1 for Chara, 4 for Asriel?

10 sev

1. How do they move and carry themselves? Pace, rhythm, gestures, energy?

okay so i know Popular Fanon is "catlike relaxed grace that lets them bend at impossible angles and backflip off walls" but. eway chara is like 2% scrawny prepubescent bodymeat and 98% Nervous Energy

there is no Unearthly Hauntingly Beautiful sleek relaxed poise and elegance to them whatsoever lol

They stand up straight. They're very still. They move very deliberately. But it's all very very tense, not effortless. around adults and humans, they're like a porcelain doll, and that includes how stiff they are. It's been thoroughly ingrained into them that good kids sit up straight, don't slouch, don't touch anything, don't fidget.

Their no-mercy manner of talking is very slow, enunciated, also deliberate. They contain themselves so utterly that any movement or noise they do permit to escape has been very deliberately planned. they're the kind of obvious held-breath tense that makes others tense just being around them

that said... they are a pacifist-route chara, and one with almost two years of largely positive development, so they've also come to a point where people are getting a look at the actual nature underneath that porcelain

and that....... also isn't a very sleek and relaxed slithering grace lm a o

they're still an extremely restless kid. it's just their nature to be active. they like doing. there is little to do light blue in this soul. they're inquisitive and eager and like getting their hands into things.

they do not sit still. sitting still is like torture for them (which is why it's so prevalent in their default Acting Like I'm Supposed To persona har har). they swing their legs in their chair. They trace the carvings on the desk. they fuss with their sleeves. they do antsy bullshit like flop halfway off the bed and talk to frisk upside-down

when they're comfortable being in a space and not feeling like an intruder in it, they're constantly moving around. peep them hanging in the diner, always taking the aisle seat in the booth because it's got an Open Escape Avenue while they vandalize the table and rip up sugar packets into tiny paper confetti

like.... everything about what "nurture" did to them was restraint and containing yourself, but I believe the "nature" part is a very lively, talkative, gregarious kind of person

they don't do big gesturing or talking with their hands because stillness has been taught to them, but they shake their head and fuss with their sleeves and sit up straighter and habitually accentuate their words with movement because they don't always manage to beat the urge out of themselves

4. What is their size and build? How does it influence how they use their body, if it does?

he is goat size and shaped like a friend

Asriel is just a widdle babby boy so he's really not that tall. he's a little bit taller than chara/frisk, but he hasn't had the growth spurt that'd get him to be Boss Monster Big

he's still got a healthy amount of his baby pudge to him. he a soft boy. but even so, he's not especially... solid or sturdy? he's made of powder and sunshine my guy

if he ever managed to wind up somewhere that he could actually grow up, he'd hit a Puberty Hell phase where he just shoots up into this big clumsy bean pole and keeps knocking things over and tripping over his giant-ass paws

(he'd try so hard to be the cool edgy Teen Asriel that he dreamed himself being when he had all those souls, but that's an idealized self and also he can float so of course he never clonks into doorways or stumbles on curbs)

that'd eventually level out into being Solid, though. he'd be a big ol mountain of fuzz like his mom and dad are. Big Floof runs in the family

for now, though: he is a golden flower projecting a shell made of Moderate Squish Boy

(said shell is already a little clumsy, though. he's. not that used to having arms and legs. after so long doing everything with your face and vines and roots only. the extremities often feel kind of... staticy? distant? unreal?? numb???? he maybe isn't as physical or graceful as he could be. he's moving a bit slow and deliberate.)

10. What energizes and drains them most?

Sev is not........ an altruist. she is not all about What Is The Universal Good. she's about "me and my posse and also me again." Whatever morality she does get fired up about, it's usually either based on herself or her ability to project onto the group in question lmaooooo

"perhaps it is simply this world's time to die, so the next can exist" "the next world will just have to take care of itself I'M USING THIS ONE STILL (saves the earth because fuck that)"

What charges her up the most are mostly two things, honestly. Opportunity and spite.

Opportunity is obvious. She kind of voraciously seeks things. Treasure, experiences, adventure, knowledge. She reads the forbidden eldritch black tomes because she has to know whats in there. She jumps into dubious business ventures with strangers because hey entrepreneurship requires a certain zest for risk right

She would rather take the chance and end up in a scrape because of it than live regretting inaction and wondering what-if. this is probably why she has been to Jail

Challenges and the unknown spark her up. she's not really interested in fame or glory or heroism, but she has the innate dissatisfaction with the mundane and modest that seems to run in Dragonborn souls

to break the fourth wall a bit, she cares more about adventuring through all that open world than about getting all the achievements attached to it, if that makes sense

the achievements just kind of happen on their own in the process

The amount of Daedric prince quests she's turned down or walked away from without an artifact are testaments to that. she doesn't necessarily want supreme unconquerable power and prestige, she just wants to get to the bottom of the mystery of this spooky house or this weird cult or whatever

Spite, too, is... pretty straightforward. All her rule-bending and favor-currying and house-having? Open defiance of what sort of lot Skyrim wants to hand out argonians. fuck that destitute oppressed break-your-back-laboring shit SHE'S GONNA BE COMFORTABLE AND SECURE AND YOU CANT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT

miraak? the biggest spite. fucker got no business calling her a false dragonborn and sending lackeys when she's got shit to be doing. ass thinks he can brainwash her into building his shitty modern art installations???

alduin? SPITE

ooooohhhh look at me i'm akatosh's firstborn i'm unkillable and all powerful and here to end the world i'm sooooooo coooollll YEAH WHATEVER SCRUB

my nirn now

you can't have it

her immediate and utter disowning of the Blades? you better BELIEVE that's spite. delphine ain't done shit but think she's entitled to boss severs around and hurl her into the most dangerous insidious army there is just because her grudgeboner blames the thalmor for actual literal dragons being around

then suddenly she thinks she gets to be Supreme Judge of Good and Evil handing down who is and isnt worthy of living??? like oooh sure paarthurnax was Divine-blessed to share the secret of Shouts with mankind and sure he's been repenting and meditating ever since but HE WAS PROBABLY A MEANIE TOO A BILLION YEARS AGO HE SHOULD DIE

ffffffffffffuck that

(ask her sometime if she forgives astrid, despite carrying out her sacrament)

As for what tires her.... (points to the blades again)

She is NOT here to be taken advantage of. not for any reason, not by anyone. people who assume she's the type of hero who will rip themselves in half for free just because a stranger asks it. people who have certain expectations about argonians. people who think she's a gullible idiot they can use for their own purposes or toss into traps

(ASTRID. MERCER FREY.)

she's also Very Deeply Weary of anything that isn't sufficiently lateral or mentally stimulating. she gets bored of anything thats too straightforward.

the typical nord "honorable face-on swinging axes" suuuuucks. the dry rote memorization of scholastic mage study suuuuuuuucks.

the path where you avoid the most harm is the path where you think the most creatively, and unsurprisingly, that also ends up being the most satisfying more often than not

she's the kind of person who stealthed around behind Arondil and stole the soul gem so his Creepy Enthralled Ghost Waifu was free of control and immediately killed him

who unlocks the cages holding sabrecats and wolves and spriggans and lets them fuck up the bandits/hagravens/etc

she takes a big page out of Maven and Karliah's kind of modus operandi, so situations where she's expected to be the Lawful Good Very Straightforward Swordy Smashy Hero are just UUUGHHHH

boyyy howdy strap yourself in for me to ramble for ages while i crawl from my sickbed to do a grilled cheese

33. How do they learn about the world–what is their preferred learning style? Hands-on learning with trial and error? Research, reading, and note-taking? Observation or rote memorization? Inductive or deductive reasoning? Seeking patterns and organization? Taking things apart and putting them back together?

Creative processing via discussing, writing about, or dramatizing things?

god this IS a long question

so chara is a voracious learner. they talk with a pretty advanced vocab and they're at a very high reading level for their age. some of it may be part of the self-protection inherent with bluffing that you're Too Smart To Just Be a Kid, the demon who knows everything, cunning enough to keep up with adults

but they are just honestly the type of kid who loooooves learning. when toriel (presumably) got to be a teacher by homeschooling her own kids, chara probably flourished in that environment like they never did in the public school system

they really do love finding out the "why" of the world. why is the sky blue? why does batter turn into cupcakes when it gets hot? why does a glass crack if you freeze water in it? why is powdered coffee creamer flammable?

Oh! It is a "water sausage."

in keeping with their active nature, they are first and foremost the kind of person who learns by doing. when they have things they can manipulate with their hands or experiments they can be part of instead of just hearing about the reaction that's supposed to happen, it sticks with them way better. kinetic learning is their JAM.

the little smattering of piano they can play and the way they learn songs is testament to it. On the surface, they deviated from their lessons and played what they wanted to play by figuring it out through trial and error. They can't tell just by listening that's in E-minor or that this note is A-sharp, but they can experiment on the keys to work it out

they can read sheet music, but more often than note? they try to recreate the music they heard by trial and error. they don't ask the closet for a spirited away scorebook, they work the notes out themself

they love it when they can take things apart to see how they work. hold and examine each piece to see what role it has in making the whole of it happen. Mettaton's chemistry set gift last christmas and his encouragement of being his pyrotechnician are both So Good because they're so exactly the kind of thing chara excels in

in quiet, private little corners of their mind, they're amazed and delighted by the natural world and the surprises it can be capable of. stars are wildfires. mixing two things together can transform them irrevocably into something huge and dazzling and explosive.

in the more front-and-center parts of their mind, they hold that up as proof they're horrible and destructive because obviously they Only Like Breaking Things Because They Enjoy Destroying Senselessly

a lot of the puzzles found underground were also very kinetic. get across the ice. push the rocks. press the switches. navigate the vents. when monsters fight, dodging and figuring out how to spare is kinetic problem-solving.

that said, while that's the type of learning they're best at, they aren't that bad at visual learning, either. again: pretty advanced reader.

they have definitely read toriel's entire book on snail facts with her.

they didn't bat an eyelash at reading an encyclopedia of underground plants

they read everything in the librarby that they could.

there's just enough fourth-wall-bend in my characterization that they don't entirely grasp whether their memories are spoken sound or text or somehow both, but visual memorization skills are definitely a big thing for them

they pluck out a line from kitchen after being dead for a zillion years they hold onto lines from the script like they're the fuckign bibble

when they share the memories that save asriel and the moment they climbed the mountain, they're largely visual images - i'd wager they hold onto those more vividly

(but not as vividly as scents)

Their actual problem-solving process is a lot messier than they want to admit to it being. peep them like a year and a half ago trying to solve the code that dipper sent them

(where chara FAILED TO BE THE EFFICIENT UNATTACHED ONE because frisk had the immediate pragmatic answer (who cares lets just ask dipper the answer) but chara dug right the fcuk in lmao)

fill up pages with messy notes working things out step-by-step, trying this thing, scribbling it out, trying this other thing. talk themselves through it. do an iterative process

they're not always as elegant or flawlessly cunning as they bluff that they are, but they are very definitely determined in their problem-solving.

they might sort of tunnel-vision latch on to one solution once they believe it's right, but when they're working it out, they're not above "try every single possible option just to exhaust them and see what's best."

which isnt surprising, considering how many timelines there were lol

39. What sort of questions or thoughts recur in their lives, either specifically or as a theme? Why are these never answered, or answered permanently to their satisfaction?

points to "kill or be killed" and the unsubtle constant repetition thereof

Asriel is very much still caught up in the midst of his trauma my dudes. he spent so long completely numb (as trauma victims often are) that it wasn't until the final battle that he finally actually began to process any emotion about it

so unsurprisingly, almost all of what occupies his thoughts revolves around that trauma

was he right to just let people hurt him? was it really okay to doom chara to die once in new home and then all over again here with him, just because he changed his mind on what "right" even meant? was it actually ever possible to be free without it being at someone innocent's expense?

the things he tormented "Chara" on and pushed for them to accept were all things that he'd convinced himself of already. he was always looking to be proven right about those awful, bitter, resentful views

some part of him wanted the world to be innately sick and vicious and empty, so it at least made sense why it had become that way to him.

but lbr he was also just as desperate deep down to be proven wrong

even if the human had gone through the underground perfectly, sparing everyone they met, never dying even once.... if the human was on their own, then it would have always come down to kill or be killed.

take asgores soul and escape this place, or die here and let everyone be free at the expense of war being waged

the perfectly happy ending only happens because flowey decides to help you. because he asks (and i don't think it's just rhetorical) about whether it was really worth it to have cared and been cared for at all, if it just meant saying goodbye

if it only meant that everyone had been set back by you

hurts, doesn't it?

...what if... he told you he knew how to get you a better ending?

i mean, you could totally interpret that as manipulative, given the phone call he makes once you leave the true lab (but you won't ha ha there's only one kid whose actions Must Always Be Painted In a Manipulative Light am i right gamers)

and it wouldn't be wrong

but even with the self-serving motive of "get all the souls for myself" it was still an attempt to give them a better ending, to see how far they could go in showing him that it didn't have to be kill or be killed

and look. Frisk gave him the answer he was seeking.

"Don't kill, and don't be killed."

he doesn't have any regrets about what happened. he's still sad about how long it took (but not about six children who monsters gave the same treatment humans gave him) so maybe it wasn't a perfect solution (six people and his best friend died horribly for this), but you can't regret the hard decisions forever!!"

(turns out: trying to immediately process and resolve all your trauma in like 15 minutes leads to kind of glossing over a lot of things and simplifying others and falling back into unhealthy idolizing behaviours in an effort to make everything feel perfectly resolved in frisks favour ha ha whoopsie)

14. What do they care deeply about? What kind of loyalties, commitments, moral codes, life philosophies, passions, callings, or spirituality and faith do they have? How do these tend to be expressed?

so... severs. not the most moral person. we established that?

but despite that, girl will absolutely go to bat for the people she can empathize with. underdogs and survivalists. people who've been kicked into the gutters but refuse to lay down and die there. people who are trying to be more than what their birth and circumstances dictate they should be.

she can be a self-serving scammer, yes, but she'll never be an astrid or a mercer frey. she won't sell her people out to get ahead.

(everyone else is free game for selling out though lmao)

she likes the feeling of outwitting and outpoliticking people who are too comfortable to use their wits. she loves the rush of having passed a Persuade check

(but illusion spells like Pacify or Fury and Shouts like Dismay or Bend Will, conversely, aren't really in her active arsenal at all. less winning at chess and more grabbing the enemy's pieces and going MINE NOW)

she can outfight most things. shes dragonborn. she's a thane in a lot of holds. she has reasonable political power to just say "hey arrest that fuck do it because i said so." but that? that's not really a victory, is it? her personal creed is more....

"it's only a triumph if you outwit it"

hence why she's always so inclined to go to bat for people who are trying to get by on wits or surprise people by being so much more than they're "supposed" to be

turn the rules on their head fuckers

that's about as close as she gets to faith, lmao, and that's.... really about as close to worship as Nocturnal cares for

Severs, largely, still holds onto some cultural attachment to the Hist, but she's mostly made peace with the fact that her soul is going to Nocturnal as a result of her pledge, not back to the Hist

(did she ever truly belong to the hist in the first place if her soul is a dragon soul placed on nirn by akatosh???)

the whole cultish reverence of Cicero and the old Dark Brotherhood doesn't.... really...... jive with her, either. she might be Listener, but the Night Mother gives her the heebie jeebies. there's nothing satisfying or praiseworthy or admirable about Sithis, father of the Void, to her

aaaaand the whole "yeah but the civil war is also about religious persecution" aspect of the local politics just nets a big "that doesn't sound like a severs problem" from her apathetic ass lmao

anyway religion and pledges and belief all probably don't matter so much now that she's on Fuck Shit Island

most definitely cut off from the hist's reach

probably not even within nocturnal's watch

with some kind of weird Big Rabbit Story Dude or whatever