Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26242189-20160605230949/@comment-27701762-20160606043802

Yossipossi wrote: About the Chara part:

When they say "Give me your SOUL", I believe they are saying the same thing: "Give me the human's SOUL". The reason I think this is because you control Frisk's SOUL, so it's possible Chara might believe it's your SOUL. Either that, or they're saying to give Frisk's SOUL which belongs too you. I'm going to sort of ramble on various possibilities to test this idea out:

In order to think through who Chara is talking to, we need to lay down whether or not Frisk and the player are the same or separate, whether Chara realizes that Frisk and the player are the same or separate, and whether Chara is addressing Frisk or the player given those possibilities. Which leaves us with 8 different possibilities to think through. In order to get to the conclusion that Chara is aware of the world of Undertale qua game, the reading must involve a clear acknowledgement of the player's existence by Chara.

1) The player and Frisk are separate, and Chara recognizes this. Chara is addressing Frisk - This would be a viable interpretation, but would obviously mean that Chara isn't talking to the player, leaving us without the requisite acknowledgement.

2) The player and Frisk are separate, and Chara recognizes this. Chara is addressing the player - We can't make sense of this, since Chara would know that the player and Frisk are separate entities but is asking the player for Frisk's soul as though it belongs to the player. Chara would need to address this distinction in some way about "you" to make this version make sense.

3) The player and Frisk are separate, but Chara does not recognize this. Chara is addressing Frisk - This would be the same as (1).

4) The player and Frisk are separate, but Chara does not recognize this. Chara is addressing the player - This seems to work, but runs into a problem. If Chara does not realize that the player and Frisk are separate, then how do we know that Chara is actually addressing the player? Especially since the soul is Frisk's, and the most likely explanation for Chara's knowledge is about Frisk's existence, we would need to presume that Chara knows of the player's existence and about the soul, but not about Frisk, which would appear to lead to an absurdity.

5) The player and Frisk are the same, and Chara recognizes this. Chara is addressing Frisk - Since the player and Frisk are the same entity, "your soul" would refer to both. This would make sense of everything, but would mean that Chara is not specifically addressing the player, and thus would not serve as suitable evidence that Chara is aware that they are in a video game.

6) The player and Frisk are the same, and Chara recognizes this. Chara is addressing the player - This would be equivalent to (5).

7) The player and Frisk are the same, but Chara does not recognize this. Chara is addressing Frisk - This would be functionally equivalent to (1), though the premise itself doesn't seem to make much sense.

8) The player and Frisk are the same, but Chara does not recognize this. Chara is addressing the player - In this scenario, Chara thinks that there are two entities and thinks they are talking to one of those entities, but are actually incorrect. So in a functional sense we would treat it as though the player and Frisk are in fact two entities and Chara knows this fact. In which case, this scenario would be functionally equivalent to (2).

So for a given scenario to support the conclusion that Chara is aware that they are part of a game, it needs to be true that the scenario offers an acknowledgement of a specific entity that is the player (though obviously we don't need Chara to literally call someone "the player").

These acknowledgements only exist in the even-numbered scenarios, because we begin with the assumption that Chara is addressing the player. But (2) does not make sense of the dialogue, (4) leads to an absurdity, (6) creates a problem that prevents the scenario from serving as evidence, and (8) ends up being equivalent to (2).

I take your first proposition to be scenario (4), and your second to be scenario (2).

Let me know if I've missed something. I've had to do this on the fly, so to speak.