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franklespine · 5 months

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You know I think you guys might be on to something when you call Sam woman coded cause - genuinely - how do you, as writers of a show, be so misogynistic as to not include any female characters asides from damsels and hookups (specifically referring to the early seasons), and yet need so desperately to have a outlet for macho masculine patriarchy power dynamics that you have an adult male character experience misogyny?? How do you mess up that badly??

It's like, although they thought that putting female characters in the narrative other than to exist as sexy distressed lamps wouldn't appeal to the true blooded 2000s American audience. But yet it was completely necessary for there to be a bottom rung in the masculinity pyramid because - well how else can we as a society function!!

Anyway, ik reading too far into things is my special talent, and in most circumstances all of this stuff is just a joke in the show but wow they really had Dean poking fun of any of Sam's characteristics that don't fit into this Hyper True Blooded American Masculinity ideology as a butt of jokes for 15 years. The fact that he has longer hair, that he cares about his hair, that he's tidy, that he likes salads and isn't a big meat eater, that he's sympathetic, that he's a bitch. And of course these are just silly little jabs that Dean makes in sibling-like fashion but like wow 15 years. Damn.

And of course it's not only this that leads to the rather odd interpretation of a woman-coded Sam, but also the way he is treated directly by the narrative. Like, for example, being the family's possession, rather than an equal member. Dean has seen it as his job to look out for his little brother since he pulled him from the fire and the wellbeing of this infant was thrown onto his shoulders at age 4, and this has created a lot of ricocheting effects on both of them. This isn't to say that Dean doesn't love, care, respect, and value Sam, but it does mean that sometimes he treats him like a possession rather than a person. He makes a lot of crazy decisions in the show that he justifies as being for Sam's own good, even if it goes directly against Sam's wishes. After Sam leaves a note to Dean telling him he's going out for a bit to handle a case, Dean weasels his way in, not trusting him to handle it due to the mental issues Sam is facing at the time, and kills Amy, despite Sam begging him not to. Even though Dean knows Sam would never consent to an angle possessing him, he tricks him into it anyway. He does these things, and many others because he believes that he is acting in Sam's best interests, totally disregarding the fact that Sam has capacity to make judgements and handle the consequences himself, even going so far as to oppose what he directly knows or Sam tells him he wants.

Then of course there is the fact that the fear integral to his character - a loss of autonomy (bodily autonomy, but also autonomy to make his own decisions about his future, to be good, to be pure and faithful), is an explicitly feminine one. Then there is the strong subtext in his story of SA themes, I think in s4 a demon even refers to Sam as a 'whore' or that he's 'whoring it up' (with respect to Ruby), and the interesting prevalent idea of Sam questioning or going against the ideals/ideology of the masculine figure head (which would be Dean I guess) and getting punished for it. Sam suggests that maybe they take a more humanitarian approach with the cow blood drinking vampires in s2 and Dean punches him, Sam tries to get him to talk about their Dad and Dean punches him, Sam tries to get him to talk about Lisa and Ben and Dean punches him, Sam gets caught simply using his abilities and Dean punches him - twice. I think you get the picture.

Anyway. This post comes off as rather critical of Dean, which wasn't really my intention. It's more sort of a broader criticism of the rampant sexism that had its part in shaping the show - being one to come out of the early 2000s. Ideas such as this - you could really go on for hours as its fascinating how ideological frameworks are presented certain ways in media - and the way masculine and feminine social dynamics, to list only one, is presented in supernatural is definitely a can of worms.

#also dont take this too seriously LMAO its late and I am just thinking about woman coded sam #seriously - how did this happen #saw someone else talk about that scene in s7 after sam finds out dean killed amy and dean says something along the lines of #be pissed all you want but dont be a bitch about it #like wow he really called sam a bitch in the way that woman are called bitches #stop being overdramatic and having an irrationally emotional response to the horrible thing i just did to you #crazy #maybe it was the time it was made but genuinely the amount of times dean punches sam in the early seasons #just for having an opinion or wanting to talk about feelings #i was actually surprised #supernatural #spn #sam winchester #dean winchester #spn meta #i guess #again dont take this too seriously lmao #just a pondering

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mirror-ralsei · 7 months

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THEORY: Deeeltaaruuuneeee

You know, despite all the intense speculation about Deltarune - its dialogue, its music, its merchandise... - there's one obvious piece of foreshadowing that no one seems to think about. A critical piece. One that's been under our nose the whole time.

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The title.

Today we're going to deep dive into the title drop of Deltarune, its connections to Undertale and Deltarune, and speculate about what it could be foreshadowing in the future.

VISUALS

Deltarune's title appears with a notable wavering, almost interlacing effect. We've seen this effect before.

Asriel causes this when using HYPER GONER.

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And though the Memoryheads have more scan lines and desync than the Deltarune title, it's still an incredibly similar visual that stands out in the game.

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A similar wavering sort of effect also appears during Undyne the Undying's deformation and reformation.

I wonder if this effect might represent holding on through determination.

At her true death, Undyne the Undying begins to visibly melt, which we're told by Alphys is what's supposed to happen to monsters who contain high amounts of determination. So, it would follow that when she's wavering as she's clinging to life through determination, that's also an intended visual.

And if that's true of Undyne, it could be true of the Memoryheads, who have the same kind of effect. It would make sense, as they are amalgamates, whose very premise is based on the presence of determination.

So, the logo fading in with a wavering interlacing effect might mean that it represents something - or someone - returning to life through determination.

Of course, that's just my best guess. Maybe it represents something completely different - or nothing at all. But both the Memoryheads and Undyne the Undying hold a lot of apparent Deltarune references, and I wouldn't be surprised if their wavering effects were one of them, tying them into the same phenomenon that's happening to the logo.

There's something interesting happening during the logo's disappearance. Keep your eye on the SOUL at the center to observe it more easily.

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The logo is not just fading out - its parts seem to be undergoing some kind of mathematical transformation, causing them to multiply, and fade out as they do so.

If any math fans know what specific formula or transformation is being used here, that would be great to know, but as far as I can figure, whatever is happening to the parts are being reflected across multiple axes.

This concept of reflection as division appears several times in Deltarune. I've delved into it here.

Basically, we have this recurring idea that in order to multiply something, you have to divide it in half. Once divided, both halves are no longer the same as the original, resembling it though they may. You could say they're both "reflections" of the original.

That seems reminiscent of what's happening here.

The SOUL, and all the other parts of the logo, appear to be divided again and again, gradually fading with each division until there's nothing left of them.

This may have concerning implications for the plot.

I'm not sure what, exactly, this whole reflection-division concept is building up to, but it's definitely setting up something. And watching this soul and the rest of the title being reflected and divided so many times that it fades out of existence... well, you can't help but worry. There's a lot of wild conjecture we could launch from here, but I'll leave that to you.

There's one more thing here worth noticing. Deltarune is a parallel story to Undertale. If we compare their logos, they look fairly similar. Both are white text on a black background with a red heart in the center letter. But there are a couple of interesting differences.

First, Undertale's logo is comprised of detailed pixels, while Deltarune's is made of blocky letters.

This gives Deltarune's logo the impression of a game with old-school, scan-line-looking graphics (if someone knows what this is called please lmk lol), while Undertale's logo looks like that of a more modern game by comparison.

Interestingly, this is kind of inverse to the presentations of the games themselves. The pixel count in Deltarune is notably higher than that of Undertale. But here, it's the opposite.

(Side note: It also might be worth noting that as of the Sweepstakes, the Ice Palace also appears to be in this old-school style.)

Second, and most importantly, UNDERTALE is depicted in all caps. The visual logo for DELTARUNE is actually presented in all lowercase: "deltarune."

This is important in a series that has consistently used uppercase and lowercase as some kind of recurring element.

One quick example is when Sans explains the Level of Violence acronym: "you never gained LOVE, but you gained love. does that make sense?"

But it's not all acronyms. There's many other interesting usages throughout the series, such as Asgore's name being alternately presented normally or in all-caps, or the presence of certain titles in the soundtracks being in all-caps for no discernible reason.

We still don't really know what this element is meant to represent. But we do know that whatever it means, it is present between the "deltarune" and "UNDERTALE" logos.

Like with so many things here, we do have to wait on more information to truly understand the meaning. But once we know more about the reflection-division and uppercase-lowercase elements, then the multiplying, differently cased logos should also fall into place.

SOUND

The Deltarune title audio seems comprised of three parts: a sound reminiscent of a collective inhale or gasp, followed by a robotic voice saying "DELTARUNE," followed by a mixture of two types of sounds - one reminiscent of a collective exhale, the other a series of discordant chimes - that gradually fade out.

As many have pointed out, the opening sound in the Deltarune title is just an echoey version of the sound that plays when transitioning up from the Dark World to the Light World in Castle Town: snd_dtrans_lw.

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Awesome! We have a confirmed connection for the beginning part of the audio. Surely this will provide some insight?

Well... not really...?

While we know a little bit more about the Light vs Dark World concept than we do about, say, the reflection-division concept, I feel we're still not much closer to understanding the meaning behind this sound effect.

I mean, the information we have here is pretty limited. The sound is used when Kris and Susie rise back up to the Light World, which could tell us that the title audio relates to something (whatever the title is representing here) rising up a level, too. If you want to stretch, taking the allegorical into account, maybe it represents some "fictional" or "escapist" elements becoming more "real." This has kind of been alluded to already, with Susie wanting to bring the Darkners into the Light World because it's just "better" than real life, and Berdly and Noelle agreeing and wanting to create Dark Fountains.

Beyond that...there's not much here, that I can think of. If anything, the usage of this audio in the title drop is more important for telling us the in-game usage is important than the other way around. We kind of have to know what the title represents to be able to know the significance of it "rising up"/transitioning between worlds would be.

There's also the sound effect that plays when Noelle or the others "get stronger," which kind of resembles an altered version of dtrans_lw, and would provide some more context if true... but I can't be certain.

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Anyway, let's continue onward.

Next up is the robotic-sounding voice saying "DELTARUNE."

This appears to be a text-to-speech voice. Moreover, the TTS voice appears to be one of the same ones from abc_123_a.ogg.

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This is notable because that TTS is also used for Gaster's text noise in "room_gaster" (Entry 17).

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In other words, it's very possible that the voice saying "Deltarune" is supposed to be Gaster's.

This isn't really as shocking as it seems. Gaster very much appears to be the framing device around Deltarune as an entire game - he gives it to us as SURVEY_PROGRAM, and communicates to us during Game Overs and save file screens. The title being another part of the game's framing, it wouldn't really be a surprise that he'd be here too.

If we do assume the voice belongs to Gaster, the more interesting questions become why he's able to speak a fully voiced word, and why the voice sounds so...strained. One can almost imagine someone desperately leaving a final message, or barely managing to contact someone, before subsequently fading out. All subjective, but interesting to think about.

The final part might be the most mysterious.

There are two main overlapping kinds of sounds playing here: a collective sigh or moan that gradually fades out, and a variety of discordant notes.

Regarding the sigh, I don't know for sure. The most simple guess would be that, if the inhale-sounding sound represents transitioning upwards from Dark to Light World, then perhaps the exhale-sounding sound represents the inverse - transitioning downwards from Light to Dark World.

The only problem with this assumption is that Kris and Susie do transition downwards from the Light World to the Dark World, and the different sound effects that have played so far don't really sound exhale-y at all. So that part's a mystery.

The other overlapping sound jumps out instantly, though.

An immediate association, to me, is Snowgrave.

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Although these notes in the Snowgrave sound effect are much clearer than the distorted ones in the Deltarune title, they both are seemingly random- and discordant-sounding, and the sound itself is reminiscent of chimes.

But there is another instance of this kind of sound.

During the Chapter 1 livestream, many tiny differences were added to the game's build for the purposes of the stream. One such difference was the forest room containing the ballerina-type enemies.

In this room, visuals were added resembling the gray star-like sparkles that also seem present during Snowgrave's animation.

And a feature was added where interacting with the ballerinas would cause them to play a bunch of discordant, glass-like sounds.

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Toby Fox was unusually cryptic about this change. He describes the sounds only as "a horrible noise," and when asked what they're saying, replies, "Secret. Never ask a dog that question."

So, it seems likely there's some intended mystery surrounding this difference, and it is unusual to me that the ballerinas' chimes are so similarly chaotic as Snowgrave and the title audio.

Personally, my best guess is that it has something to do with the silvery sparkles. "snd_snowgrave" notably does NOT include the preceding chimes - which play while the sparkles are floating out of Noelle's hands. The livestream ballerina enemy area seems to once again associate these chimes with the presence of sparkles.

If that's the case, then maybe the chimes at the end of the title audio have something to do with the sparkles.

Of course, to those without a music theory background like most of us, sound perception seems pretty subjective. Three sounds that all sound like a bunch of glassy, discordant notes to my ears could actually be completely unrelated.

So take this with a grain of salt. The only truly solid information we have is that the Deltarune logo voice seems to use the same TTS as abc_123 and Gaster. The rest is speculation.

But if these similarities are intentional, and those chiming sounds in the title audio are supposed to represent something to do with Snowgrave, that's obviously not a good sign.

CONCLUSION

While I don't think we have all the puzzle pieces just yet, we do have a variety of clues that give off a strong tone about what's going on. This is my suspicion:

The Deltarune title is depicting a tragedy.

Something bad is happening here.

The strained and desperate voice, the inhaled gasp, the collective sigh as a discordant collection of sounds and reflections fade out into nothingness... it's not looking good.

We know Gaster met with an unfortunate fate, and it's his voice that's speaking to us. We know dividing something causes the original to be forever altered and lost, and the SOUL and everything else that makes up the title seems to be undergoing that until it's reduced to nothingness. We know Undyne reformed herself through determination with a similar visual to the logo's appearance, but like Undyne, the logo ends up fading out anyway.

And let's be honest. We know something bad has happened to Deltarune before.

Gaster wants us to make "a new future" with him. One that shines with hope. ("Unlike the old future" perhaps implied.) He specifically made his appearance known in Undertale to players with low levels of violence.

By contrast, this implies something dark and terrible happened to Deltarune's universe in the past. It's in all the little things. Alphys sets the stage with Mew Mew 2's darker storyline. Kris' birdcage has "seen a lot of crashes," and they certainly act like this isn't their first time being possessed. Sans has seen his share of bad timelines, and in the casino dialogue, talks about back when he was less experienced, when one time he witnessed an especially bad snow. Spamton knows exactly what will happen to Kris on a Weird Route, as if he's already seen it - almost as if he's been frozen for years inside rings and behind mysterious locked doors. Noelle claims she doesn't know what Snowgrave is, but also stares off into the freezer, and can't remember what she's done. There's characters preparing for a particularly bad winter. And then there's the perpetual threat of the Roaring, and Ralsei's haunted expression when he describes it, like he's seen it before. There's the fact that we fall down into an evacuated town within a barren landscape of darkness and eyes. The title screen, after all this, plays a mournful piano song over an image of the three heroes at Worlds' Edge. Before the Story.

So, is it really any surprise?

There's so much writing on the walls about Deltarune having repeating, tragic elements, and the title drop seems no exception.

Will we be the ones to break the cycle, and change Deltarune's future? Or is the fate depicted in the title the only possible outcome?

(Screenshot credit: 1)

#i do not have a great understanding of interlacing or anti-aliasing or math so feel free to shake your head dismissively as you read this #the 10 video per post limit was sadge btw i would've put a few more comparisons together for your convenience #but ah well you'll just have to scroll back a bit. sorry #deltarune theory #utdr theory #ETA i am so tired rn and its too late to private this now so just pretend the 'getting stronger' sfx part makes ANY kind of sense #it is absolutely the same sound effect and i dont have time to dig into the implications atm. just know. they are there

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