The Chara Double-Standard

[shamanicshaymin]

So, it’s generally agreed upon by a certain sect of anti-shippers in Undertale’s tumblr fandom that pairing Frisk with Sans, Papyrus, or any of the “adult” characters is “pedophilia.” If you age them up, it’s even worse, because you’re taking a child character and projecting your pedophiliac fantasies in a “legal” manner so you can get away with indulging your disgusting fetish. If you draw an adult Frisk having sex with Sans, you’re not drawing smut between two characters over 18, but creating child pornography (even if Frisk is 18 too).

As a long-term member of fandom in general, I find the assumption of “aging up child characters = pedophilia” to be absolute bullshit, especially since it’s part of our reality that children grow into teenagers and adults, and thus most become interested in sex (ironically with aces, we’re treated like something’s wrong with us if we don’t want sex). Ex. Simba and Nala start off in “The Lion King” as cubs, then meet again and fall in love as adult lions. The cub they got at the end of the movie (revealed to be Kiara in “The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride”) did not come from Zazu paying a visit to the clouds in the Pixar short “Partly Cloudy.” Yeeeeah, by tumblr logic, Disney endorses pedophilia. But that’s okay, Disney’s used to being everyone’s scapegoat. There’s even *GASP* teenagers interested in being sexually active with each other! Man, the abstinence-only programs in America got it all wrong, they should be shaming teenagers for promoting pedophilia if they’re sexually active. But that’s another essay.

Let’s say tumblr’s right and I’m wrong. It turns out shipping Frisk is indeed indicative of pedophiliac behavior according to scientific findings. The anti-shippers are completely justified with driving artists like sanscham out of fandom. The comics reported and taken down from sanscham’s blog on grounds of “pedophilia” were affirmed to be such. That drawing Adult Frisk in porn is just as illegal, if not moreso, than drawing Child Frisk in porn. Even shipping Frisk with Sans without any implications of smut is still “grooming” or condoning pedophilia. Frisk/Sans (Frans?) shippers are dangerous criminals who must be stopped.

Where, then, is the hatred for Chara/Sans shippers?

If there’s anything else anti-shippers hate as much as pedophilia, it’s unhealthy and dysfunctional ships that “endorse abuse.” Jaspis. BillDip. Reylo. You’ve got heaps and heaps of anti-shipping blogs dedicated to eradicating those ships from existence. You’d think Charasans would be the embodiment of everything tumblr hates:

1. Chara is around the same age as Frisk, meaning pairing them with Sans is just as pedophiliac.
2. Sans is the most popular character in the fandom while Chara is the most divisive and controversial since So Sorry. That’d be like pairing the Fandom Favorite with the Scrappy.
3. Usually Sans and Chara are shipped in the context of the Genocide run. There is nothing fluffy or happy or healthy resulting from this. Chara killed Papyrus and everyone who is important to Sans. Anti-shippers should be crying how disrespectful it would be to Sans’ character if he suddenly “fell in love” with Chara after all that (alas, anti-shippers are not familiar with concepts such as “hateships” and assume shippers like their ships to always be mushy and romantic). Let alone the possibility of Chara and Sans getting along in a True Pacifist run.
4. The porn involved is usually inevitably non-con/dub-con, with lots of blood and bones. Non-con is a tumblr no-no.

Yet not one peep about Charasans. As a Charasans shipper who reblogs it on her regular blogs, I never got hatemail or comments for it. I spoke with fellow Charasans-loving friends and they reported the same thing. Could it be because we’re not popular enough to be punished for it? Let alone, is Charasans even popular enough to be noticed and criticized? Charasans is reported by TV Tropes as thus: “Chara x Sans is also very popular, coming on the heels of the final Genocide route battle and the preexisting popularity of Self-Insert Fic shipping with Sans, which Chara’s metatextual nature plays well into.“ While TV Tropes is admittedly a dubious source, I’ve seen my fair share of Charasans on Pixiv and the Korean twitter fanbase, so it’s not like it’s rare, such as say, Sans/Napstablook or Muffet/Shyren.

I had someone snark how gross I was for “posting Frisk and Chara all over their blog ew” and once had a friend confide in me that the person she had a crush on unfollowed her because they learned Charasriel is her OTP. I’ve seen Charisk shippers being harassed (enough that it required a public service announcement for the fandom. The Korean fanbase were harassed by tumblr anti-shippers as well. If the anti-shippers are attacking Charisk fans across the ocean ‘cause their "cultural views on pedophilia” are wrong? HELLO RACISM) and Charasriel shippers talking themselves blue that they don’t believe Chara “abused” Asriel nor think they have an “incestual” relationship. I’ve even seen Soriel being attacked for “being heteronormative.” At the time I’m writing this? Charasans ducked the anti-shippers’ radar entirely.

What does this mean? It’s not like anti-shippers are unobservant. If you want to dox someone, you got to have the patience and rage and determination to dig up all the dirt and dust specks of this person’s life that you can find. Remember: pairing child characters is pedophilia. Shipping Frisk with Sans is pedophilia. Drawing an Adult Frisk having sex with Sans is pedophilia. Unless they’re making a blanket statement of “shipping child characters in general is wrong!!!1!11″, why do these same people willing to dox and drive Frisk/Sans shippers out of the fandom look the other way when someone posts Chara/Sans?

Could it be… because Chara is not an “ideal” child?

Fandom regards Frisk as a martyr… they’re everything we wish we could be. Frisk is all the good that we could be capable of. If we, the Players, make the choice to go True Pacifist, Frisk and the game shows us we already are. Frisk is kind, patient, and full of lower-case love. They might have their own issues (as implied by the reason they climbed the mountain, which is never revealed), but they went past that in order to help and save everyone else. They’re also implied to be a child, which means they’ve accomplished what many of us still struggle with. Whereas with Chara, they are our darkness and anger and completionist tendencies, all what we’re scared about revealing about ourselves; it could be that very reason why Toby Fox recommended we use “our own name” when naming the Fallen.

Unfortunately, tumblr has a black-and-white view regarding Frisk and Chara. To anti-shippers, Frisk isn’t just a child, they’re the child. Innocent. Impressionable. Good. Impressionable. Kind. Impressionable. They represent the children anti-shippers claim to be protecting.

Chara, according to them, is none of that. According to what little is revealed of them in-game and the various theories and headcanons thought up by fandom, Chara does not fit tumblr’s definition of what a “child” should be. They’re suicidal and hate humanity. They’re an implied abuse victim and they’re spiteful. They lash out at people who care about them. They manipulated Asriel, their best (and only) friend. Under the Player’s guidance, they are fully capable of becoming an unrepentant killer. They smile as a defense mechanism, as opposed to “being happy” in spite of the pain they endure(d).

Anti-shippers can’t prove children are innocent victims who need protection from pedophiles and abusers when someone like Chara exists. (They do consider Chara an abuser, though. OH HO HO I’ll be getting into that soon) Frisk is a “Good” Child and the “Ideal” Victim, so anyone would gasp in horror to see what the evil shippers and Undertail artists subject them to. But if it involves Chara and Sans in the Bone Zone…

Chara is the “Bad” Child. They don’t behave the way a victim of child abuse is “supposed” to behave. Therefore, they are not a child worth caring for. They’re not even a “child” anymore. They’re “evil.” So if they’re shipped with adult characters and drawn in porn, they’re getting their just desserts.

Frisk/Sans is pedophiliac. Chara/Sans is forgettable. The message anti-shippers are sending is shipping Frisk and drawing them in porn is “wrong,” but doing the same thing with Chara is “okay.” Because Chara is not a “real child.” They deserved it anyway.

I don’t know what side of the shipping & Undertail war you’re on, but you got to admit that’s seriously fucked up.

So what Chara pairings do anti-shippers protest? When they’re being paired with characters closer to their own age… namely with Asriel or Frisk. What’s their argument this time?

With a pairing like Frisk/Asriel (best known as Friskriel) or Frisk/Monster Kid, shipping them is bad because it’s pedophilia. Because shipping something automatically means you want two characters to fuck no matter what age they are, despite the existence of Toy Ships and a reality as Old as Time called Puppy Love. But that’s not the criticism Charasriel and Charisk get. Instead, anti-shippers cite the pairings as problematic because “it’s abusive.” Chara “abused” Asriel while they were friends, and Chara “possesses”/“brainwashes” Frisk. The latter which is only possible because of the Player’s actions. It’s because of you, the Player, that Chara asks for Frisk’s Soul after completing Genocide. You tell Chara that murdering everyone is the answer. You tell Chara it’s okay to use others for their own gain if it means reaching the end goal. You make Chara abusive.

If you argue that Chara was an abused child who didn’t know how to properly respond in their friendship with Asriel, you’ll be accused of being an abuse apologist (“Just because they’re a child with a bad past is no excuse for what they did!”). But if say, you point out how wrong it is for Asriel to project Chara on Frisk and repeatedly torture/murder them as Omega Flowey, you’ll get scandalized screams from the same people who damn Chara for their actions. (“Asriel was Flowey at the time! He can’t be responsible for what he did while soulless, he’s already suffered soooooooooooo much! He’s JUST a child!” Even Asriel, who wants you to separate him from Flowey, makes a point at the end of True Pacifist that Flowey’s actions were still his)

Charasriel and Charisk shippers aren’t making excuses for Chara. They know that being a fan of Chara doesn’t mean they approve of everything they’ve done, the same as any other character that ever existed in the history of fandom. There’s no point telling Charasriel shippers that Chara & Asriel’s relationship is co-dependent and unhealthy, or Charisk shippers who draw Post-Genocide/Soulless Pacifist versions of Chara & Frisk that it’s disturbing and creepy. They know. And that’s what appeals to some of us in the first place.Some Charasriel shippers are interested in seeing how deep the rabbit-hole goes or want to see a happy ending for Chara & Asriel as they learn to detox and move on peacefully in the afterlife or get a second chance in an Everyone Lives AU. Some Charisk shippers want to explore what good “partners” Frisk & Chara are, whether it’s the dark route or the increasingly common True Pacifist interpretation where NarraChara guides Frisk as a mentor and Frisk helps Chara regain their faith in return. Hell, there’s probably a small number of Charasriel fans who see Chara & Asriel as siblings and ship it anyway. Nobody is romanticizing or endorsing anything. Whatever goes on between two time-traveling humans and a rainbow goat monster-turned-flower-turned-eldritch-cactus-turned-god is not a blue print to real life relationships.

But back to the point. Anti-shippers don’t like Charasriel and Charisk not because it’s pedophilia (though it’s certainly one of their reasons, like the dude I mentioned earlier that commented on “all the Frisk and Chara” on my “gross” blog. :P), but because it’s “promoting unhealthy relationships.”

Rather than consider Chara a child, they consider them an abuser.

Which… completely contradicts the point anti-shippers are making ("CHILDREN ARE INNOCENT AND NEED PROTECTION!!11!1”) that they are always preaching toward Undertail and Adult!Frisk artists. They’ll defend one child, but happily dismiss the other as abusive. Speaks volumes regarding their commitment to saving children, huh?

But gosh golly, how awful would it be if “Good” children like Frisk and Asriel grew up? What if they become “too old” to be the proper poster children the anti-shippers want them to be? Why would they be anything other than pure and innocent (uhh… about that? Regarding how resets impacted Frisk and Asriel’s lives in-game? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)? Why would the clock of biology tick for those two precious cinnamon rolls and they turn into nasty icky adults and “betray” the anti-shippers’ cause? Why would they want to do something as dirty and disgusting as having fluffy weepy happy-to-be-alive sex with each other in a bed of golden flowers?

Which reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to draw. Chara will be filming them. And joining in.

Comments

[tehexile]

a lot of people seem to forget that everything up until Genocide = also Frisk. so, Frisk can quite happily kill all but a handful of people in the Underground.

I have a strong phobic reaction to Flowey and intensely dislike seeing him in any context, but it would still be weird of me to attack others over it unless they were purposefully spamming me with such images.

[thenicochan]

I wanted to have a well thought out and meaningful reply to all this, but I think you said everything so well here, I really... have nothing to add. Other than a round of "hear, hear!"