Board Thread:General Discussion v2.0/@comment-27330847-20151202034303/@comment-24662946-20151227192316

Nightblade1337 wrote: LarsMars wrote: I found this to be interesting...

For example lets take the protagonist of my favorite game of all time: Chell, from Portal.

She is a character whom the player can project upon. Literally nothing about her is known, she doesn’t speak a single line of dialogue, and very little is implied about her backstory. All that’s known about her, for the most part, is that she’s a woman named Chell.

And the player ACCEPTS that she’s a woman without question! The only characters she interacts with always refer to her by she/her pronouns, so she’s obviously a woman, right? Even though she’s a projection for the player, no one doubts that she is a woman.

Well the same could be said for Frisk. All we really know about them is that their name is Frisk and that they’re referred to by they/them pronouns.

So why is it that when we have a nonbinary character, suddenly it’s ‘up to interpretation’ and ‘whatever gender you imagine them having’?

-mathes0n I think you missed the point by a mile. Or three.

Chell is a set character. You can't name her, or customize her in any way. She's given to you by Valve to play as.

With Frisk, you don't even know that their name is Frisk until the end of the Pacifist Route. You think the "Fallen Child" is Frisk the whole time. And for Frisk, absolutely nothing but a name is given. You're given the opportunity to build their nature through the game. Are they a genocidal psychopath? Are they merely corrupted by Chara? Are they a situational killer, or a True Pacifist?

That and we were -told- to project ourselves onto the Fallen Child by Toby himself via a Tweet. Well not TOLD but it was heavily suggested. So the natural result was we project ourselves onto Frisk. I'm a guy, so when I went through it, I decided that Frisk/Chara were guys as well. And that is a good point as well. I think the player can interpret Chara/Frisk's identity for themselves.