It's strange seeing even our fellow Soul-respecters on Reddit not thinking through the implications of the Vessel becoming its own guy.
Excerpts from my ask to StarPup/Baddrummer:
Q: I think it'd be convoluted/too many cooks for [the Vessel] to develop a life of its own like Baymax in Kingdom Hearts. […] It also leads to that problem we've observed of fans putting a wall between themselves and the story--the idea that there's some Third Guy instead of Literally Just Us playing as ourselves. Why would the Vessel need to learn to be itself when [A] there's no room in the narrative and [B] that arc is already being explored through every member of the Fun Gang? Fans have long seen the Vessel as a separate character from both themselves and Kris.
A: […] Narratively, I think that the vessel was simply meant to be our avatar. I know Gaster says "it will not hear" which makes it seem like it could have a mind of its own, and the fact that we name it differently from ourselves, but I simply do not think there is room in this narrative for another "Creature with Lack of Identity", especially one that is literally just us but again. Most of my thoughts about this game come from an angle of "How would this fit narratively and what themes would it play on?" [...] If it's our avatar, which please let it be because I'm already so tired of getting "third guy'd" with the vessel and the red soul, then things are a lot simpler. Us being separated from our vessel and forced into Kris only to be discarded later when banished is already our plotline. Reuniting with our vessel would be a way to reestablish our own autonomy and personhood. I simply don't know what could be done with the vessel that isnt us being reunited with it. If the vessel is its own person, then great we're back to square one with the autonomy thing. That means there was and never has been a way for us to have our own autonomy, and that we're always an influencing force rather than one that can be a person. I don't like that at all. I hope that's not where this is going. I hope we were shaping a version of ourselves to be placed into this world, and that we were denied the ability to be ourselves when we were intercepted. If we reunite with our vessel and it's just Kris But Maybe Less Antagonistic, then what's the point? […] The vessel would be us finally getting to express ourselves.
#and rn the vessel feels like it would be shoehorned in if it became its own character in the final hour.
The line between oneself and another person is very important in this story. For it to suddenly switch up on us at the last minute would retroactively cause problems.
The vessel was supposed to be a version of ourselves. People just say "our child" because they're trying to get ahead of the curve & expecting the game to pull an Undertale, "surprise--the vessel had a life & personality of its own, it's its own person, Kris 2.0", a twist for its own sake, as though it's already confirmed we were never meant to be our own person in-universe. Meaning the Gonermaker hijacker's words never get subverted.
Think about how cruel it would be for it to be its own person: roughly 15 years of its lifespan would be missing, it exists solely so someone else can control it, even if temporarily (Kris's circumstance But Worse), it'd be another person's personhood being violated for our benefit In Thee Story About Personhood, and it'd be icky & manipulative to impose our own preferences on someone with their own selfhood (and no, chat, that's not even what parenthood should look like.) Even if the Vessel never feels the need to rebel against you, painting it as its own person separate/independent of the Player, even at a later point, still naturally endows it with its own rights to autonomy (if you disagree, then your moral compass is screwy.) That's why it shouldn't happen.
The "evidence" people invoke to support the idea that it's its own person is either just "Undertale will repeat itself, trust me bro" (Frisk commits identity theft) or Gaster's wording during the Gonermaker Sequence (which I think was misleading & often misinterpreted, but basically, "It will not hear" could easily mean in the same way a rock or stick will not hear. "Shape its mind as your own" is just filling your new brain with your own interests/values/etc. to better reflect you in the story, not having a wholeass person to manipulate/overwrite for your own ends.) If I had to guess the reason we give it a separate name from ours, it'd be [A] just our handle/avatar as part of any typical RPG (character-creator in BG3, SDV, Skyrim, etc. in the same vein as the Lightners' Darkworld clothing) and [B] precisely to emphasize that the Player is a participant (if the game only asked for one name, most people would put in a fake RPG name, and our 4th-wall-breaking involvement would not be as clear.) When you investigate the puck Kris stuns you with, it says it looks like it would hurt. If you imagine either the soul or vessel as separate from yourself, then that's all they are. But, as with Darkworlds, our imagination makes everything real to us. (And no, chat, the limitations of choices doesn't mean that the choices we will get must come from "someone else." That'd just be confirmation bias from preemptively deciding the Vessel is its own person, using the limited nature of our choices in DR (nvm the fact that, once free of Kris, we may get a longer list of intuitively-programmed options) as "evidence" that the Vessel would be its own person, and not, y'know, just the limited nature of this type of RPG.)
But every other pattern of "evidence" about "objects coming to life and beings gaining sentience" as applied to the Vessel actually contradicts our own thematic relevance to everyone else's arc in the game: if one vessel gains its own sentience, then why not any and every other vessel we try to use? Ralsei is already the one learning to be his own person despite believing he's just an object. If every potential vessel we try to occupy deviates from us, then that communicates to the audience that we don't belong in this universe--we were summoned to do a job and then gtfo with the added wound-salt that some rando replaces us. Because whether it happens now or later, the vessel's independent personhood means our banishment. If any vessel is potentially its own person, then, as StarPup says^, there was and never has been a way for us to be ourselves in the game, and Thee Player, themself, breaks theme with everyone else, thus shattering the consistency & very substance of this game's thematic core. It'd mean there is no meaningful difference between one person and the person/object next to them. Thus, your differences & whatever makes you unique would be unnecessary, and there would be no reason for you to shine if someone else already has (ring any Kris & Susie bells?)
Another reminder that a random vessel is generated, and yet Gaster still asks your real name, if you skip Chapter 1. As my Reddit friend writes, "Almost as if we were the one destined to be inside the story regardless of how we name the vessel and not the vessel itself independently…" If you do name your vessel, and you name it yourself, then Gaster says, "Of course. Of course they are the same." How else to interpret that?
I don't want to control someone else, and I don't want to get sidelined Yet Again (by my own body, no less.) By just jumping from one person with their own sentience to another, the game is not really changing status quo. The Gonermaker Hijacker's words--the very first and most thematically-central problem in this story--also wouldn't be subverted, not really, if the Vessel was its own person (either from the start or later) rather than a way for us to be ourselves in that universe. It'd be an injustice to that New Person the story wouldn't have time to explore/rectify (even worse if it were left unresolved, both for it and us). Therefore, it'd be much better if the vessel were literally just a vessel, interchangeable with us, just our body. I just think references to the vessel as its own person needlessly confound our already-small, unpersoned place in the story.
We are already the one in the role of Person Screwed Out Of Our Personhood. The true subversion would be letting us be our own person, and the vessel is the sensible, clean way to do that. What good would it really do to teach Yet Another Lesson of (others'--not even our!) autonomy to the audience when that ground is already being covered by 3 other characters--one of whom had their own individuality distinguished from the Player in Chapter 1--and especially considering also how we occupy a subverted role of being a person with even less autonomy than, and having our being-self-ness, robbed by the player character (Kris) that it'd fall completely flat happening all over again with the vessel. We're so used to being asked to Step Aside, Self-Erase, Make Ourselves Small, Make Room For Everyone Else, that some have decided it's the track on which the story should stay & stagnate rather than subvert. (If there's so little room in the story, as it is, that THEE Player, themself, needs to give up their spot, then why have both the vessel and us be separate characters? Why write the Player into the story at all to begin with?) It makes more narrative sense for Team Knight to have discarded your ability to Be Yourself than it does for them to have discarded some rando who wasn't related to you and who would usurp you by developing their own sense of self, anyway. Why players want to erase themselves (and the rest of us by consequence) from a story that explicitly reaches out to us and asks us to involve ourselves remains beyond me.
Even if it's handled or decorated beautifully, there's nevertheless something intrinsically unsatisfying about the Player being usurped yet again [A] after someone already has done so to us (twice--the first time in Undertale and now by Kris) and [B] right before being banished once the game ends, anyway (which is fast approaching.) I'd be disappointed if the finite room left in the story was taken away from us and all the other characters that still need development and were given, instead, to this completely new, random-ass character that showed up late in the story. If the vessel were to be its own person, there would have to be a narratively significant reason, but all it would communicate to the audience is that there's never been any intended room for the Player. If the vessel's only connection is to the Player, and it gets taken away a second time in the form of "being itself," guess what that says to the Player. Whether the vessel were to get "character development" starting in Ch5 or 6 or at the very last minute of the game, the vessel was implied to have started a life of its own without us, it'd screw the Player over. The vessel's only canonical significance has been to us as our means of self-expression: it hasn't been independently developing its own character or arc this whole time, and wherever themes of identity and self-expression crop up in the story, it's more relevant to us than it is to some rando the story hasn't spent any time with. It'd be one helluva slap in the face for the story to give any time to a stranger when, for so much of it, we've already been denied selfhood. We're the one who needs to be able to be, express, exist as ourselves. My frame of mind when thinking of the vessel as its own person is one of detachment, because I know I'll be replaced, whereas the story actually asks for my investment, my hope that these will be my friends one day.
(Additionally, if the Vessel is or will become its own person, then why not have an existing character who already is their own person, who would maybe be less-hostile to us, fill that role and take us on? Again, what room in the story is there for the vessel if it isn't just our body/voice? These people will personify a rock before they personify the Soul.) If you think your vessel "needs" to be on-theme with everyone else, then that automatically kicks you off-theme, because where do you draw the line between pieces of you? Is your IRL body its own thing, too? Are Kris's or Susie's bodies going to eventually deserve autonomy & legal rights from their souls (even if they never ask for it?) Is your hair a separate entity from your skin, your eyes, your bones? Should your hands and vocal cords have a will of their own, and are you a controlling pos if you think they should belong to you? At some point, personal sovereignty means bodily autonomy/being able to call something your own. If nothing is yours, not even your own self, then you practically don't exist and are more dehumanized than ever.
Sure, this may be a story where (some; other objects stay objects in Darkworlds) objects learn to accept their personhood, but that's not the only or even main story--the main story is people learning to be themselves, and guess what that means if the Player can never have their own body? And if being oneself isn't the main thesis of the story, then why are the other characters wasting limited story time learning to do just that? And if we agree it is, then why wouldn't it apply to us?
Now, if the final story beat is, "This version of you gets to stay," with an emphasis on, "This Is Still YOU (just a piece)" then I'm fine with that, because that means you can "plug in" anytime you want using your imagination in the future after Ch7 ends, writing fanfic, making fanart, or even just having fantasies because it's all equally imaginary and thus "canon," anyway. But the way people speak about the vessel does not reflect that--it reflects the idea of yet another person, who is not us, coming in to push us out. But there's no scenario where blurring the lines between one person and another person (saying the vessel is us but also its own person) isn't significant in a Bad way in this, of all stories. Whatever differences exist between the vessel and ourselves should not be meaningful or emphasized by the story. (If the story is going to address the vessel as a poor/incomplete reflection of us, it should do it in a way that compliments how much more three-dimensional we are as a higher being in relation to this world, that there are wonders to us beyond the characters' comprehension.)
There's just this massive, ridiculous trend of self-erasure and putting a wall between oneself and the story in this fandom, and the Vessel-issue is undeniably part of that.
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