#I really dislike the most common fanon personalities Asriel Chara and Frisk are given and try my best to do something different

[clevercatchphrase]

To answer your reply That's fine can't wait to see the final product when it's done

I thought you represented Asriel very well but how did you exactly get an exact picture on what personality type to give Asriel? because the game doesn't really feature him as much as other Undertale characters

I was going to work with someone on an AU comic for Undertale's 10th anniversary and I was hoping to have every charceter as accurate or canon as possible. What would be the best approach ?

I'm gonna answer this ask in reverse, starting with "how to keep the characters In Character", then how/why I decided on Asriel's personality. This is quite a long answer, so I'll put it under a Read More as not to stretch out your dash~

So you say you want the characters to be as canon as possible, and wonder what would be the best approach. Well... the only advice I can give is to replay the game and explore as much as the dialogue as you can. Click on everything. Inspect everything at least 2 times. Make a phone call to Papyrus in every room, then go back and do it again after you befriended Undyne. Keep in mind the relationships the characters have with each other and how they're all connected. Undyne has ties to both Gerson and Asgore, who in turn also have a connection as Gerson was once the War Hammer of Justice, and could resonably served in the royal guard as well with Asgore as his boss. Alphys is connected to Bratty and Catty (childhood friends), Bratty and Catty are connected to Burgerpants (the glamburger fiasco), Burgerpants is connected to Mettaton (boss and employee), and Mettaton is connected to Alphys (both have a mutual interest in humans). Everybody has ties to everyone else. How could those ties effect their interactions? What does the character's home/room/job say about them? Take in the environmental clues and extrapolate on them. You can learn so much about the undertale cast from indirect details. And it's okay to dip your toes into common tropes or stereotypes to flesh them out. Just be wary about making those tropes/stereotypes their ENTIRE personality, or else the characters will end up being flanderized. Never forget Papyrus is more than a skeleton who makes spaghetti, Toriel is more than an anxious mother who makes butterscotch pie, Undyne is more than a guard who suplexes boulders just because she can, so on and so forth. Ask yourself, "What are these character's values and beliefs", then using that framework try to imagine they would respond to the situations you have planned for this comic of yours. While some reactions may be similar, all should be unique. We all know Papyrus's reaction to a bad pun will be different to Sans's, but Sans and Toriel may have a similar reaction, etc, etc. There will be wiggle room. You may have to fill in parts that don't have clear cut answers, but ultimately, so long as you stay consistent with the characterizations you decide, readers will be willing to suspend their disbelief even if their interpretations are not 1 to 1 with yours. That's what makes fan fiction and theories so much fun~

Now for the second part. To copy/paste what you asked;

"how did you exactly get an exact picture on what personality type to give Asriel? because the game doesn't really feature him as much as other Undertale characters"

This is just amusing to me because saying the game doesn't really feature him is just factually incorrect. Asriel is in the game A LOT. More than some of the minor characters like Napstablook and Monster Kid, at least. But what do I mean by this? Well, aside from the protagonist you control, Asriel is the very first character you meet in Undertale, even if you don't realize it, and that's because...

Asriel IS Flowey. This is an irrefutable fact about Undertale's lore. Even if he doesn't look like a sweet goat child, even if he doesn't act like an innocent baby boy, we must accept that this cruel, heartless, emotionless flower is Asriel at his absolute worst.

Asriel himself doesn't even deny it. He doesn't say that the things he did as Flowey were the actions of a seperate entity. He fully owns up to it. To directly quote his dialogue from before and after his God of Hyperdeath fight, "I was so tired of being a flower", "As a flower, I was soulless," "I acted so strange and horrible," "I hurt so many people," "There's no excuse for what I've done." And even as Flowey, he does not see Asriel as someone separate from himself when he talks to you in New Home in the No Mercy route, recalling the memories he has before falling down as is own (example, he says "remember when WE played here", as opposed to "Remember when you and Asriel played here".)

(Now, granted, I think the concept of Flowey debating if he still "counts" as Asriel is a facinating philosophical quandary for him to explore, so much so that it became a minor story thread in a 200k word fan fic I wrote 4 years ago, but that story thread is not relevant to my current fan comic nor the game itself because, once again, Asriel DOES see himself as the same entity that is Flowey and vice versa)

Alright, enough sidetracking, back to my main point. Flowey IS Asriel at his absolute worst. Flowey is what Asriel always had the potential to become if none of his actions had consequences, if his choices had no repercussions. With out a prong collar of past regrets to keep him in check, his worst traits can run rampant. And knowing this, I reverse engineered a personality for him by defining who Flowey is then watering these traits down to something that would fit a 10 year old.

So what do we know about Flowey? We know he's deceptive (Lying to you in your first encounter in an effort to steal your soul), He's controlling (Save Scumming in every neutral ending to keep the upper hand), he's sassy (mocking you after the toriel fight no mater if you spare or kill her) and he's obsessed with Chara (declaring life isn't worth living without them, claiming "chara" is the only one who is fun to play with anymore.) (You can also make the argument that Flowey is incredibly lonely and bored, but I personally think that is a result of reliving so many timelines over and over and not something intrinsic to Asriel) using these descriptors I dialed it back in order to fit an average "child" character. My Asriel became someone who is snarky, stubborn, and cares deeply about those he loves to the point of detriment because he justifies it all as "I'm doing this for your own good/I know what's best for you", which in turn becomes his own hamartia. Asriel is also an honorary brat because he is a child and all children are brats and I don't mean that in a negative sense. I was a child once, so I was a brat once. We were all brats once in our lives. It's part of the process of growing up as an emotionally complex creature, and no one is born with perfect emotional intelligence for others. Chara and Frisk are brats too in this comic, but to varying degrees because of their own life circumstances, but that's an essay for another time.

Anyway, I hope this long-ass post helped you if just a little bit, or at least made you think. Good luck on your AU~! (god, I can't believe Undertale will be a decade old in 2 short years.)

#ghost switch #long post #I guess I could also mention I decide character personalities by processes of elimination #as in I identify what I DO NOT want them to be and work around it #I really dislike the most common fanon personalities Asriel Chara and Frisk are given and try my best to do something different