- 480
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bored, I'll quit stalling and post the thing now
tldr this garbage, this less so
First thing is the biggest, but shouldn't be difficult to explain. The profile seems to treat the ending scene as Chara physically manifesting independently, hence the feat of nuking the timeline being listed on their profile + superhuman physical abilities. All of the context either contradicts this or has a much better explanation.
First of all, the sole bit of explanation the profile has for this.
Now, the alternative.
Throughout the genocide route, Chara gradually overrides control of our character, which the profiles do seem to agree with. Starting from Toriel's house, while this is probably always the case, the non-dialogue text boxes are explicitly Chara speaking. Right after you kill off Toriel, Flowey immediately recognizes Chara in the protagonist. As early as Snowdin, Frisk walks in the middle of dialogue which they never do otherwise. By Waterfall, Frisk adopts Chara's signature smile when encountering an enemy, and later intimidates Flowey with it. At New Home, the descriptions when you examine objects are explicitly Chara's thoughts. At the end of Sans' boss fight, Frisk attacks Sans a second time in a row unprompted. Near the end, Frisk attacks Asgore without us even choosing to attack once first, and then they brutalize Flowey without the rest of the battle HUD even being present.
By the end here, continuing the natural story progression of the entire rest of the run, Chara has taken full control, represented by Frisk's sprite being reskinned with the fallen human's features and clothing. In the post-genocide pacifist ending, when possessed, Frisk takes on Chara's appearance as the same sprite they have at the end of the genocide route.
A natural assumption could be that we're just looking at Chara in first-person from Frisk's perspective, as we would in a "battle" screen. Only problem is, Chara has an overworld sprite here. And this is the overworld. This parallels with the finale of the neutral path, in which it's an all-black overworld and Flowey speaks with the exact same text format as Chara does: same font, white text, appears below the character, and not contained within a speech bubble or text box. There's even similar sinister ambience, and Flowey makes the screen flash red during his transformation the same way Chara does during their scare, though Flowey's is less epilepsy-triggering. If this is the overworld, though, Frisk has to be somewhere on screen; and they're right in the center, with Chara having overridden their appearance to symbolize their control.
Even the direct relationship with genocide route progress and possession works here. Chara calls themselves a demon, and they're even likened to Satan with "the demon that comes when people call its name" (speak of the devil and he shall appear) and the fact that they make a deal for your soul, just like a typical deal with the devil. Demons are typically just the voices in people's heads that tempt them to do evil, and the more corrupt you are the more susceptible to demonic influence and outright possession. In the genocide route, Chara is a voice in your head, represented by the non-dialogue text boxes, and does encourage you throughout. As you become more violent throughout the game, Chara gains more control. As I said before, you can legitimately go all the way to LV 19 on a neutral route. Furthermore, if you ever abandon the genocide route by failing to kill every enemy before proceeding or sparing a pivotal enemy, it transitions to a neutral route with no sign of Chara's influence for the rest of the game. Regardless of statistics, it's only when you actively seek out monsters to kill and do so until none remain throughout the entire game, thus being as conventionally evil as you can be and furthering Chara's goal during the route of "eradicating the enemy and becoming strong", that they ever have any control; just as demons gain more control over you when you decide to indulge in whatever sins they suggest.
The currently used interpretation is a flimsy assumption that's just extremely dumb if you think about it. My proposal is consistently supported by everything the game shows and tells us, and is significantly less dumb. Also favored by Occam's razor, being the simpler theory, since people here care about that I think.
As for the world recreation feat, my head hurts. I'd probably just say they do it via Frisk, since it seems very far fetched for Chara to be able to do it themselves given their nature and isn't at all for Frisk, the person who has "total control over the timeline" heavily implied to be more than just the ability to reverse it. I considered "Low 2-C creation with Frisk's/the player's soul", but the way Chara speaks during that scene like it's a transaction implies that recreating the world is already within their power to do. Acquiring the soul just means they can control Frisk whenever they want, as in the PGPE.
Other than that, I added an "alive" key. Not really necessary, but Asriel has a key for his actually featless and barely seen pre-death child self and Monster Kid has a profile so might as well be consistent. Some of the wording and explanations are smoothened out, the summary is more substantial, and I replaced the quote with a better one.
Finally, while I forgot to apply it to the sandbox, "Chara" isn't the fallen human's canonical name. It's an easter egg reference to TFH's sprite names, starting with "truechara" for "true character", which itself is referencing how green shirt is the true character we choose the name for rather than blue shirt Frisk, whose sprite names are "mainchara" for "main character". People pretend it's clever for some reason, but Chara would be one of the dumbest and laziest names one could choose for a character aside from just the full unabridged word, and Toby is very good with names when he wants to be. Giving the character a true name at all ruins the point of having us choose their name, and this game is obviously very serious about player choices. Basically, Chara is a convenient fan nickname the internet adopted because of a misinterpreted easter egg. I was going to let it side just for convenience, but I thought it'd be better to actually voice all of my opinions in this more or less overhaul CRT.
tldr this garbage, this less so
First thing is the biggest, but shouldn't be difficult to explain. The profile seems to treat the ending scene as Chara physically manifesting independently, hence the feat of nuking the timeline being listed on their profile + superhuman physical abilities. All of the context either contradicts this or has a much better explanation.
First of all, the sole bit of explanation the profile has for this.
"Power" presumably means LV, as they only show up like this at the end of the game, when we're at max level. But LV just increases the recipient's physical strength and lessens their empathy. Nothing suggests it would allow a tagalong spirit to manifest with its own form. One of Chara's slightly obnoxious amount of arbitrary classifications is "Manifestation of the player's willingness to kill just to increase their stats" which is oh so dumb, but presumably based on the line in the page's quote, which might serve to explain Chara being able to do random bullshit if we level up enough. First problem is that you can legitimately get all the way up to LV 19 on a neutral route with no possession weirdness, meaning Chara's influence isn't actually linked with statistics. Them claiming they embody the feeling of gaining power much better serves the idea that they are, literally, a demon, which I'll come back to later.
Now, the alternative.
Throughout the genocide route, Chara gradually overrides control of our character, which the profiles do seem to agree with. Starting from Toriel's house, while this is probably always the case, the non-dialogue text boxes are explicitly Chara speaking. Right after you kill off Toriel, Flowey immediately recognizes Chara in the protagonist. As early as Snowdin, Frisk walks in the middle of dialogue which they never do otherwise. By Waterfall, Frisk adopts Chara's signature smile when encountering an enemy, and later intimidates Flowey with it. At New Home, the descriptions when you examine objects are explicitly Chara's thoughts. At the end of Sans' boss fight, Frisk attacks Sans a second time in a row unprompted. Near the end, Frisk attacks Asgore without us even choosing to attack once first, and then they brutalize Flowey without the rest of the battle HUD even being present.
By the end here, continuing the natural story progression of the entire rest of the run, Chara has taken full control, represented by Frisk's sprite being reskinned with the fallen human's features and clothing. In the post-genocide pacifist ending, when possessed, Frisk takes on Chara's appearance as the same sprite they have at the end of the genocide route.
A natural assumption could be that we're just looking at Chara in first-person from Frisk's perspective, as we would in a "battle" screen. Only problem is, Chara has an overworld sprite here. And this is the overworld. This parallels with the finale of the neutral path, in which it's an all-black overworld and Flowey speaks with the exact same text format as Chara does: same font, white text, appears below the character, and not contained within a speech bubble or text box. There's even similar sinister ambience, and Flowey makes the screen flash red during his transformation the same way Chara does during their scare, though Flowey's is less epilepsy-triggering. If this is the overworld, though, Frisk has to be somewhere on screen; and they're right in the center, with Chara having overridden their appearance to symbolize their control.
Even the direct relationship with genocide route progress and possession works here. Chara calls themselves a demon, and they're even likened to Satan with "the demon that comes when people call its name" (speak of the devil and he shall appear) and the fact that they make a deal for your soul, just like a typical deal with the devil. Demons are typically just the voices in people's heads that tempt them to do evil, and the more corrupt you are the more susceptible to demonic influence and outright possession. In the genocide route, Chara is a voice in your head, represented by the non-dialogue text boxes, and does encourage you throughout. As you become more violent throughout the game, Chara gains more control. As I said before, you can legitimately go all the way to LV 19 on a neutral route. Furthermore, if you ever abandon the genocide route by failing to kill every enemy before proceeding or sparing a pivotal enemy, it transitions to a neutral route with no sign of Chara's influence for the rest of the game. Regardless of statistics, it's only when you actively seek out monsters to kill and do so until none remain throughout the entire game, thus being as conventionally evil as you can be and furthering Chara's goal during the route of "eradicating the enemy and becoming strong", that they ever have any control; just as demons gain more control over you when you decide to indulge in whatever sins they suggest.
The currently used interpretation is a flimsy assumption that's just extremely dumb if you think about it. My proposal is consistently supported by everything the game shows and tells us, and is significantly less dumb. Also favored by Occam's razor, being the simpler theory, since people here care about that I think.
As for the world recreation feat, my head hurts. I'd probably just say they do it via Frisk, since it seems very far fetched for Chara to be able to do it themselves given their nature and isn't at all for Frisk, the person who has "total control over the timeline" heavily implied to be more than just the ability to reverse it. I considered "Low 2-C creation with Frisk's/the player's soul", but the way Chara speaks during that scene like it's a transaction implies that recreating the world is already within their power to do. Acquiring the soul just means they can control Frisk whenever they want, as in the PGPE.
Other than that, I added an "alive" key. Not really necessary, but Asriel has a key for his actually featless and barely seen pre-death child self and Monster Kid has a profile so might as well be consistent. Some of the wording and explanations are smoothened out, the summary is more substantial, and I replaced the quote with a better one.
Finally, while I forgot to apply it to the sandbox, "Chara" isn't the fallen human's canonical name. It's an easter egg reference to TFH's sprite names, starting with "truechara" for "true character", which itself is referencing how green shirt is the true character we choose the name for rather than blue shirt Frisk, whose sprite names are "mainchara" for "main character". People pretend it's clever for some reason, but Chara would be one of the dumbest and laziest names one could choose for a character aside from just the full unabridged word, and Toby is very good with names when he wants to be. Giving the character a true name at all ruins the point of having us choose their name, and this game is obviously very serious about player choices. Basically, Chara is a convenient fan nickname the internet adopted because of a misinterpreted easter egg. I was going to let it side just for convenience, but I thought it'd be better to actually voice all of my opinions in this more or less overhaul CRT.
