Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-30664268-20170420225552/@comment-27701762-20170422054306

Puppycornashlynn wrote: Mabian wrote: Puppycornashlynn wrote: Mabian wrote:

As a second point, if Asriel did indeed absorb Chara's soul, then there would be an expected result from that theory: Chara's soul should be in some way observable. In particular, when Asriel releases the power of the souls he has collected, we see six hearts with colors (representing the six human souls that were captured), and a bunch of white hearts (representing all of the monsters that were captured), but no red heart for Chara (or any other color that could represent a seventh human soul). He lost it after death, so...maybe, a red SOUL, for Determination (Most likely), is enough to turn you into what you'd become by absorbing 7. But that doesn't respond to the problems, and in fact raises a new one, since if the red soul is equivalent to seven other human souls, then there was no need for Asriel to leave the Underground, since he would already have enough power to break the Barrier (which is why he left in the first place: to get more human souls). Yeah, but, it doesn't give the power to destroy the barrier. The red SOUL's powerful, and, in-fact, is so powerful to, reset, save, load, and REFUSE DEATH ITSELF! This isn't really helping, as it is essentially a sort of special pleading about the red soul: it has enough power to do X, but even though the same amount of power is needed to do Y, the red soul can't do Y (since, of course, that would destroy the game's narrative). Rather than jumping through all of these hoops, why not just go with the simpler explanation offered by the game's own narration: that Flowey absorbed six human souls plus nearly all of the monster souls, and that's what allowed him to turn into Asriel?

Not to mention that aside from the "refusing" part, the whole reset/save/load isn't unique to the red soul. The other humans were able to do it. Flowey was able to do it.