Talk:Chara/@comment-68.131.6.125-20151101074640

Here's my understanding of Chara:

Chara is the player who is playing the game. If you play the pacifist route, everything (most noticeably the mirrors) still points to Frisk still being Frisk, however if you go the dark route of a megalomaniac who murders everyone, it hints more towards it being Chara instead. In most RPG games, you run around and kill monsters, get loot and exp to fuel your ambitious goals but yet the game takes it a bit further at the end of the Genocide route where Chara actually manifests within the game and destroys the world with that absolute power you've obtained.

Though you don't actually engage Chara in battle, it is safe to say the player literally takes the back seat after attaining level 20, since everything after that point is effectively scripted until you get a last-ditch effort to try and choose what to do with the world where the player ultimately no longer has control over their creation.

The only choice the player has is if they want to corrupt Frisk's soul. Considering the player is even directly addressed at the ending of a True Pacifist run regarding the True Reset and Frisk and Friends' happiness, although it may be a bit fourth-wall breaking, the player is pretty much the will of the first fallen human. The player is the SOUL of Chara.