Webcomic / Underline

WARNING: Major Undertale spoilers below.

Underline (also known as Fallen Child) is an Undertale prequel fancomic, created by Dustyart, Littlegrumblranna and Ifellforundertale.

Years ago, humans and monsters lived together in peace - up until a great war broke out. Monsters lost and were trapped underground with a magical spell. Only way to break that spell is by countering it with power of seven human souls.

Many years pass, as monsters futilely try to destroy the Barrier. Finally, one day a young human child named Chara accidentally falls to the Underground. Here, they befriend Asriel - son of the monster king Asgore Dreemurr. Just like everyone else, Chara is trapped behind the Barrier - but their arrival gives monsters hope that there might be escape.

Adopted by the royal family, Chara slowly learns about many different species of monsters, magic they use and their traditions. However, live of the Fallen Child isn't completely free of problems: one day, after a potentially lethal accident, they discover they have power to travel back in time to the day of their arrival Underground to prevent their own death - and quickly finds themselves trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop where every time they die (which is very often), they have to relive their whole live with Dreemurrs up to the point of their death, and find a way to avert it. To make matters worse, everything they hear and see about humans (most importantly Asriel getting killed by humans just for being a monster after the two manage to cross Barrier in one of the alternate timelines Chara creates through their time travel) makes them start questioning the alleged natural goodness of their own species...

The Main Story:

• Underline (finished): the story details Chara's life in the Underground, their friendship with Asriel, and their slow fall into madness due to the power of Reset.
• Golden Flowers (finished): short prequel chapter, showing Chara's last few days on the surface, as well as reason they climbed Mount Ebott and fell to the Underground.
• Choices (finished): following Chara's suicide and Asriel's death at the hands of humans, Asgore vows to kill any human that ever falls to the Underground. Soon after that, four more humans climb Mount Ebott. All of them must pass through the whole kingdom of monsters in order to return to the surface.
• Forgettable (finished): chapter follows the story of Aster and Wingdings - two royal scientists known collectively under the name W. D. Gaster - showing how the became the royal scientists in the first place, detailing their friendship with Chara and attempts at solving the Fallen Child's problem, which ultimately lead to one of the timelines getting corrupted, many monsters erased from existence, and brothers having to make a risky, one-way time travel to the future to avoid the same fate, ending up in a world where nobody remembers about their existence, with unstable timeline ultimately forcing them to take new names and personalities as Sans and Papyrus.
• Mirror (finished): as a side effect of the experiments conducted by the new royal scientist, doctor Alphys, Asriel ends up resurrected as a talking flower: and gets Chara's power of reset. However, as he soon finds out, his resurrection didn't give him back his soul...
• Missing (finished): two more humans fall Underground. Asgore is out for their blood.
• Cage (finished): with the death of Quinn, just one more soul is needed to break the Barrier.
• Promise (finished): back before the Barrier was created, a human visits the monsters' village.

The What If?/AU chapters:

• Soulline (finished): after Chara's death Asriel absorbs their soul - but doesn't actually leave the Underground.
• Goatline (ongoing, though finished chronologically): continuation of Soulline. Chara is resurrected and turned into a monster. However throughout the time they were dead, many things changed.
• Across the line (finished): instead of Chara, it's Robin (the second Fallen Human in the original timeline) who falls first and befriends Asriel.
• Nineline or fALLen (finished): sometime after Chara falls, all seven other children fall within a short time of each other (somehow).
• Professor Papyrus (in progress): a version of Undertale where Papyrus is based on Professor Layton.

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Tropes featured in multiple chapters:

• Ambiguous Gender: All of the Fallen Children (except for Anna) are not identified, with all pronouns being avoided except for small parts of Mirror. According to Word of God, Brook and Robin are both male, while Sela and Quinn are both female, leaving only Cass, Chara and Frisk with unspecified gender.
• Anachronic Order: the actual chronological order of the chapters is: Promise -> beginning of Forgettable -> Golden Flowers -> Underline and most of Forgettable taking place at the same time -> ending of Underline -> climax of Forgettable -> Choices -> Missing -> Cage -> ending of Forgettable -> Mirror.
• Ascended Extra: See Recurring Element. The only companions to not qualify as this are Asriel/Flowey and the fire buddy.
• Doomed by Canon: So, so many. Chara, Asriel and all of the Fallen Children except for Frisk will die. Toriel and Asgore will break up. Alphys's experiment will lead to a disaster...
  • Subverted by W.D. Gaster. According to the game, he ended up accidentaly erasing himself from existence. Here, he barely avoids it, but has to create himself a completely new personality.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Frisk has yet to make an official debut in the main story, but they already appeared multiple times in oneshot side stories (although almost all of those are marked as non-canon).
• Recurring Element: Every human child to feature in the comic has a monster companion.
  • Chara: Asriel
  • Robin (Patience): Migospel
  • Sela (Integrity): Moldessa
  • Cass (Perseverance): Gerson
  • Anna (Kindness): Fire Buddy
  • Brook (Justice): Whimsalot
  • Quinn (Bravery): Parsnik
  • Frisk: Flowey
• Supporting Protagonist: The comic revolves around Chara, but only the first two chapters (and two "What If?" chapters) have them as the main character. They do play important role in "Forgettable", but don't appear in other chapters (except as ghost in both "Choices" and "Missing" and in flashback in "Mirror").

Main Story

Tropes featured in Underline:

• Foregone Conclusion: If you've played Undertale, you know Chara and Asriel will end up dead by the end.
• Portal Cut: In the eighth timeline, Chara is leaning against the barrier when Asriel grabs their hand, causing them to begin to pass through it. He lets go in a panic, and Chara awakens in the ninth timeline.

Tropes featured in Golden Flowers:

• Origin Story: it details Chara's reasons for climbing Mount Ebott.

Tropes featured in Choices:

• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Unlike the previous two chapters, this one doesn't star Chara as main character.
• Tragic Keepsake: All four children give something to the monsters they befriended (see Recurring Element) before dying. Moldessa and possibly Migospel and Fire Buddy all die themselves soon after.

Tropes featured in Forgettable:

• Early-Bird Cameo: During the time travel sequence, Sans and Papyrus catch a glimpse of the Fallen Children - including Brook and Quinn (main characters of chapter "Missing").
• Genius Ditz: More genius than ditz, but Wingdings still qualifies.
• Obfuscating Stupidity/Insanity: Wingdings/Papyrus, post-Time Skip.
• Origin Story: of Sans and Papyrus.

Tropes featured in Mirror:

• Adaptational Badass: Asgore puts up much more of a fight at the end of Flowey's Genocide run than he does against the human in the original game.
• Early-Bird Cameo: even though they aren't actually shown, the final two pages depict Frisk - The Hero of the game - arriving to the Underground.
• Meaningful Echo: Multiple times. Perhaps the most important is when, midway through his suicide attempt, Flowey realizes that having no soul, he might cease to exist. The scene strongly mirrors Chara's fall at the beginning of the first chapter.
• Replacement Goldfish: Flowey accuses Toriel of replacing him when he finds the photo of one of the children in his old room.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: At first, Flowey tries to do good deeds with his new power, but as the story goes on, he gradually becomes more sociopathic out of a combination of boredom and being unable to feel anything for anyone.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The main point of the story.

Tropes featured in Missing:

• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. According to Parsnik, Toriel grew to hate her own species - even though in the game it's never even implied to be the case (aside from few Froggits - well established as a species of lovable cowards - being afraid of her). Though this might be due to chapter taking place before Toriel befriended Sans, or considering nature of that statement, Parsnik being an Unreliable Narrator.
• Break the Cutie: Quinn starts of as the most optimistic and happy of all Fallen, finding the monsters fascinating and not at all threatening and believing she can easily return. Then she discovers that there is no way to escape, monsters are hunting humans and her Resurrective Immortality means that she will feel the pain of death again and again, time after time, but never get to actually die. All of this is understandably enough to make her break down sobbing.
• Demoted to Extra: Toriel, important character in all previous chapters and video game, has two short and not very important scenes.
  • This trope is applied to whole area - we only ever see the very beginning and very end of Waterfall, with Quinn's journey through it not being shown and Brook outright skipping it with help of River Person.
• Four-Leaf Clover: Brook has one.
• Heroic BSoD: Quinn doesn't take it well upon witnessing Brook's body in Asgore's arms. It leads to her resetting and breaking down in tears when back in the Ruins.
• Oh, Crap!: Unlike all the other Fallen Children, Quinn didn't know about Asgore hunting humans. Cue her walking up to him completely unprepared to fight and getting killed. Good thing she could reset.
  • After Quinn's reset, she forgets to tell Toriel about her allergies, creating this reaction in Toriel when Quinn gets very sick from her pie.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Quinn accidentally doomed Brook by taking over the Reset power when he needed it most.

Tropes featured in Cage:

• Early-Bird Cameo: similarly to the ending of "Mirror", the final page shows Frisk arriving at Asgore's throne room, as in game (though once again they're offpage the whole time and we only know from Asgore's reaction that they're even there).
• Mood Whiplash: We go from a depressed Asgore going about his day to kid Undyne showing up and challenging him to battle. Notably, the arc up to that point has the colors muted and slightly darker, only for them to return to normal when Undyne shows up.

Tropes featured in Promise:

• Exact Words: A retroactive example. The Waterfall glyphs in the game claim that not a single soul was taken during the war. Upon dying, the human gives their soul to Asgore. And it's then erased from history anyway via a reset.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: By after the Time Skip, the human has grown much friendlier towards monsterkind, and Asgore in particular. To the point where they fight alongside monsters against other humans.
• No Name Given: The human's name is not revealed. They are dubbed "PHuman" in the tags.
• Time Skip: After Asgore lets the human take some food, the story skips to some time later, by when the human has grown into young adulthood.
• Wham Episode: The battle scene. The human sides with the monsters, ends up getting killed, and gives their soul to Asgore.

What If/AU Stories

Tropes featured in Soulline:

• Comes Great Responsibility: by absorbing a human soul, Asriel becomes far more powerful than any other monster. Asgore is quick to point out how important it is for him to learn using that power responsibly.
• For Want Of A Nail: The nail being that Toriel and Asgore catch Asriel before he can leave with Chara's body.

Tropes featured in Goatline:

• Ascended Extra: The mouse-like NPC that player meets in Snowdin Town in game becomes one of the main characters here.
• Downer Ending: After the Time Skip, things start to gradually get worse, culminating in an earthquake that allows Frisk to enter the underground. Frisk then proceeds to kill several monsters, with Papyrus and Asriel among the casualties. After exhausting every possible option and realizing Frisk will never stop, Chara activates a True Reset back to when they originally fell, saying if they remember anything from the experience, its that they can't trust humans.
• Lighter and Softer: Until after the Time Skip.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Chara is surprisingly cute even by the Boss Monster standards.
• Time Skip: The story eventually skips ahead to when Asirel and Chara are teenagers, right before Asgore and Toriel's deaths.

Tropes featured in Across the line:

• Downer Ending: Robin's emotional turmoil leads him to leave the Underground, and as of the Distant Finale, he has not returned and monsters have not expanded.
• Exposed to the Elements: Somehow Robin can walk through snowy forest with nothing but pajamas on and still not feel cold. Although, Asriel soon finds Robin shivering after falling into a snow pile.

Tropes featured in Nineline/fALLen:

• Bittersweet Ending: The two unused endings, as told by Word of God. "Sad" would have had the fallen children discover they were pulled through time, meaning their families are dead, but monsters are widely accepted. "Bad" would have seen the monsters be attacked by humans, leading to Chara resetting, revealing the danger, and allowing only the human who want to leave do so.
• Downer Ending: When fans voted on vague descriptions of different endings, "broken" got the most votes. The result was Wingdings revealing that all the children were brought together by some sort of temporal anomaly that also affected the sun, which would quickly lead to Earth being burnt to a crisp.
• Made of Iron: Averted in a hilariously dark way. Turns out that originally the Seven Fallen (or at least Cass) didn't survive the fall. Then Chara found their bodies - and, not giving it much thought, proceeded to reset and bring some mattresses and pillows to where they were going to fall.

Tropes featured in Professor Papyrus:

• Blatant Lies: Asriel at one point claims that he's Luke (Monster Kid) from the future.
• Mind Screw: The vaguely reality-bending qualities of Papyrus's hat lend to this sometimes. In one entry, it somehow goes through the story's other AUs, and when Frisk is given a puzzle that requires selecting Papyrus's out of three identical hats, they circle the real one...as in, a red circle is drawn over Papyrus in the next panel.
• Running Gag: "That reminds me of a puzzle!"