Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-823410-20160602094956/@comment-27701762-20160603013246

Thanatos-Zero wrote: GetYourFix wrote: Hm? I mean, no, the original Chara and Asriel are long gone. Flowey isn't Asriel - he's a soulless being with Asriel's memories. The protagonist isn't Chara, either - they declare themselves as a separate entity in TP and "Chara" never even says that they're us. We just woke them up and drove them to power-hunger.

Not having a SOUL messes you up. However, the protagonist has a SOUL up until killing Asgore and Flowey, in the Genocide Route. The "Unconditional Love" interpretation doesn't leave room for the protag. killing monsters at all, and thus doesn't hold much merit to me. @Mabian

There are things which needs to be explained, because the issue with Chara made me think a lot.

Go here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/4f3qh8/spoilerstrue_pacifistgenocide_so_if_redacted_has/ This doesn't help. This is the same jargon being applied to a related but different line of inquiry.

You have introduced multiple ideas about the relation between the physical and spritual realms without actually addressing the extremely important question of whether these ideas are at all in line with Toby's intentions.

If this is all just your own headcanon for how the world works, then I have no ability nor desire to disabuse you of your notions. But if this is true, then it's not a theory.

A theory is an attempt to explain the "truth" of the matter, and for the sake of a constructed world like we have in Undertale the "truth" is the intention of the author. So if we're going to bring in all of these ideas that come from the long study of spirituality and metaphysics, we need evidence that Toby is familiar enough with this line of study to introduce it into his own work, and keep the ideas relatively consistent. And none of the language you employ is utilized in the game, nor even anything resembling the language. There are no mentions of a higher plane of existence. "Consciousness" is never even mentioned. And the picture we get of the soul is given to us in tiny scraps which points to little or nothing beyond a thing that exists and is in some sense a source of power. Hell, there isn't even any clear evidence that the soul is actually metaphysical: this is just an assumption that we would bring in from what we normally think about souls. But we need a justification for introducing these ideas if we are going to claim that they reflect Toby's intent or give us insight into his intent. And to get that justification we need evidence and proof (or as close as we can get to proof with such forms of analysis). We need evidence that the soul conforms to general principles that have been applied in such philosophical investigations. We need evidence that the relationship between the soul (or SOUL) and the body is as you conclude.

And "here's a specific point that fits my conclusion" is not sufficient evidence. Any line can be ultimately twisted to conform to any conclusion. We need a clear set of expectations: if the theory is true, then we can expect that the game would operate in X manner, or that the concept would be treated in a consistently Y manner in dialogue that we can track and verify. Without those expectations, there is no possibility for verification. Any theory (and hence in this case any acronym) is equally plausible.