into trouble and he would always brush off the event whenever I told him it was the end of the world. My brother didn’t do this because he didn’t care, he did it because he didn’t want to see me worry.

Now one might still disparage Chara in this instance for lying to Asriel. Isn’t it a bad thing to give someone false hope or false reassurances? Well, I don’t see it as a clear-cut sin for Chara to reassure a guilt-stricken Asriel in a situation where he couldn’t do anything to help Asgore anyway. It’s not unlike Chara to try to inject levity into a grim situation since we see this countless times when they narrate Frisk’s journey, and this is a trait that Chara shares with their father. What’s more, I could easily argue that Chara thought that what they were telling Asriel was true.

I think it’s very likely that the pie incident was a complete accident on Chara’s part as well as Asriel’s, and fans have pointed out that Chara may have mistaken (poisonous) Nova Scotia buttercups for (non-poisonous) European buttercups, so even if one would argue that Chara couldn’t mistake buttercups for cups of butter (which I think they could have) then it’s still possible that the whole thing may have been a prank that got out of hand.

As for the prospect of Chara lying in general, I think Chara might mask their true feelings from time to time but I think this is more of a subconscious act or a way to distance/protect themselves emotionally rather than any sort of premeditated malice that would be more consistent with an “evil mastermind” interpretation of Chara.

Anyways, after putting all this entire analysis together I can draw a few conclusions from the pie incident:

Chara most likely “laughed off” the pie incident as a way to reassure Asriel, as this is the only interpretation that is consistent with the previously-established facts that 1. Asriel felt bad, 2. Toriel was upset, and 3. Asriel later felt that he should have “laughed off” the incident the same way that Chara did. After all, Asgore did make a full recovery and neither he nor Toriel seemed to bear any lasting ill will against their children for it. In this context, Asriel saying “I felt so bad… I should have laughed it off, like you did” really meant “I was so worried, but everything turned out all right. I should have taken your approach, Chara.”

It is very unlikely that the pie incident occurred because Chara wanted to make Asgore suffer and/or Chara was testing their suicide method on Asgore. I’ve already explained why it wouldn’t make sense for Chara to be openly laughing with delight at Asgore’s suffering, but additionally I’d point out that Chara had plenty of other opportunities to be cruel to monsters and to push things even further while Asgore was sick, but they didn’t.

For one thing, Chara easily could have taken Toriel by surprise with a sneak attack, finished Asgore off while he was ill, then go on a rampage throughout the Underground. They wouldn’t even have to worry about Asriel trying anything because he’d likely be too shocked/heartbroken/weak to fight back—Chara could’ve even saved him for last if escaping to the surface was one of their concerns. And if Chara was planning to use the monsters as cannon fodder for their war on humanity (which I’ve also discussed and largely debunked) then killing the strongest monster in the underground would be a huge waste.

As for Chara poisoning Asgore to test their planned suicide, I’ll go into more depth about why that interpretation doesn’t work in a future analysis, but for now I’ll say that it doesn’t make much sense to test a suicide method on someone else, especially for a supposed mastermind trying to keep their true intentions on the down-low. What’s the worst that could happen if Chara’s suicide didn’t go as planned? They wouldn’t die? Moreover, Chara’s poisoning of Asgore failed to kill him, so if anything this would have disinclined Chara to use it for their own plan if they intended it all from the start.

In the end, I’m more inclined to believe that Chara chose to use the buttercups after the fact as their act of contrition for poisoning Asgore and causing so much grief for their family.

(submitted by vgfm)