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[dontkillme]

Player Information
Name: Snapdragon
Age: Still over 18, last I checked
Contact: temporarycancer
Current characters: None (unless the Dragonborn is accepted wink wonk)

Character Information
Name: Asriel Dreemurr
Series: Undertale
Appearance: wow check out that HD sprite

The picture kinda says it all, but Asriel is a boss monster. He looks sort of like a goat-rabbit-thing, complete with white fur and floppy ears. He wears a green-and-yellow striped shirt and black pants, with bare feet underneath it (probably because he's got great big honkin' rabbit feet good golly). As a young boss monster, he doesn't really have any horns yet, and is about the size of a human of the same age - maybe a little bit taller.

Age: Kid. It's... kind of more complicated than that, when you consider death and rebirth and endless time loops, but... he's just a little kid. He's maybe, like, ten.
Canon Point: Pacifist route ending
Canon History: Here's the juicy wiki page again! Wowie!

Personality: Asriel Dreemurr... there's a lot to him. It might be tempting to slice him down into little portions - in fact, he kind of actively encourages Frisk to only count the best possible version of him and consider the rest someone else completely - but you can't really understand Asriel by picking and choosing only the most appealing bits.

Asriel is a gentle, sweet boy. You see this when he's most "himself." When he chose to resist attacking the humans who were hurting him on the surface, even if it cost him his life - he was just an ordinary child at that point, completely and utterly unprepared for the enormity and finality of committing murder. The choice to show mercy ended up costing him everything, but it's still a choice he made. You can see it, too, in the way he strives to make amends after he's been SAVED. He releases everyone's SOULs and breaks the Barrier, even if means that he has to lose the ability to feel compassion and go back to being a flower. He pushes for the player to let go, to let the world continue on without them, even if it means not getting to see the characters they've grown attached to - because he decides that he has to do that exact same thing as well. In those last moments of compassion, he shows a great deal of kindness toward Frisk. He's the only person in the Underground to ask their name, and when he lets everyone go free, he makes sure that they all know Frisk's name, too. He's also the only person who asks why they climbed Mt. Ebott - and therefore, the only one who even begins to touch on the possibility of Frisk being suicidal. He does his best to apologize and reassure Frisk that they're going to do a good job, and everyone will be there for him. One of the last thoughts he leaves them with is not to expect to keep being absolutely perfect - that not everything will work out perfectly in the real world, and the best that anyone can do is to just not kill, and not be killed. For all his flaws, Asriel has a pretty advanced sense of morality for someone his age, and he sees things with much more clarity than the black-and-white because-someone-said-so that many kids at his age understand good and bad as.

Asriel is also a very, very lonely person. One who tends to get sort of... clingy. Possessive. Put people up on a pedestal. His behaviour toward Frisk for much of the game was shockingly unhealthy, all out of the belief that they were his best friend, and so he had to keep them there playing with him no matter what it took. For much of his existence, Asriel built Chara up to an impossible ideal. He should have laughed things off like they did, as if they genuinely didn't feel bad and that wasn't a worrying sign of distress. He'd never doubt them, even if saying no is sometimes the healthier thing to do. They're the only one he could ever possibly care about - Mom and Dad couldn't fix him being empty, so obviously Chara could manage it singlehandedly. Chara is the only person who could ever understand him - not just because they're the only person who could be even remotely capable of knowing what it'd feel like to have died in that traumatic manner and come back without a SOUL, but because they're inseparable. Chara is the one and only person who would give his life meaning again, because he could never predict them - they'd never become boring or rote like everyone around him did! He cares about them more than anyone else. They're the only one who understands him. They're the only one who's any fun to play with anymore.

For all the things that he examines and accepts in his last few moments as himself... Asriel doesn't necessarily completely get over all his flaws. He might learn to see Chara in a more balanced light, acknowledge that he shouldn't have set them up as an infallible bastion of complete and utter rightness, but he also then goes on to call Frisk the friend he always wished he had. A pretty bold statement, considering that depending how you look at it... he's either saying that about someone who he knew for 10 or so minutes, or he's saying that about someone who he could have seen commit tons of murders in other, less pacifistic runs, make Snowdrake run off in tears, eat a piece of a living snowman right in front of him, betrayal-kill his mother, leave a Monster Kid in peril to fall to their doom, or any other number of downright horrible actions. Fundamentally, Asriel is kind of just... someone who craves approval and validation. Someone who really, really wants to be liked, even if it means saying yes to things he really wants and needs to say no to. Even if it means begging and sobbing pathetically to be allowed to help, because he's useful, really, please! That well-developed sense of morality isn't always something that he really... insists on standing by or putting into use a lot, especially if he thinks that love and acceptance from others hinges on agreeing with them all the time.

But the crybaby little goat is not the only Asriel you see in Undertale.

Asriel Dreemurr is also the legendary being made of every SOUL in the Underground, who taunts Frisk endlessly about their naive, saccharine "determination" and about how useless it is as he kills them over and over. He's also the Absolute God of Hyperdeath, who renders them completely helpless and hisses that each time they die, their friends forget them a little more. Who promises their life will end here, in a world where no one remembers them. Asriel Dreemurr, despite his request that you think otherwise, is also Flowey.

No, really. Bear with me here.

It's true that when he's Flowey, Asriel is missing a soul. He loses the innate feeling of compassion and empathy. But he does, nonetheless, have all his memories, his personality, and even without that emotional component, how much he cares for Chara continues to be evident. His determination to keep them around doesn't only show up when he's Asriel, after all. You can see in the No Mercy run that even if he's a flower, he still reminisces about how much fun they had together, and he still only wants to just live together with them on the surface. His post-pacifist speech reassuring the player there's nothing left to worry about, everything's okay? The one where he just wants Frisk to be happy and live their life? He's Flowey for that. The timelines he went through before the game started where he solved everyone's problems perfectly and made friends with everyone? Still Asriel's innate kindness and eagerness to be loved. Understanding Asriel means including what he did after his trauma, and that means including being Flowey.

So why does he only want Frisk to think of him as the kid who apologized and freed everyone? Well... let's be real, here. He did some pretty awful things as a flower. Chalk it up to his desire to be loved and accepted, yes, but also to having a hard time fully reconciling himself with the sorts of things he's capable of doing. Asriel, after the terrifying, agonizing death of himself and his sibling, was hurting. He had nobody who understood how he felt. He had nobody to get him through dealing with what had happened. He had nothing but confusion, loneliness, survivor's guilt. Why was he still here? What was the point in living in a world without Chara? Asriel, as a flower, tried his best to cope with it on his own - staying for weeks with that stupid king, desperately trying to feel something, banking everything on his mother's comfort fixing him. When he couldn't make sense of what happened or how he felt, he became suicidally despondent.

Without anything else to give any meaning to the fact he was still alive, he put everything into two things: this new power he'd been given, in the hopes that it would give him something new, something different, some reason to stick around... and the hope that Chara would come back again, and he could go back to how things used to be. Be fixed, be cured, undo all of this sadness and suffering.

The longer this went on, though, the more mired he became in the unhealthy beliefs that he'd picked up after what happened to him. When a person gets so mired in negativity that they completely lose sight of the surface, it's not uncommon for them to want to drag people down with them. I'm not a bad person for becoming like this! Anyone would end up like this if they went through what I went through! I don't like doing this, I'm only doing it because I have to see what happens! Throughout the game, it's never Flowey reminding "Chara" that they taught him to kill or be killed - rather, the various timelines only ever seem to take on two flavours. The first is entirely in keeping with the vile things that Flowey tells Frisk: he tries to teach them, too, that it's kill or be killed. His mocking, his abuse, his accusations - they're all attempts to drag "Chara" down to his level, to validate his own bitterness, to feel like someone understands him.

He doesn't recognize "Chara" in a No Mercy run just because they kill a lot - no, it's because he thinks they're empty inside. Just like him. It's not that he recognizes Chara just for being a hateful person - or why would he be so sure that Frisk was Chara in the pacifist run, too? Why wouldn't Asgore recognize the No Mercy human at all? The Chara he remembers is someone who the entire Underground loved - "Because of you, everything's fallen into place. See you soon, Chara," the strange voice over the phone says, but only once he's sure everyone in the Underground cares about the compassionate person you are. "It's all your fault," he spits, "it's because you MADE them love you." Asriel's behaviour as Flowey has a very clear running theme: he wants validation, wants empathy, wants to be understood. The cruel, vicious view of the world that he took on after his traumatic death... it's something he wants to see the only person who gets him accept, too. He wants to see he isn't the only one who'd be messed up so badly by what happened. He wants to feel less broken by breaking someone else. That's why Photoshop Flowey jeers for "Chara" to cry for help, using the exact words that he once used to cry for help - "Mommy! Daddy! Help me!" - and waits for them to see that nobody will come to their aid. That's why you can find an Echo Flower where he imitates Toriel voice, and taunts "Chara" about how actually, Toriel wouldn't really go looking for their child - she'll just find a new one and forget all about you. He really and truly does a ton of projecting when he's Flowey.

...There is, however, that second flavour to the things Flowey tells to "Chara" in the various timelines. Deep down, Asriel isn't happy with... well, with being bitter and miserable. He doesn't -like- that the world is cruel, unfeeling, kill or be killed. In the timelines where he isn't pushing for them to kill everyone, he's begging them for something else: to show him that it doesn't have to be this way. To show him that there's a way that doesn't mean being heartless or cold. To show him that crying for help will get an answer. That's why Photoshop Flowey's smile turns to bated-breath anxious silence as "Chara" calls for help. That's why in the No Mercy run, he goes from telling you that you should kill "everyone and everything" to telling you he just wants to live together on the surface. That's why SAVING him works. He doesn't want to live in a world without love. That, more than anything else, is central to who Asriel is, no matter what form he may take. Even when he adopted bitter, detached cruelty as a way to protect himself. Even when his unhealthy attachments talk louder than his sense of what might be the right thing to do. The whole reason that Asriel is willing to give up everything that he clung to as a lifeline - the idea of Chara as a saviour, the power to reset, the notion of kill or be killed - is because he gets to see that the world really can be fundamentally kind, that it doesn't have to be as unfeeling and cold as he's convinced himself it has to be.

Then, and only then, does he find some measure of peace. Only then does he learn to move on.


Abilities: Asriel is a monster, and thus, he has the ability to use magic. When he has six-to-infinity-or-so SOULs inside of him, that extra power lets the magic take on all sorts of devastating and dazzling shapes - flies, bombs, lasers, stars and meteors, swords, guns, black holes controlled by goat skulls, the works. Without a ton of souls within him, though... Asriel's magic is much more muted. You can probably only expect one or two different shapes: the generic spinning ovals of Flowey's "friendliness pellets," and the fire magic that makes his very last attacks against Frisk - the same fire magic used by Toriel and Asgore.

As a monster, Asriel also has the power to absorb human SOULs and add their power to his own. This, however, means giving some autonomy and control over to the person he absorbs; as Flowey, we saw the six human SOULs slipping Frisk green healing "bullets," then ultimately rebelling against him and subsequently ending up ejecting themselves from his body. As... well... Asriel, he admits that Chara had some control over their shared body, so it was them who carried their own corpse back to their hometown, and them who wanted to fight back against the humans who rained blow upon blow onto them. In that case, he was able to wrestle control of his body back, but it might not always be such a consistent or easy thing - just because the body is his originally doesn't mean he has the final say over it.

Inventory:
- A heart-shaped locket. It says "best friends forever."
- A set of clothing. The shirt, of course, is striped.

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Thread Sample: Remember the time Bird broke my heart? I SURE DO