Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27997069-20160317174518/@comment-28064260-20160401025003

GetYourFix wrote:

Prpr wrote: My question was about why using Chara for such a meta role when it's easier and better to make a character from the ground up solely for this purpose? Creating an NPC without history would have been the cleaner solution but I am not convinced that it was the better one. Without Chara, the Player could never see the Asriel/Chara/Flowey disparity that occurs. Though Chara is given some history, they are mostly left up to interpretation so, again, we are offered an idea and not fact. We don't know why Chara hated humanity. We know she is sympathetic to monsters. Or perhaps she is manipulative? Who knows. We're meant to be able to add meaning to her on our own time and not on Toby's.

So, from a story-telling perspective, I can see why Toby used Chara as opposed to an NPC with no history. Could he have done it differently? Sure. Why he used Chara is not unfounded, though. Our point of contention is whether using a new character for the sole purpose of the meta role that Chara plays in genocide is better than using Chara. I believe it is. You can expand Chara as a character, just don't give him/her that meta role. The proper way to do this is to write a character with a meta framework from the start, so that no matter how deep or important you want this character to be, this character will always get the job done. Imagine using a typical shadow character from the Persona series as base, apply meta-writing, and at least let this shadow say and do similar things to what Chara does in genocide. You can obviously do more if you're good at metafiction.

I don't think using Chara for this role is completely unfounded, I just think it creates unnecessary room for intepretation, and by extension, plot holes.