Or why you should’t write them off as ten year old Hitler.

Chara’s a character we actually see very little in Undertale, though their footprint is everywhere. You hear their voice as you play, you find their things everywhere. The entire monster kingdom has felt their presence for years, even though they’d been long burred in the ruins by then. You may only *meet* them in genocide, they are very much sewn in to the game’s very fabric.

(This character intersection is going to rely heavily on the “Chara is the narrator theory as well as the work done here: http://thefloweryfanclub.tumblr.com/post/143284030397/greetings-uh-so-ive-been-working-on-this. Check it out, the author has some great insight in to the character at large.)



I’m going to be dealing in specifics here. Chara’s abandonment as well as the subsequent suicide attempts and what exactly they mean for their character.

Chara had been hurt, pretty badly. Badly enough that they’d gone up the mountan to kill themselves. Badly enough that the potential years they’d lived underground hadn’t softened the hatred for humanity as a whole.

To me that resonates. While dealing with my own borderline symptoms, and depression, hurt turned to hatred. Being abandoned or abused created this rush of emotions that made killing myself seem the only option to stop it. For me that hatred turned inward and from the information I have, I think it did in them too; for a while.

Toriel and Asgor are good parents. Even through the war brewing and the split up, they still have the habit of hiding the knives. In both Home and New Home, there are no overt knives. The only cutting implement in ether house is the “worn knife/Knife” that’s wrapped as a present, more than likely a gardening tool to be used with supervision.

Self harm is a significant issue in BPD cases. Personally I’ve had issues in the past(and cravings in the present) with self harm. Cutting, burning, anything that would break the extreme emotion that would overwhelm me. While Toriel is a significantly protective, the fact that Asgor, who seems much more scatterbrained, is still in the habit of hiding cutting tools from his kitchen screams to me that Chara probably had self harm problems.

The ways Chara decided to kill themselves are especially grandiose. One big symptom of BPD is grand and sweeping gestures that show their emotions in the extreme. Throwing yourself down a hole and Buttercup poisoning are flashy but not as…They are both extreme ways to kill yourself. Buttercup poisoning especially is not a pleasant way to go.

When you have depression and borderline, your emotions are like a tsunami. You can’t stop them, ever. You can only feel them build and build until they become an overwhelming experience. Now that I’ve become more tempered, or at least feel like it, with my depressive symptoms, I’ve come to realize that it’s not that I especially want to die. I want the rushing, explosive, turmoil to just crest.

With both Buttercup incidences you have the makings of such an event. Before Chara finally managed to kill herself, there was an incident with accidentally poisoning Asgore with a Buttercup and Cinnamon pie. While she laughed it off at the time, almost killing your father figure doesn’t just disappear in a fit of giggles. She had time to stew, to hate herself, and then turn that hatred in to a motivation.



She killed herself in a grand gesture, trying to absolve herself of the guilt and hate by dying for a worthy cause. It was impulsive, it was flashy, it was very BPD.