Levor wrote:I'm wondering if Charlie is more or less motivated in the way he represents himself. Charlie is content with a single city, isn't interested in trying to conquer anything in his own right, certainly doesn't want to take over the world. He just wants the 'game' to keep going on forever and so is constantly involved in stirring up further conflict by helping whoever will pay him and then switching to the other side when they pay him for a contract that trumps the original contract. Charlie enjoys the game for its own sake, and amassing the money and favours that extend his ability to be involved. He's a bit like Data's 'winning' strategy in "Peak Performance" - never tries to win, so never risks being destroyed, but, unlike FAQ pre-Queen Jillian, is actively involved in broader conflicts, and so therefore is part of the problem.
It's possible, I guess, especially if Erfworld were an actuality and not a story.
But I think that, storywise, Charlie's more likely to have some ambition deep down inside. I've always seen Charlie as being Erfworld's eventual final/semi-final boss (pending a plot twist somewhere), launching his own plot while Parson is breaking everything and eventually coming down to one last showdown. He's this really mysterious guy who keeps working to make himself ever more indispensable to Erfworld's sides, becoming more and more influential and powerful in the process. As a story goes, I just have a gut feeling that's going to lead up to something somewhere. It'd feel like an anticlimax for big bad Charlie, with his Arkentool, nigh-impenetrable fortress, and continually growing might to want only to be a bystander whose primary goal is just to maintain status quo and keep himself in calculated servitude.
And, if the Hippiemancer in the Magic Kingdom was more-or-less on the money, that, ironically, makes Charlie the Big Bad Guy in the overarching plot. If Hamster's true goal (narratively or given to him by erfworld) is to bring an end to the internicine warfare by defeating everyone, then Charlie is the one force that is truly his opposite - promoting warfare not for himself (in the sense that he has no interest in expanding his territory), but simply for its own sake.
Agreed, yes, on Charlie being the Big Bad. I foresee Charlie being Parson's end opponent (or very close to it), but I don't think Charlie just wants to keep things as is forever. At some point, if current trends keep up, Charlie is going to have a network that encompasses most, if not all, of Erfworld. As a character in a story, I'd think it a bit boring if he just wanted to maintain the way things are now for all eternity. The way I think the Charlie-Parson showdown would go is Charlie's launching his own plans as the final obstacle to Parson's own -- basically, two ways for Erfworld to change, neither of them being the same.
I mean, I can kind of see Charlie being the way your theory would present him to be, I just don't think it'd be particularly dramatic.
No-one, including the reader, believes that it could be that simple because, as Charlie says, no-one believes what he gives away for free. And the reader (and Hamster) got this info fairly 'cheaply'.
I dunno, I'd think it more of an anti-climax if Charlie's scheme is just keeping things as-is forever, instead of something at least fairly grandiose and complex like we're all expecting. When there's a mysterious and powerful overlord in the equation, I figure it's
supposed to be more complex than simple. Anything less just kind of makes me question why he's presented as being so big and mysterious in the first place.
