Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27997069-20160317174518/@comment-27701762-20160327193602

Lunasmeow wrote: Not necessarily. When you play most games that allow you to name a character, they tend to come with backstory. That doesn't stop you from "becoming" them from the point you named them onward, which I already mentioned in my earlier post. Chara's backstory is as such, but as one can see by playing the different routes, Chara (from the point where we actually enter the story) starts off pretty neutral (see the narration) and doesn't go twisted and evil until we start the genocide route as shown by the red text.

Actually, Chara's backstory isn't even the level of twisted evil that we see in the Genocide run ending. The Chara we see in the backstory wanted to kill the humans, but out of love of the monsters. A "justified" vengence done to those who unjustly imprisoned the monster race out of fear and envy. Yet the Chara we see in the Genocide run is far far worse, wanting to destroy the entire world. Scaring even Flowey who literally shakes in fear when the realization comes. "People like us won't hesitate to kill each other if we get in the way."

It is us who turned Chara from the Neutral party they started as (willing to kill, but doing so to save the innocent monsters they had befriended) into a total world ending killing machine. Chara initially died to save the monsters, yet now we have made Chara into a True Monster, (the concept, not the race). Further evidence that Chara is us. Even granting the premise that Chara is at all times the narrator of the game, and thus that Chara's personality is altered by the run we take, that still doesn't get us to the connection you want to make. The exact same premises can be explained by the idea that Chara is a separate entity who is influenced by Frisk, or our control of Frisk.

So I'll bring up the issue I did much earlier with the topic creator: if Chara is literally us, or some representation of us, then why does Chara suddenly become disembodied and speak to "you," and why does the game suddenly put us in the perspective of Frisk? If Chara is literally us, then narratively we are speaking to ourselves and making a deal with ourselves.

Gold is not a stat increase. It is a held item. That's like claiming that more money raises your intelligence, or your agility. It's ludicrous. (ATK) and (DEF) are stats, but as you pointed out only the actual base stats which go up only from levelling. Additions due to equipment don't count as that is physical, and the menu even takes the effort to show this unlike many games where you tend to just have one stat number that changes as you level and/or change equipment. Thus this premise is flawed.

I did not bring up gold because it is a thing that increases. I brought it up because that's the line. "HP. ATK. DEF. GOLD. EXP. LV." If the increase in the various stats is literally Chara and not Frisk, then the theory needs to explain gold as well.

Remember, I never said that Chara was representative of the Completionist mentality, but that Chara was us. I said that the completionist effect  is what would cause you to MEET Chara, but that it WAS Chara. (At least, I don't think I did. I'll have to go back and re-read to be sure. I was pretty tired when I responded before and may have mis-typed.) Whether you only have the neutral Chara or the dark, twisted, red text Chara is totally dependant on the Player.

This is again getting confusing. Chara now seems to be the player except when they aren't, in which case they are a separate entity. If the way we play the game affects Chara's view of the world, then Chara would need to be a separate entity, as otherwise the statement is "the way we play the game affects us." Given that the completionist mentality involves the player simply wanting to know what happens, while Chara takes on the desire to destroy everything, there is continually a serious disconnect between what the player is doing and presumably thinking versus what Chara does and thinks: if Chara is the player, these should be one and the same.

This entire line of thought hinges on what you said at the end. "So what is the value being added here?"

Indeed it does. And for good reason. If we were simply brainstorming various ways of thinking about the relationship between the player and the characters, any idea would be good enough. But we aren't. We are engaged in interpretive analysis, which means the goal is not to come up with any old idea, but to provide a theory for what "the truth," so to speak, is. The measurement of a theory is thus what the creator had in mind. So the question of value is pertinent here, as any theory of what the creator had in mind must be able to demonstrate its value against other potential explanations, which in this case is the null hypothesis that Chara is a distinct entity from the player. If we were merely comparing headcanons, then the value question would be irrelevant.