As you may or may not know, the great SYOC shadow war is still ongoing. In case you need a recap, I chose to submit Chara everywhere; either authors would learn to be more specific with their requests, or we’d get some entertainment out of watching them try to fit in an extremely unsuitable character.

Let’s find out how they did!

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11901955/2/Pokemon-Academy-Nexus

This one died before Chara could appear, but I feel like listing it anyway just because this update is hilarious:

I have a friend, who is also an Author here on FanFiction, his Name is LaTiNoKingpin, he just made an account yesterday I believe. He’s an excellent writer, even better than I am in certain areas. I told him of my problem and I asked him if he could take over my stories for me, to which he agreed to. So, I have to put all my documents from both of my stories, make copies of them, put them into a USB, and mail the USB to him. He should get it in a few days. He knows about the whole process, so if you guys have any questions, please PM LaTiNoKingpin.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11889923/8/A-Yearning-for-the-Mud

The sound of her body hitting rattled Wallace to his core. He was barely able to comprehend in the sight of Chara standing where Simone was just a moment before, bloody knife in one hand and white rope in the other.

“Chara?”

Chara tossed the knife up and caught it by the handle before she aimed the sharp end at Wallace’s head. A mix of relief and confusion flooded Wallace’s already cluttered mind. The man who called to him was gone, but it was Chara he found at the bottom surrounded by bodies with a bloodied knife.

“Chara, what did – w-what happened?” Wallace asked, his mind working at a slower pace than his mouth.

“I did what I came here to do,” Chara said in that same deep voice Wallace heard from the second floor. “Dirk was my only target, but the other two were tagging along.”

“T-Target?” Wallace asked, his brain falling over itself trying to make sense of the words and voice coming from Chara’s mouth. “You killed them?”

“Just Dirk,” Chara said coolly. “For now.”

“W-Why?”

Chara’s body doubled over as she let out a high pitched laughed. She threw her head back and sighed before she looked off to the southern wall. “He wants to know why!” Chara pulled her arm back so quickly Wallace didn’t have time to react before she hurled the knife directly at him.

Definitely the best Chara portrayal by far. Not only does the story go for broke with the crazy murderer angle, this is also the only story so far to use the “talking to the player” detail – Chara even looks to the south!

Chara reached a hand to his waistline and pulled a Poké Ball out, a design Wallace wasn’t familiar with. “There are always weapons.”

They also explicitly say they view pokemon as weapons. Most excellent.

Wallace listened to the sound of fabric tearing as the knife cut across Chara’s chest, ripping through the stripes of her sweater, before the orb vanished and the knife clattered to the floor.

“Heheh.” Chara straightened up and grabbed at the shredded sides of her sweater, tearing them apart to expose her chest.

Wallace gaped at what lied underneath. Where he expected to find breasts, he found a bare and toned chest, and suddenly Chara’s change in voice didn’t muddle his mind any longer. “You’re a boy,” he said, his voice light.

Chara clapped his hands and grinned. “Congratulations,” he said before he scooped up the knife.

There is some gender weirdness going on here, though – Chara is initially presented as a girl, but after their shirt gets ripped open, it’s revealed they were actually a boy pretending to be a girl. Not sure what the author’s thought process there was – it’s not that Chara is generally androgynous and the protagonist misread them, they purposefully raise their voice while they’re pretending to be a girl. I can’t tell if the author just thought it would be a good twist, or if they thought it didn’t make sense for a girl to be a serial killer, or what.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11943544/9/The-Miraculous-Adventure-of-Tessa-and-Lunala

Chara’s POV

Wassup, peeps? I’m Chara Dupain and I live in New Bark Town in the Johto region. My parents are Chase and Aurora Dupain, and I am 10 years old.

I started my journey yesterday with my best friend, Cyndaquil.

Lately, I’ve been having nightmares about me and Cyndaquil being kidnapped, so I always carry a knife with me for self-defense.

As I was walking with Cyndaquil, I heard the flapping of huge wings behind me. I screamed and pulled out my knife, turning around, ready to stab my attacker, when I saw a large bird-like Pokémon shaped like a Y hovering before me. I recognized the Pokémon immediately.

“Yveltal… I didn’t know it was you. I’m so sorry I almost attacked you.”

“It’s all right, Chara Dupain.” The Destruction Pokémon replied.

I gasped. “How do you know my name?”

“Arceus gave me your name. He told me what you looked like and sent me to find you.”

“But why? I just started my journey!”

“The Pokémon World is being threatened by a monster called Dark Matter. I would like to be your Pokémon so we can stop this monster. I may be the Destruction Pokémon, but Dark Matter’s intentions go way too far.” Yveltal explained.

“Oh. I’d love to help you!” I pulled out a Pokéball and captured Yveltal. I recalled Cyndaquil back to her Pokéball and called Yveltal back out.

“Chara, we should head off to the Mahogany Town airport. A group of other Trainers will meet us there, and we’ll board a flight to Kalos.”

I smiled. I had always dreamed of visiting the Kalos region! I assumed this was where the other Chosen Trainers would gather.

This one made the ill-advised decision to include an OC hero for literally every single legendary in the franchise. It is somehow still going, and after 9 chapters of introductions they finally got around to introducing “Chara Dupain”, a jive-talking kid who only carries a knife for self-defense because they love their starter pokemon so much. I made their patron Yveltal for obvious reasons, but Yveltal is just a boring exposition fairy in this and provokes no interesting response from Chara. So I suppose this teaches us that these authors have no problem just turning the submissions into their own characters if necessary.

The author did clarify in a PM that they planned to have Chara eventually get possessed by the villain and turn evil, but they neglected to discuss this with me beforehand because ???. We’ll have to see how that’s handled later. If the prologue ever ends.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11968826/13/Hearthome-High-SYOC-Submit-by-PM-or-Review

Chara shakes it’s head disappointed in the girl as it watched her. “You can’t let her keep walking all over you like that.” Chara said.

Chara shows up in this as an “it”, and also has no relation to the character I submitted.

I don’t even know.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11960091/5/Solstice-Academy-The-School-Of-Disaster

She approached her locker where her two new friends stood. “Hello, Sunshine!” The male said with a wave. The female next to her locker however, remained silent. She had earned the nickname “Sunshine” because of her happy and optimistic personality, and didn’t mind it very much. She smiled and waved, nearing Havan and Maia.

Havan D’ Rath was considered the “Hero” of the school. He helped in anyway he could, and as a Colbalion this year, he already set a good example for the underclassmen. Also, since he was graduating that year, he was considered to be one of leaders of the Solars. He was of average height, with a stocky build, and brilliant blue eyes. His platinum blond hair shone slightly under the lighting, and his attractive, baby-like face held a charming smile. Combining that with his usual formal attire with the Unova flag on it, it wasn’t such a shocker that girls in school sometimes threw him looks of wanting. Even so, Amelia sometimes wondered if his act was a ruse.

I submitted Havan to this one. The author copied my description of him word for word and also had the protagonist see through him immediately.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11997751/2/Pok%C3%A9-Rangers-Elemental-Fury

I mentioned this one before. While this gem is perfect on its own:

“What the hell was wrong with you out there? You almost killed a man!” Jared snapped.

[…]

“You know what Kara? I’m going to level with you. What you did was wrong! You’re irresponsible, rash, and you need to learn to control yourself!” Jared told her.

Kara was about to argue, but she thought about what Jared was saying. He was right.

…Continuing reveals that the author accidentally generated a total Softchara in their attempt to shoehorn Chara into a heroic role.

“As much as I hate to admit it… you’re right. I have a lot of things I’m still trying to work through. Team Rocket and I have…history. Nothing good and I don’t like to talk about it,” Kara told him.

[…]

“Look, no offense to you guys or anything but I don’t make friends. I’ve only had one friend in my entire life, and she’s…” Kara told him.

“She’s the one who gave you the locket? he inquired.

“Yeah. I just don’t like getting close to people. I can’t face the idea of losing somebody again. I won’t face it again,” Kara explained with a grim look on her face.

Chara has a traumatic backstory to justify her hatred of Team Rocket, and the reason for her prickliness (which is so silly and irrational, it’s hilarious how she keeps trying to kill people and has to be restrained at the last second) is because she’s so sad over the death of her best friend and doesn’t want to get hurt again, poor baby!

Maybe he wouldn’t care so much if he knew what she really was. Kara looked at her right wrist and read the code etched forever into her skin: K-474. The eternal reminder of who she was, or rather what she was made to be.

Also apparently she’s a government experiment or something. I don’t even.

Just then, Kay and Kara walked onto the scene. Kay’s outfit was a traditional bikini with pink and white stripes, white sandals, and a pair of white wing themed prescription sunglasses. Kara’s was a one piece yellow swimsuit with frills towards the bottom and white and yellow floral patterned sandals.

“Wow,” Jared said.

“What?” asked Kara.

“For a second there you almost looked feminine,” Jared responded blankly.

Kara almost jumped onto Jared but luckily Adam was able to hold her back.

[…]

Jared looked her in the eyes and smiled, which annoyed the girl.

“I spill my heart to you and you smile? The hell is wrong with you?” Kara angrily said.

“I was just thinking about how rewarding it’ll be when we finally become friends. Good things come to those who wait, you know,” Jared jokingly replied.

“Oh, shut up!” Kara yelled.

Then in the next chapter Chara puts on a swimsuit so the boys can all ogle her and point out that she’s so feminine deep down, followed by the main boy insisting that they’re going to become friends whether she like it or not while Chara freaks out about how hard emotions are. So it turns out Softchara overlaps with Strong Female Characters, who knew?

You may recall that I explicitly told this author I did not want a tragic backstory and that Chara was just a horrible person, so that’s 3 out of 4 authors so far who just turned my submission into their own character. You can never expect SYOC authors to be very faithful, but the sheer brazenness of this is still a little surprising to me.

I’d really like to know how this would have gone down if I said Chara was a boy.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11998025/2/World-Adventures-in-Kanto

This one led to a bio rewrite! This person apparently thought “stilted” meant “sesquipedalian”:

“Your inability to recognize how self-confident and pompous your Bulbasaur is simply perplexing. It really is just a view of how incompetent your skills as a Trainer” she continued on

This story also placed an emphasis on them hurting pokemon, even though I told the author they prefer to hurt humans. Points to the MC for risking his own safety to protect his pokemon, though.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12009415/2/Pokemon-Sudden-Destiny-The-New-Generation

This one said Chara was an “amazing character idea”, but the story died before they could appear.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12055543/4/Quest-of-the-Ancients-SYOC-CLOSED

A Meganium stepped in front of Kyle along with a boy that appeared to be younger than him.

Kyle was about to call out until the trainer called for Meganium to use Grass Knot.

Grass vines shot up out of the ground around the Team Rocket grunts and wrapped around them. The Meganium growled as the vines began to squeeze all the life out of the grunts.

Kyle, Charizard, and Espeon watched in horror as the grunts slowly began to die. And when the vines released, the three didn’t know what to even think.

Kyle was speechless, until the boy turned to him.

“And now it’s your turn.” He said in a monotonous voice. Kyle couldn’t help but notice the knife in his hand.

Kyle took a step back in fear, turning to look at Espeon. To his horror, Espeon was already wrapped in vines to prevent any action.

Kyle stopped immediately. He began to register the fact that his life might life that day, on that moment. Just when Meganium was about to attack him, a blaze of fire washed over the Grass Pokémon, causing Kyle to return Charizard and quickly get Espeon.

The killer boy turned and saw a young man standing in front of him, frowning with great displeasure. A Typhlosion stood by the boy, growling viciously.

“Kyle Cobalt and Char.” The boy began. “My name is Ethan Hibiki, an international detective. After getting a lead on you, Char, I have come here. You both are now under arrest for murder. I’m bringing you in for questioning.”

Chara appears briefly at the end of the fourth chapter for some quality murder, though they are a boy this time.

Char was strapped to a chair and sat in front of a table, while Ethan stood alone on the opposite side. A light shone dimly on them, Ethan’s favorite interrogation setting.

Ethan slammed his hands on the table. “Just tell me why the hell you killed those people and Pokémon!”

Char stared back at him emotionlessly, saying nothing.

In the next chapter, they are completely emotionless and unresponsive, even though I described how they talk and emote in some detail. I suspect the author may have played Undertale and has their own interpretation of how Chara acts.