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SimonSoys In reply to arafridi2000 [2017-05-17 02:50:15 +0000 UTC]

Kinda however you want them to be, honestly. I don't think they're totally good or totally bad in canon, you get to pick.

Typically for Post-Pacifist I write Chara to be reserved, deliberate, and well-spoken. They talk like they're 30 years older than they actually are. Chara is good at wordplay and intellectual things, but sometimes gets too caught up in their own head. They get anxious and go through the same negative thoughts over and over until they're convinced they're true. They have a poor opinion of their self worth. They care deeply about their family, but don't like to show affection. They're not necessarily evil, but Chara did have a mean streak-- arrogant, bitter, and jaded. They used to think they were smarter than everyone, but now that they're dead and riding along in Frisk's body, they've been rethinking things. Now that the good ending has occurred, they trust Frisk's judgment and have quietly retreated so that Frisk can have their own story.

For Frisk, I picture them being a standard kid. They're a hot ticket and full of childish sass (where did this kid learn to say stuff like that??), but they don't have any meanness to them. Frisk is confident and certain, and they're not shy about expressing their feelings. Call that goat lady "mom"! Call that dinosaur cute! They say just about anything on their mind, as long as it isn't hurtful. Usually Frisk is a really GOOD kid, very kind and friendly. But they do have some deep-rooted insecurities that bubble up sometimes. They have a hard time registering that their new family is FAMILY-- they wander off on their own adventures sometimes without thinking someone might be worried sick about them. Frisk is amiable and funny (not clever, like Chara), but they're not a doormat either. They stand up to their own friends when they disagree with them. They're a good balance between Chara's strength and Asriel's gentleness.

To complete the trio, Asriel is soft, goofy, and naive. He's a gentle soul to the core, and extremely passive. He tends to see what he wants to see, not how things really are. Very emotional and empathetic, is easily moved (or guilted) into doing things. He doesn't have much of a spine though. He doesn't stand up to people he cares about that he disagrees with. He deludes himself instead. He's good down to the core, but is a follower, whether it's Chara or Frisk he's following.

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arafridi2000 In reply to SimonSoys [2017-05-17 03:23:13 +0000 UTC]

Thats very similar to how I see Frisk and Chara....
Honestly, for me, any portrayal of the two is fine (that's why they're ambiguous with next to no info provided, so you can leave it to your imagination) as long as it ain't the black and white portrayal (that activates my sass mode. You should've seen the comment I made at this. It even got featured by the owner!)

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SimonSoys In reply to FuzzyPickles42 [2016-07-27 03:11:01 +0000 UTC]

My first playthrough, before Frisk's identity is revealed, I imagined them to look just like Matilda from... Matilda. Chara I always saw as Coconut Head from Ned's Declassified. So, a girl and a boy, respectively.

I always thought both characters were meant to be ambiguous to reflect the player's identity, rather than non-binary, but people have pointed out that both are referred to as "them" on multiple occasions by multiple characters, so now I just make them as gender-neutral as possible. I try not to draw them with one particular gender in mind, even if my brain automatically snaps back to Matilda and Coconut Head. 

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FuzzyPickles42 In reply to SimonSoys [2016-07-27 03:22:48 +0000 UTC]

Frisk as Matilda... oh my gosh, that's so cute x)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure what you originally thought was correct - they're meant to be as vague as possible so the player can imagine whatever they'd like. I think they're referred to as "they" for the same reason that Frisk always has a blank look on their face - it's an acceptable lapse in realism to aid in the self-insertation. If Frisk reacted in any particular way to any situation, it might contradict what another person imagines, so similarly, they're called "they" to avoid confirming or denying any and all interpretations. Frisk and Chara are whatever you want, plain and simple, and if anybody demands otherwise than they should look into getting that stick out of their butt.

The reason I see Frisk as a girl is mostly because I am one and I imagined myself in their place while playing (hence why I opted not to go with Toriel at the end unlike 90% of people - already got a human family who loves me, yo), and since Frisk and Chara are supposed to be "opposite sides of the same coin" kind of characters, I think it makes the most sense for them to be the same gender.

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SimonSoys In reply to FuzzyPickles42 [2016-07-27 04:01:56 +0000 UTC]

I think that's a fine way to view it. The only thing that pops that for me is Asriel referring to Chara as "they" also. I'd think he'd know if Chara preferred to be called 'he' or 'she', but it's still 'they'. And there are other definitively non-binary characters like Napstablook, so there's at least some basis for it in the game. Not that I'm trying to convince you or anything, just pointing out the evidence I follow. It really comes down to a bigger debate about how much Chara and Frisk are their own characters instead of self-inserts of the player, and I don't think anyone's really come to final conclusion on that.

Still, I keep wanting to call Chara Asriel's brother. Mostly as a parallel to Sans and Papyrus' relationship, and how they treat each other so much better than Asriel and Chara did. It's funny how each person interprets them differently!

I don't think it was meant to be clear, either way. And I don't feel like it's a big issue if other people have concrete genders picked out for them.

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FuzzyPickles42 In reply to SimonSoys [2016-07-27 04:38:15 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, I'll admit, that one particular detail did strike me as weird for a while, but personally, I think that was just one of their more major lapses in realism in order to preserve the ambiguity. I mean, think of it this way: there was no reason whatsoever for Asriel to have the video camera with him to record when he and Chara were talking about the buttercup plan, right? But if Toby hadn't had him do that, there'd be no way for the audience to find out about it. Sometimes, you need to sacrifice realism in fiction in order to tell the story you need to tell, and since it was part of Toby's vision to make the two fallen humans 100% up to interpretation, gender included, he had every single character refer to them with gender-neutral language 100% of the time, even the character that's the sibling and best friend of one of them. As an aside, I think that's one of the reasons Toby had almost every single character refer to you with a personal nickname - "(THE) HUMAN", "(the) kid", etc. - so that his lack of specific pronoun use stuck out in the writing as little as it possibly could.

That's actually a really cool way of looking at it, nice thinking! You're right, it really is cool how every single person views them a little bit differently; in a weird way, the fact that they have basically no traits whatsoever is what makes them so unique and fun to make stories and art out of.

And nah, it really isn't that big a deal at all. If I see another person who made a comic or something where Frisk and/or Chara are a boy or neither, even if I don't see them that way, it doesn't feel "wrong" to me or anything - it's still Frisk and Chara, just another person's version of it. My only issue comes with people who insist their headcanon is correct and use "proof" they find within the game to thump you over the head about how "non-inclusive" and "erasive" you are xP

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