Talk:Chara/@comment-28469490-20160515221443

So, there's a lot of agency left up to the player of the game in who their character is. Up until you get to the end of either route (pacifist or genocide- the neutral route doesn't matter), you could be either Frisk, who simply is trying to do the best they can, or you can be Chara, who is actually basically pure evil and wants to murder everything.

Either character is you depending on your actions.

At the beginning, you name the fallen human, and it's then implied that "you" are the person throughout the game- unless you're taking the genocide route. If you take the genocide route, your identity stops being implied and you are instead told who you are: "It's me, ". Once you get to New Home, everyone's dead and you can't go back. The red text is Chara telling you about the place- what things are, why they're there, what you should do. Once you get to Asgore, Chara basically takes over and kills everyone else for you. While Chara takes control of you at the end, it shouldn't be this crazy twist ending- you've been feeding Chara the whole time, so what would you expect? Chara is representative of a normal RPG player who doesn't think about their actions, and in Undertale they're the reminder that actions have consequences that you can't run from.

But on top of that, it's also implied that you literally raise Chara from the dead if you complete the genocide route. It's stated that Toriel moved Chara's body from the crypt beneath the throne room to the patch in the beginning....y'know, the one you wake up in. As you go on your murderous rampage, Chara occasionally takes little bits of control via their red text narration and forced movements (toward Papyrus, Monster Kid). While you can say that you didn't chose to kill Asgore and destroy the world at the end, the Genocide route requires so many conditions to be fufilled that you HAVE to reach it on purpose- and it means you can also end the route (as well as Chara's control over you) at any time. Completing the genocide run means that you play right into Chara's desires when you kill everyone, and that force is what feeds their rise.

This is also how determination plays into the game. Completely positive determination makes you your own person- Frisk- and completely negative determination makes you into Chara, since you both share a passion for intense murder and destruction. Your actions turn you into the character that you become.