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a-town-called-hometown · 1 month

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yippee! apologies if my takes are horrendously bad

my personal take on the matter is that i definitely think the dark worlds can work as a metaphor for escapism without undermining the darkners' personhood. it can be more than one thing, yknow? the darkners are important, their lives matter. and the lightners do go to the dark world as an escape from the problems they face in their own life. but that's not the darkners' whole PURPOSE, yknow? i mean. according to the laws of the universe of deltarune yes darkners' "purpose" is to serve the lightners but like it's not their whole purpose in the STORY.

it's sort of like how, in UNDERTALE, LOVE represents how distant you've become, how easy it is for you to hurt people. but it also literally gives you the power to destroy the world.

i think the biggest reason i believe escapism is at least a part of deltarune's narrative is queen.

queen's whole speech in both of her fights is about how she intends to provide escapism for the lightners (so that they will worship her but also so that they will he happy). she wants to turn the whole world into a dark world, so that everyone can live in bliss and not have to worry about the woes of the light world. she mentions "Staring, Tapping, To Receive Joy. Staring, Tapping, To Avoid Pain." which is like pretty much the definition of escapism

she wants to help Noelle with the problems she faces in the light world ("Noelle. Who Will Be There To Help Her? Her Strange And Sad Searches" and "My One Idea To Help Noelle, Failed") by just... shoving it away for a blissful fantasy world ("Wake? No, She Has Already Awakened Too Much. Let Her Close Her Eyes And Sleep Away, Into A Darker, Darker Dream.")

...i forgot the rest of what i wanted to say!

well first off, thank you for your ask! I'm going to get extremely in depth in my answer, so bear with me here. sorry it took several weeks to write this. the escapism reading of deltarune is pretty deeply entrenched in fandom, and to refute it, I felt it required a full-length essay to completely explain my viewpoint.

yes, "the lightners desire escapism" does not automatically translate to that being the darkners' actual narrative purpose. escapism can be a theme without dehumanizing those who are used in order to escape - in fact, I've read a number of stories that use someone's desire to escape to HIGHLIGHT how they're hurting others in pursuit of that. I believe that toby fox is definitely capable of telling a story about kids having a valid desire to escape, and about them grappling with having inadvertently created a world of real, living people as a result.

(I'll reiterate again that this is not the story arc that generally shows up in fanon. the common consensus is that the game will end in an omori-esque "growing out of" the dark worlds. it's why I have a huge dislike of the fanon escapism reading, given that the darkners are shown as people whose lack of agency parallels kris' own. it would feel cheap if the resolution to that plot was that the darkners were actually never meant to be agents in their own fates. but this is a digression.)

the reason why i DON'T believe that this is a story that toby fox is telling is because of the way the world, themes, and characters are written. put simply, it just doesn't come across as congruent with the story being told.

deltarune's main themes are agency, fate, identity, and control. this is a conflict that shows up in nearly every major character, is baked into the worldbuilding, and is the central struggle involving us, the player. the protagonist of deltarune is literally possessed by us against their will. the darkners are objects that have no choice but to serve and be discarded. over and over again, there is emphasis on roles that characters play - and crucially, roles that are imposed on them.

what would escapism mean, in this thematic context? in real life, escapism can represent any number of things, but in a story, a major narrative theme generally has to dovetail with other major narrative themes in the work. I would argue that escapism in deltarune would likely mean going to a place where characters are able to choose for themselves what roles they embody, or even to discard the notion of roles altogether. a fantasy of control is the only way to escape a reality where you have no agency. and honestly, it's hard to imagine that something could count as an escapist fantasy if you don't even get to choose whether or not you participate in it.

let's talk about kris.

I see a lot of discussions around kris that say that kris goes into the dark worlds to escape. the dark worlds are posited as kris' fantasy of heroism. it's a world where they can seem heroic and cool, a world where they can have friends. this theory makes a decent amount of sense on the surface level, but only until you consider that kris is being controlled in order to go into the dark worlds. and it is not a control that they appear to welcome.

if those worlds represent kris' fantasy, then why don't they get to choose what happens in those fantasies? why are they being controlled by an external force, one that they actively push back against? if it's really an escape, then why does everything about this world reflect their lack of agency? if they really think this world is just a pure fantasy, then why do they care if spamton falls when his strings are cut?

because they're being deliberately obscured to the player, it is hard to say how kris actually feels about many subjects... but I do seriously doubt that they view the dark worlds as an escape. they don't act in a way that is consistent with that. they resist their lack of agency, and what little we do see of their reactions to darkner characters doesn't suggest that they view those characters as part of a disposable fantasy, either. they seem to have complicated feelings on ralsei. and of course, one of their biggest emotional reactions in the game is to the spamton fight. I would argue that that suggests they have empathy for spamton, which is a hard emotional reaction to have if you believe he's just part of a fantasy. not impossible, mind you, but it seems unlikely that kris believes that all this is simply fantasy.

also, considering that snowgrave both actively discredits the idea that the dark worlds are mere fantasy and is actively traumatic for kris... I seriously doubt they'd open another dark world in chapter 3 on a snowgrave run if their motive was purely to escape. on that route, they've seen the damage we can cause in a dark world. they know that berdly has sustained lasting damage due to our actions, assuming he's not outright dead. why would they want to try and "escape" to a place like that again now that they know what can happen?

the only answer is that they have a motive that isn't escapist.

now, as for ralsei... what part does he have to play in all this?

ralsei does play a lot to the fun, fantastical elements of the dark worlds. he delivers the prophecy that kickstarts the adventure. he flatters both kris and susie endlessly when they act appropriately heroic. he welcomes them into the castle and even makes nice rooms for them. he initially seems tailor-made to enable a fantastical experience where no real issues can ever complicate anything, and where the pain of reality can successfully be hidden from. but there's a lot of complications to the idea that he might represent an escapist fantasy.

the first, and what honestly seems the most important to me, is that he doesn't encourage kris and susie to remain in the dark worlds. he is welcoming and kind, but once the adventure is over, he prompts them to return to the light world. he wants them to deal with their more "real" problems like homework. that doesn't feel like he is trying to facilitate escapism in them. a real fantasy would encourage you to stay in it, wouldn't it?

and while ralsei is definitely invested in making sure the lightners are happy, there are always cracks that show. he isn't able to make kris ignore what happened in the spamton fight. he isn't able to convince susie to be peaceful and kind. and in his very essence, he represents a number of uncomfortable ideas. very importantly, he represents a number of uncomfortable ideas to kris.

this probably ain't your first fandom rodeo, so I'm not going to explain all the different ways that ralsei interacts with kris' personal issues. there's plenty of posts on it out there. what i will point out is, once again, it feels odd that a character who seems tailor made to bring up kris' most uncomfortable associations with their lack of agency and their outsider status in their own family would be part of a fantasy of escapism to them. you'd think that they'd prefer something that didn't have an inbuilt hierarchy, a prophecy that denied them autonomy, or especially a person that reminded them how little they fit into hometown.

that doesn't mean kris doesn't care about him at all - it seems very likely that they do. what I mean to say here is that he just seems ill-suited to an escapism reading, both behaviorally and on a conceptual level. it doesn't seem like that's at all part of his servitude towards the lightners.

of course, there is another non-lightner entity that ralsei seems diegetically engineered to serve. but I'll discuss that later.

now as for susie...

yes, susie definitely views the dark worlds as more fun than the light world. and why wouldn't she? the light world sucks for her, and she doesn't seem very aware of the fact that the dark world can also suck. you could definitely make the argument that she views the dark worlds as a fantastical escape from reality... were it not for the fact that she treats her darkner friends with just as much importance as she does kris and noelle.

can someone treat components of an escapist fantasy as real and important? of course. but given deltarune's themes of agency and control, as well as the fact that darkners exist in servitude to the lightners, I feel like you'd have to make escapism tie into forcing others into a lack of agency if you wanted the theme to feel coherent with the rest of the work. this would require susie to be limiting the agency of the darkners around her. and obviously, she doesn't do that. her presence around them might be inherently limiting, just by simple virtue of being a lightner, but she isn't aware of it, and clearly is uncomfortable with the idea of limiting anyone's agency. she encourages ralsei to make choices. and she supports lancer in basically anything he wants to do. her treatment of lancer is integral to chapter 1's narrative, and it seems like that treatment of ralsei is integral to the ongoing narrative as well!

her preference for the dark world feels very rooted in her engagement with it as its own reality. rather than trying to avoid her real-life problems by engaging in a pretense, she seems to simply want to spend time with her friends in a place that isn't cruel to her. she isn't ignoring any of the dark world's problems in service of that, either. she notices when things don't line up. if she thought of it as a fantasy, wouldn't she be inclined to ignore issues that impede the fantasy?

and critically - like kris, she does not intentionally choose her imposed role in the prophecy at first. she steps into the role of bad guy to resist it, but that role is limiting too, and she eventually acquiesces to being a hero. it's never something she's completely on board with, though. she actively pushes back the limitations that the role places on her. I find this important to reiterate when we are discussing the notion of the characters viewing the dark worlds as fantasy.

noelle has a complicated relationship to the dark worlds. susie tells her that it's a dream to make her accept the strange reality she finds herself in, which works well on her. she continues to think of it as a strange dream throughout the chapter. (though, like the others, it is not a 'dream' she entered of her own volition!)

it is also a markedly unpleasant 'dream' at times. she has her agency restricted, is kidnapped, has to evade a controlling monarch, and is even tied up in a weird evangelion cross thing on the hand of a giant robot. it's not purely fun. noelle does like scary things, and while it might be healthy for her to have an experience where she stands up to a controlling adult figure... again, the circumstances make it difficult for me to assume that this is a fantasy she would choose for herself. not impossible, mind you, but it's not the first reading of the situation that comes to mind.

and while she does say she wishes she could dream like this every day in the normal route, that does happen specifically because she was talking to the girl she likes. it makes sense she'd find that pleasant. I don't think that necessarily equates to her finding the dark worlds escapist.

and importantly, this isn't the sentiment that she expresses in every route.

again, there's a lot of analysis on snowgrave, so I won't bother regurgitating it much here. but it's nightmarish for both kris and noelle, and very likely fatal for berdly. noelle needs to believe that the event is a dream, for her own psychological safety, but one of the most important parts of snowgrave...

...is that its events, and the world it took place in, are very, very real.

noelle wants to have the strength to face her problems, both in the regular route and in the snowgrave route. rather than escaping from them, she views the "dream" as a chance to practice dealing with her day-to-day issues. it's just that in the regular route she finds that strength authentically, and in the snowgrave route, that desire is manipulated and pushed until she is forced to kill berdly. she doesn't interpret snowgrave as an escape gone wrong. she views it as a dream that became a nightmare. and those are two extremely different things.

but i haven't even gotten to the biggest thing that undermines the concept that the dark worlds are a metaphor for escapism! which is: this fucking guy is dead wrong about everything.

so full disclaimer - I really love berdly. I think he's slept on a lot in the fandom because he's annoying and weird. which is fair, I suppose, but I think ignoring him hinders a lot of people's understanding of deltarune's overall narrative. because berdly often illustrates a lot of concepts in the game, but his narrative framing as a joke (usually...) prevents the player from taking it completely seriously. he has things to say and ideas to show off, it's just that he's often very loud and kind of dumb in his expression of them. which is kind of the point!

ralsei brings up the idea that the darkners are meant to serve the lightners very seriously in chapter one. by extension, and by way of the literal mechanics involved in a dark world's creation, we can infer that this logic is probably something that also applies to the dark worlds themselves. they are allegedly worlds and characters that only are supposed to fulfill a dream of the lightners. but due to narrative framing and deltarune's themes, we know that that's not the full truth. however dark worlds and darkners are created, they deserve to have their own agency. they can't just exist to fulfill a higher being's wishes.

you know who else undermines that view of the dark worlds? berdly! berdly does!!!!

because berdly is the only lightner in the game so far who does take the dark worlds to be an escapist adventure! he wants to turn cyber world into smartopia. he views this as a chance to be a cool hero. he believes he's going to get the girl, he's going to shape this world to his own liking, and maybe also he's going to get queen to acknowledge him or something so he stops being a forgettable little bluebird. and not only does none of this happen, his steadfast belief that it will happen is continually a joke within the narrative!!

berdly's wishes for uncomplicated escapist fantasy are flat-out denied by the dark worlds themselves. as a lightner, those worlds should be serving him. he should have the power to do whatever he wants within the bounds of an escapist fantasy. these npcs should be singing his praises!

but he doesn't have the power. and this world doesn't sing his praise. because it just isn't an escapist fantasy. he isn't right to view it that way. his wishes for heroism are always going to be thwarted.

so now that I've gotten all that out of the way, let's swing back over to the subject of your original ask. queen.

because, like berdly, queen's entire character arc is about how she's completely wrong about what the lightners actually want.

queen would in fact like nothing more to place the lightners into an escapist fantasy. she believes that that's the best way to serve them and make them happy forever. as a darkner, queen has very much internalized the idea that a lack of control is what actually makes people happy. since darkners have no choice in their destinies and are supposed to be happy in it, and since she personally finds her role as a darkner fulfilling, she believes that that's true of all people everywhere. if you want to make people happy, you just have to remove that pesky personal agency!

so she spends the story trying to force the lightners and particularly noelle into situations where she controls them in order to make them ostensibly happier. she does genuinely believe that this is the right thing to do, but as she finds out eventually, she's just wrong. noelle doesn't want that. queen believes that escapism is why the lightners use the internet... but that's totally wrong too.

while there are other searches mixed in, noelle is trying to use the internet to find her sister. instead of trying to hide from whatever happened, noelle wants to figure it out. queen's thesis about noelle and the lightners is proven wrong even before she personally encounters noelle in the dark world. it's just that queen doesn't realize it due to her limited perspective.

the concept of escapism being brought up with both queen and berdly is not there to say that the dark world is escapist. rather, it's there to say that it isn't. despite the dark worlds being a fantastical place, they are extremely real. to view them as a means of escape is foolhardy at best. you cannot act as though you are above consequences within them.

themes and ideas exist within the story for a sake of an audience. so let's get into the final character I need to discuss here. hopefully this will tie my thesis of deltarune together neatly.

that character is of course us. the player.

when creating a piece of fiction, an astute author will often identify and anticipate an audience's reactions to certain things in their work, and write things in such a way that they elicit the desired reactions. in essence, a writer is directing the "character" of the audience. how we feel and how we are anticipated to react to things is an integral part of nearly every fiction.

that effect is far more overt when dealing with metanarrative fiction that diegetically involves the audience. since the fiction is saying a lot of things about the general 'you,' the audience in aggregate, your reactions to certain things in the story have to be finely cued and anticipated by the author, so that the author can thus commentate on the reactions that you have to the story. the "character" you are assumed to inhabit is posited by the author to have certain traits.

to explain what I mean in plainer terms, I'll use the player of undertale's no mercy route as an example. because undertale is commenting on the way rpgs generally work. the player's behaviors in no mercy are attributed by characters in the story to be the result of us acting like a typical gamer. we kill the characters in the game because we want exp. and more than that, it's because we want to see everything the game has to offer. the role we inhabit in this role-playing game is that of a completionist. you could say that that's assumed to be our "character" in no mercy.

deltarune also posits that certain things are true of its audience. by being written to evoke certain cultural ideas, rpg tropes, and references to undertale, it guarantees that its audience will probably have certain traits, and spends a large amount of its conceptual focus commenting on those traits. one of those traits is nostalgia, which is probably an idea that I'll expound upon in a further essay because it's quite integral to my reading of deltarune. but the main one I mean to discuss here, and why I went off on this tangent about how audiences are dealt with in metafiction, is that we are posited as someone who believes in the logic of certain narratives.

deltarune's writing evokes a lot of portal fantasy narratives. alice in wonderland, narnia, pretty much every story where it's revealed at the end to be all a dream... the story of deltarune superficially resembles a lot of those. this, I think, is responsible for the popularity of the escapism theory. because those stories are often at their end about a child learning to put away fantasy and grow up, people tend to believe that deltarune must be about the same thing. but I truly don't think that deltarune is trying to do anything with that aspect of portal fantasy narratives, at least not directly. its main characters aren't involved in that exact type of coming-of-age arc.

instead, deltarune is very concerned with what happens to characters in fantasy, and specifically fantasy rpgs. if your world is deemed to not matter because it's a dream, what does that mean for you, who has no choice but to live in it? if you are an npc whose role has been predetermined for you via script, then can you ever decide for yourself what you want? what if you want to matter? what if you want to be your own person?

as the major controlling force of deltarune, we are initially cued to believe that deltarune is like a dream. it superficially fulfills so much of what we want from undertale fanon. hometown seems like it's a perfect idyllic town, at least until you start noticing the obvious cracks. and remember what I said about ralsei earlier? he is so reminiscent of asriel, and extremely eager to help us. it's not a stretch to say that making us specifically view deltarune as dreamlike and idyllic is probably part of his purpose in the game.

I would not say that we are posited as escapist. but the idea of escapism as brought up with queen and berdly is meant to strike at the heart of a much deeper idea that deltarune is trying to deconstruct. because if we view deltarune as a dream, escapist or otherwise, then we are inclined to write the internal realities of the characters inside off. the dark world can disappear without it mattering. we can control kris without it mattering. if it's all a dream, what does it matter? why should we care to let its characters go free? aren't we supposed to be in control?

if deltarune is an rpg... what is the significance of us interacting with it?

#deltarune #deltarune analysis #BIG big thanks to tvlandofficiall for being my sounding board and providing the flavor images for this essay #this one gets into some big overarching analysis of deltarunes construction and what it deconstructs. hope u enjoy

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tvlandofficiall · 9 months

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what ARE your addison thoughts? i know you said spamton isn't one, but do you have any other opinions on them?

what does it mean when noelle kills the pink addison?

after all, they're not a huge character. sure, the music cuts out after you kill them, and it is framed as a horrific thing, but you can still back out of the snowgrave route at any time afterwards. their and the other darkners' deaths are able to be smoothed over quite easily -- too easily. the game merely treats it as though you didn't recruit them. berdly is the only one that snaps noelle out of her trance -- and as well, he is marked as the point of no return, the divergence point of snowgrave. but why?

in the world of deltarune, to be "real" is a metric of power. the more "real" one is within the system of deltarune, the more power one has. we stand at the top as players -- existing on the highest plane of "reality", our reality. the lightners are a level below that -- lines of code and dialogue in the game of deltarune that we play. the darkners exist on the lowest level -- as the lightners are video game characters to us (both literally and figuratively, as mirrors of undertale's cast), the darkners are mere objects to the lightners. it's a system that reflects all the way down. we "determine" the fates of the lightners, and the lightners "determine" the fates of the darkners. of course, each level of reality is still a reality. the darkners are no less of people than the lightners, and the lightners are no less of people than us. but that doesn't mean this power metric exists merely in the characters' own heads, nor is it something simply realizing one's own worth can overcome. it is a real system baked into the world of deltarune, one that exists to oppress and govern the people within it. this "layered reality" and the power dynamics that divide it are tangible, constricting, and horrifying.

in snowgrave, we see this come into play when we kill the darkners. noelle becomes conditioned to see them as "enemies". the snowgrave run is also faster, quicker -- you can "clear" the dark world and get to the coveted, "more real" light world faster that way. even gaster doesn't treat the darkners as important -- ralsei does not get to be "very, very special" like the others. and you can back out of the snowgrave route at any time, so long as you don't kill berdly -- a lightner. someone "more real".

i tend to stay away from connecting undertale to deltarune too much via "plot facts" and the such. taking the darkners to the light world, for example, is not the solution to deltarune's conflict, as it is not a one to one mirror of undertale's. but there are a number of symbolic and thematic ideas that come up in both games. the darkners in deltarune are framed much like the monsters were in undertale -- the "enemy" character type.

but what measure is an "enemy", anyway? don't these "enemies" deserve to be treated like people, too?

#ooc #pink addison #deltarune #weird route #this one got WAY out of hand. and kind of veered into my thesis statement for deltarune as a whole. whoops!#i think about those recontextualized lines post-snowgrave so much. OUCH. ouch.

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callmearcturus · 2 months

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The Video Gaming Major Arcana

The latest patron episode of Into The Aether/@intothecast asked the boys to decide a video game for every Major Arcana card. They ran out of time on it and only got 2/3s thru

my ass was like "Challenge Accepted"

0 - The Fool - Dragon Quest (The Fool is infinite potential and is at the start of a long journey. DQ as a series is a long-running, is a bedrock of the medium, and has done its own takes on everything from pokemon to minecraft, and it either did it first or did it better.)

1 - The Magician - Metroid and Zelda (The Magician is the first person the Fool meets and is a guide for the journey. The Magician is associated strongly with teaching and with tools. Metroid and Zelda both are foundational works and they revolve around gating player process through tools.)

2 - The High Priestess - FEZ (The High Priestess is another guide, but sits before the veil, keeping guard over arcane, hidden knowledge and deciding when to share the secrets of the universe. FEZ is one of the Big Games that hide under layers and layers of mystery.)

3 - The Empress - Stardew Valley (The Empress presides over growth and cultivation of her kingdom, sitting in a field with wheat in hand. SDV is chiefly about taking care of your own domain, the farm and the wider village.)

4 - The Emperor - Civilization (The Emperor is the firm hand of government and can be an important navigator in chaos but also is angered by lack of obedience and losing control. Civ is all about steering every aspect of a nation and protecting it viciously.)

5 - The Hierophant - Pokemon (The Hierophant is a cultural, societal leader that gains power from people who believe similarly but subsequently is very set in their ways. Pokemon is a huge phenomenon that unites people of all ages, but also struggles heavily with innovation and progress.)

6 - The Lovers - Journey (The Lovers aren't necessarily smoochy-smoochy, but represent a Decision, joining hands with another person and striding into the future together. It's Journey. If you know, you know.)

7 - The Chariot - Bethesda's Catalog (The Chariot is a tumultuous, potent card. They hold onto the reins of powerful beasts and drive forward, blazing a new path. But if they lose grip, everything goes to hell. Bethesda's works tend to have this incredible ambition to them, and when they hit, they HIT, but when they miss, it's dramatic.)

8 - Justice - Dark Souls (Justice is the system and its enforcement of its rules, whether they feel fair or arbitrary. I feel DS fits it well-- it relentlessly follows its own rules and is firm in them, which can either draw players in or seem cruel and unwelcoming.)

9 - The Hermit - Immortality (The Hermit is a wise person who gained specialized knowledge but through great personal sacrifice. They find it difficult to share their knowledge because they essentially traded that ability to communicate easily for the wisdom. Immortality has some deeply complicated concepts to communicate, but its methods and the basic mechanics it uses are to some people impossible to understand.)

10 - (Wheel of) Fortune - Spelunky (Fortune is the card of pure luck and the whims of fate and how you survive being caught in its spokes. Spelunky is a pure Rogue-like as opposed to a Rogue-lite and there is no knowing what the procgen will give you.)

11 - Strength - Undertale (Strength is specifically about emotional control and fortitude. It's not about slaying the lion, but holding it, keeping it from lashing out. Undertale is a game that asks the player to endure emotional struggles both against the mechanics and against their own inclinations.)

12 - The Hanged Man - Signalis (OH BOY ITS MY FAVE CARD. The thing about the Hanged Man is that it's a test, a gamble, a deal. The Hanged Man is not hung from the neck, this is not an execution, they are inverted. They choose to be inverted in the hopes of gaining some Insight into the universe, but in doing so risk madness or obsession or doom. Signalis is both a game about a protagonist going through this and also a game that will put the player through this if they aren't careful.)

13 - The Nameless Arcana - Braid (I'm not even personally a fan of Braid, but I believe it is one of the handful of Original Indie Games. The very existence and popularity of Braid and its contemporaries showed that games outside the big studios could hit big. Braid (or Cave Story for the PC crowd) altered the landscape.

14 - Temperance - Yakuza (Temperance is the melding of disparate elements that should not go together into something grand and new, and maintaining that balance. Yakuza manages to be genuine and profound not in spite of its strange mixture of tones and mechanics but because of them.)

15 - The Devil - Genshin Impact (I don't feel the need to elaborate on this one.)

16 - The Tower - Shenmue (The Tower is total upheaval and where it all comes crashing down, where ambition crumbles and brings an institution down with it. Shenmue is not solely to blame for the failure of the Dreamcast and Sega's exit from the console arena, but it contributed to it and is emblematic of that seachange.)

17 - The Star - Mass Effect (The Star is a beacon in the darkness, a distant light that indicates not so much a goal, but that the journey will continue. Mass Effect is a landmark title that maybe didn't execute on half the things it tried, strangled by its own scope, but it still showed what games could do, broadening the possibility space. It is hope for greater experiences and art.)

18 - The Moon - Metal Gear (The Moon illuminates the path through the darkness, but creates illusions in the reflections, demanding the querent move forward with care or they will go astray, go mad. Is Metal Gear really deep? Is it the closest triple-A games get to arthouse? Does it have meaning? Or is it a mess? Is it too Problematique to justify it's big ideas? Is it all just really, really stupid? Or is it genius?)

19 - The Sun - Tetris Effect (The Sun comes at the end of a long, arduous journey. It is the sigh of relief, the tears of release, the light to finally see how far you've come. Tetris Effect is the latest iteration of one of the oldest formulas ever, and it's brilliant and celebratory and invites everyone to take part in its joy.)

20 - Judgement - Pathologic (Judgement is all-seeing and all-knowing, the final tally and the reckoning. So is Pathologic. Few experiences demand so much from the player, and few games are so brutally honest in answering the player's decisions. In Pathologic, you will get what you deserve.)

21 - The World - The Outer Wilds (The beginning is the end is the beginning. Completion and totality and holistic understanding of Everything. It's gotta be Outer Wilds.)

#arc plays games

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deltaruminations · 1 year

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i think one of the most telling examples of how we’ve been influenced to think about gaster is that if we say no to him after he asks if we want to continue after a chapter 1 game over, we’ll proceed to hear the absolute gentlest most heartbroken fucking unaccompanied piano arrangement of gaster’s motif any of us has ever heard and we’ll still be like "huh wonder why THAT’S there."

it’s because he’s sad!!! he’s fucking sad!!! this is the sound of an incorporeal man holding back metaphysical tears!!! WHY would the game have us linger here at a black screen instead of immediately going back to the menu like a normal RPG would? because it wants us to have this quiet moment in the dark with him, to finally catch him in a moment that’s raw and deeply vulnerable and unmarred by either cryptic mythologizing or his own mask of confident, neutral professionalism, just a black screen and a tender, melancholic song. and then he closes the fucking game himself.

it’s like, after narrating our ending, he just can’t think of anything else to say. he doesn’t want to tell us to go away because he probably doesn’t want us to, we’re both his last hope for success and the only person he’s been able to "connect" with in a very long time. he just sits there awkwardly with us while he quietly processes the situation, before he finally accepts that this is the world’s (and his) fate and he can’t force us to stay there with him any longer.

again im not trying to woobify him, what im saying is that we’re so used to seeking out spooky, vaguely sinister lore for an extraplanar entity that even when we finally meet him, it doesn’t occur to us that he could just be another character, one who’s VERY different from the other characters but a character nonetheless.

gaster is fundamentally cryptic and ambiguous, possibly in part because he intends to be hard to read. i think he hides himself between layers and behind clinical speech and trees because he’s uncomfortable with being seen, but he isn’t a perfect rational being, he’s just a guy, and he can’t connect with us without risking "pieces" of himself seeping through. just as undertale challenged us to hunt through it for pieces of gaster’s lore, deltarune is now going out of its way to give us insight into his character, but just as with his lore, we have to seek it out and consider it carefully in order to learn anything. like do you understand why im suddenly so obsessed with this guy!!! not to mention all the ways he parallels kris and chara and alphys and serves as a reflection of the player and. god. i love these fucking video james so much

#$ waltz of a shattered man #deltarune #wd gaster

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hainuwelle · 17 days

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The third man theory

Note: This theory takes as starting point Aurora's Fun theory. It states that the invention in which Gaster fell was a new version of a warp door that would have allowed the monsters of the underground to escape to a timeline in which the war against the humans never happened. If this experiment were to work, it would have allowed for a happier ending than the True Pacifist one, because more accidents and deaths would have been prevented.

Sadly, Gaster's experiments went wrong and he was scattered "across time and space". The only other time in Undertale this expression is used is when we call Papyrus in Sans's room, the one that gets us lost in a seemingly endless darkness when we enter it, with a door that suspiciously looks like Mystery Man's grey door and Deltarune's warp doors. This key expression used by Papyrus tells us Gaster's creation and untimely demise should have something to do with these doors.

If this theory is correct, the invention in which Gaster fell would have been under our nose the whole time.

With the FUN theory video in mind, something about Mr. Elegance's dialogues caught my eye.

Evidence 1 - Mr. Elegance, if we didn't previously talk to Jigsaw Joe:

Evidence 2 - Mr. Elegance if we previously talked to Jigsaw Joe:

For a flaming teleportation door one would assume to be magical, the vocabulary used to talk about it sure sounds mechanical and mundanely machine-like : « Fix up », « working on it », « got this door workin’ », « it might break », « fixed that door », « it should work without any issues ». Intriguingly, it looks old, and yet, it is new to the Darkners, who have never seen it before. Is it really Darkner technology?

Of course, to an experienced Undertale player, it looks familiar, similar to the one to Sans's room.

This brings us to my question: Why did Toby Fox add these two different Mr. Elegance dialogues about this door? What purpose do they serve?

It can't be to alert the player that they could malfunction if we haven’t previously talked to Jigsaw Joe, since they always work properly regardless. It’s not like this triggers a side quest asking you to talk to the puzzle man if you don't want a 1/6 chance of the door teleporting you into the void. And they don't serve a comedic purpose either. There is no joke, no punchline. So why warn us about the breaking hazard, if the warp doors never break in the first place ? Why specify that 3 people are needed to get them to work smoothly?

Because this isn’t really about the Scarlet Forest shortcut. The door might not break in the game, but it might have broken somewhere else. This is really about what went wrong with Gaster's experiments.

Time to bring in evidence 3:

First, let's note that this tweet isn't exactly talking about the same situation as in evidence 1 : Mr. Elegance talks about a door that two people got to work and that might break, while Toby Fox talks about a machine that's already broken and that two people could never repair.

However, evidence 2 tells us that when three of them worked on it, the machine should work without a problem. So if we assume that these dialogues are really about the creation that led to Gaster’s demise, this means that the reason things went wrong is because one person was missing.

Two people worked on the machine instead of three, which led to Gaster's disappearance. Yet, we know that two people were trying to repair the machine once it was broken. This means that after Gaster's disappearance, the missing person came back.

Now let's imagine that Gaster formed a trio with two other colleagues that we'll name X and Y. The Royal Scientist is working on a door-shaped machine that would free the monsters from their imprisonment. As the fate of the Underground lies in his hands, a lot of pressure is resting upon his shoulders. The role that X and Y had in this creation is unknown. Gaster could have even built it on his own. But thanks to Entry n°17, we know that shared his experiments with two other people. And thanks to the Japanese translation, we know he was rather close to them.

After the construction of the machine, Gaster and X try to get it to work, but without Y. Maybe they walked away from the experiment, maybe the other two didn't trust them enough, we don't know.

Despite this, they manage to make it work with just the two of them. However, what Mr. Elegance predicts happens, and something goes wrong. Two people just wasn't enough to assure that the machine would work properly. It's too unstable. It malfunctions. Gaster falls inside, is shattered across time and space, and the machine breaks.

Now let's come back to the end of Toby Fox's tweet. ”Neither of them could fix the machine, no matter how hard they tried. No one can." Notice that "neither of them" means precisely two people.

After the incident, Y comes back, but Gaster disappeared. The trio is now a duo. Y and X do everything they can to repair the machine, but can't. No one can. Because Gaster, the person necessary to its reparation, is no more.

If this theory is right, what are X and Y’s identities? And why was Y absent during the creation of the shortcut door machine? A lot of questions have yet to be answered...

#deltarune theory #warp door lore #deltarune #gaster

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carlyraejepsans · 11 months

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speaking of dr, there's something that really annoys me about how shallow the ship discourse around kr4lsei is. I'm not sure I'm 100% behind this for the same reasons i doubt toby will go full in with noelle's mom being abusive, ie "those are very delicate and complex topics to handle, does he have the time and space to deal with them in deltarune's story?" so take this with a grain of salt.

(warning for brief mention of incest, so I'm putting this under a readmore)

i think the discourse being framed as "thinking ralsei is presented as a romantic interest" vs "thinking ralsei is compared to kris' brother or like a family member" is incredibly stupid because those are... both true at the same time. yes, there's an unskippable "tunnel of love" scene, and it looks like ralsei could have somewhat of a crush on kris. but ralsei still 1) looks just like a dreemurr, 2) clearly plays, as a character, on our feelings and memories of asriel from playing undertale, as evident by their designs and their names being anagrams 3) i am 99% sure Noelle was going to say "that kinda looks like asriel" while looking at him eating cotton candy with Susie, and Susie herself suggests telling toriel he's "a long lost cousin". either way, if ralsei is meant to play on our feelings towards asriel, then as asriel's sibling, kris is likely gonna feel similarly.

are you uncomfortable? good! you should be. that's the point.

it's not random that the snowgrave route was framed and portrayed with the imagery of a wedding. first the freezering, then the thorn ring are explicitly compared to wedding rings. "we're just friends"/"we're something else". "YOU'VE BEEN MAKING [hyperlink blocked (...LoVE?)], HAVEN'T YOU?" noelle with whom kris had a strained relationship, whose feelings (platonic? romantic? we don't know) we brute force in what is the most chilling, manipulative, cruel iteration of chapter 2's story we could take... it's almost as if deltarune uses kris being forced into romantically coded situations they're deeply uncomfortable with as a way to showcase their lack of agency in the story.

and being pushed into romcom-like situations with a guy who looks like their brother works pretty darn well to follow that pattern, if you ask me.

now, if a forced romance with noelle represents their lack of agency in regards to the player, then... a forced romance with ralsei could represent their lack of agency towards Fate. The Plot/Story. unskippable cutscene, remember? not to mention ralsei's whole purposepilled shtick he clearly has a complex about.

this does raise a couple of questions about susie though, as the third option in the "who would you take to the fair with you" question, the one option kris seems to agree with, as well as being a character who is actively resisting the narrative.

because there's people who are very much FOR krusie, just as there are people against it, i doubt their getting or not getting together would work to represent kris gaining their agency back. and i believe i speak for everyone when i say that susie is going to play a huge part in that arc. either way, i'm curious to see how this develops.

idk! like i said, I'm not sure just how much toby is gonna go into this because it IS a very delicate subject. but it's an example of what i mean when i say "there's more to fandom than shipping" and "fixating so hard on Shipping Good Things" can be detrimental to analysis. I'm not cancelling anyone with this post, go on doing your thing whether it's kr4lsei or r4lsusie or krus1e. but if your first thought going into this was "I'm gonna ignore the part where the game compares ralsei to asriel because that would make my ship incest and that is Bad and uncomfortable" then... that's a very cheap way to interact with media? lol. sometimes being uncomfortable IS the point. god knows utdr makes you uncomfortable on purpose sometimes. ok rant over :P

#incest mention #entry log #deltarune #kris #ralsei #metanalysis

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hydro-city-zone · 25 days

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ALTERFALL: 2024 Recap.

As of last post, ALTERFALL's entire cast of Beta Kids and Beta Trolls have been revealed! Before moving on to any further details such as auxiliary characters (Guardians, Exiles, etc.), Alpha session characters or in-depth looks into the Beta sessions, let's recap - for those who joined partway, or are only joining now!

ALTERFALL is a Homestuck Kidswap/Bloodswap AU in which, due to a single in-universe change, many characters' upbringings are altered due to the landing locations of their meteors being switched. The in-universe event that changes the course of the story and the nature vs nurture approach to changing the characters in their new roles was inspired largely by Inverted Fate, which we definitely recommend to all UNDERTALE fans! Below the cut are some images detailing each character, and at the end a links will be provided to read more about them!

BETA KIDS

A group of four human teenagers who communicate online after meeting each other in a series of odd encounters. Together, they intend to play SBURB: a mysterious video game entrenched in conspiracies, hoping to dispel the wild rumors breeding in the depths of message boards, or at least to have some fun. Unbeknownst to them, the game truly is the catalyst for Earth's apocalypse, with the four of them being thrust into another world and given the task of creating a new universe.

BETA TROLLS

Twelve aliens and previous players of SBURB - or as it is known on their planet - SGRUB. Their gruesome home planet of Alternia has instilled within them all manner of quirks, prejudices and generally colorful personalities (for better or worse), but somehow, against all odds, they managed to succeed in their game and create the universe that birthed humanity. Despite this, these twelve have been trapped in their game session, unable to claim their prize of a new home and festering in their captivity. Connections have been established to the game session of the humans, however, and thus they have gained the ability to send messages to them... At any point in the timeline they so please.

POST LINKS:

Humans: John Jade Dave Rose God Tiers

Trolls: Patrons Aradia Gamzee Equius Tavros Eridan Feferi Sollux Nepeta

Misc: Correction Sprite Art Human Modus Descriptions

Chrono Tag

See you soon.

#alterfall #homestuck #rose egbert #john lalonde #june lalonde #dave harley #jade strider #gamzee megido #equius nitram #eridan captor #feferi leijon #terezi vantas #karkat pyrope #vriska maryam #kanaya serket #aradia makara #tavros zahhak #sollux ampora #nepeta peixes

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novalizinpeace · 2 months

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You know, I can relate with Nell's paranoia.

The very idea that the lives of these characters are in our hands is very nerve-racking. To know that one mistake could result in their deaths. I am used to character deaths by now, but there is something I find unnerving about the idea that the audience who is watching and doing nothing somehow gets to play a role in deciding their fates. There's a big difference between writing someone off and asking someone else to do it for you. And what's worse, we don't know what the end results will be until it's too late.

I know, this kind of stories isn't for everybody, but there's something interesing in it that make me like to write it

I took a big inspirations in stories like Undertale and Otome games, where usually the end can change with the audience/the player decisions.

If you played Undertale, you know where 'm going: that feeling that your existence in the story isn't something extra, that your decisions actually have consecuences to the other side, and that you can be a monster even when you're a hero.

Poppy Playtime is perfect (in my mind) for this kind of storytelling, 'cause yeah, we're looking now at the life of the experiments, how they feel, how they love, how they care...

But what do you think is going to happen when the Player show up? How much do you think your past decisions are going to affect them? Do they really are safe believing in you? Is their life safe in your hands? Or are you going to play this game like always, defeating the monster and keep going?

JUST TO POINT IT OUT, if going to be obvious when a choice go to a dead, 'm not going to be the devil and make you all kill a character without notice, specially 'cause there's no reset button here, BUT when the times come, you all going to see why the decision is going to be hard, both for you and the character.

#poppy playtime #smiling critters #smiling critters arg #ask #nova say

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marydivamask · 1 month

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WOAH MAH GAWD, IS SANS UNDERTALE! 😱😱😱 I just realized I almost never draw Sans, so I tried doing so (with an extra Gaster Blaster included) - OH MEU DEUS, É O SANS UNDERTALE! 😱😱😱 Eu percebi que eu quase nunca desenho o Sans, então eu tentei né (com um Gaster Blaster extra incluso)

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undertaletheplayersfate · 4 months

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[ENGLISH]

I made this thing to visualize the region of Waterfall in TPF, with it's crazy plant life and it's iconic crystal stars. This place is gonna be very important in the series as well, with it's first appearence in EP 3. But honestly, I just wanted an excuse to draw my favorite characters in my favorite scenario! lol I hope you like this simple drawing I've made, and also, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! :D

[PORTUGUESEE-BRAZIL]

Eu fiz isso aqui pra visualizar a região de Waterfall em TPF, com suas plantas malucas e suas icônicas estrelas de cristal. Esse lugar também vai ser muito importante na série, com sua primeira aparição no EP 3. Mas sinceramente, eu só queria uma desculpa para desenhar meus personagens favoritos no meu cenário favorito! ksksks Espero que gostem desse desenho simples que fiz, e inclusive, Feliz Natal e um Feliz Ano Novo! :D

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bluenightcomedies · 4 months

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🗝️we've been looking into Undertale Yellow, and a detail caught my eye that lends to an interesting headcanon... it involves major spoilers, so they will be under a readmore. :p

there is a moment near the end of the Flowey boss battle where he gradually loses patience and grows tired of the battle, questioning how Clover is still resisting... then looks up directly at the player, and as he stares his visage starts to droop and melt, as if building up to a jumpscare... only to sheepishly change his mind and decide to reset. see, i believe that stare of his is when he truly glances past the fourth wall and witnesses the presence of the player. but the distorting face you witness was not planning to jumpscare or even fake you out, but an internal breakdown as he realizes the truth. imagine you are in his place, you have finally defeated a sworn enemy of yours and now seek to take their power for your own... yet long after their death, long after all hope for escape and survival has left them, they still resist just enough so that you can't finish this. eventually you realize how impossible this seems, and upon a closer watch... you see the hand guiding your enemy. the hand of something far outside of your realm, too far for you to even hope to touch. and this being is ensuring that as hopeless as your enemy's fate is, yours is just as hopeless, never quite obtaining the true victory you wanted. but even if you can see them, you know beyond certainty that there is absolutely nothing you can do to touch them, but if they know you saw them... who knows what they could do? wouldn't you also decide to abandon the battle, and your memories of it?

#undertale #undertale yellow #ut yellow #uty clover #uty flowey

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gamequoteshowdown · 4 months

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Thank you everyone for making this happen! Now, without further ado, the match-ups for Round 1!!!

Round 1

"I've been waiting for this!" - Akihiko Sanada, Persona 3 / "You're just a corpse who doesn't know he's dead" - Valter, Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones

"Are you going to be our goddess of victory… or our angel of death? Doesn't sound too bad to bet my life on that." - Keiji Shinogi, Your Turn To Die: Death Game by Majority / "Don't fuck with a witch!" - Bayonetta, Bayonetta

"Teammates!? Friends!? To hell with that! Why am I inferior to you!? I was extremely particular about my life, my grades, my public image! So someone would want me around! I am an ace detective! A celebrity! But you… You're just some criminal trash living in an attic!? So how!? How does someone like you have things I don't!? How can such a worthless piece of trash be more special than me!?" - Goro Akechi, Persona 5 / "I was just gunna ask you to sell a gun to this child." - Starlo, Undertale Yellow

"I want you to live." - Charlotte Wiltshire, Hello Charlotte Series / "Your hair… sunset colored. I like it." - Queequeg, Limbus Company

"The hope to end pointless conflict… The hope to tell your daughter how much you care… It is our mission as apothecaries to ensure that everyone lives long enough for their hopes to become reality. Even if it costs us our own lives." - Castti Florenz, Octopath Traveler II / "Game is clear when 2 zombies hold hands!!" - "How to Play" Narrator, Loving Deads: The House of the Dead EX

"Thanks to you, I am saddled with unnecessary… feelings" - Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "I am so fucking normal right now" - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

“SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN” - Harry du Bois (in the form as a potential mural painting), Disco Elysium / "You pull out your cellphone and access your old Tumblr. You have ten, but you specifically access the Garfield one." - Narrator, Monster Prom

"… Nice meeting you again, you FUCKING WHALE!" - Ishmael, Limbus Company / "My guess is no one's ever loved you before" - Woody, Kingdom Hearts 3

"Take care, [player]. I was lucky to have known you. Though the parting hurts... the rest is in your hands!" - Grovyle, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky / "Far out, man." - Netzach, Limbus Company

"I'll be back once I eliminate that devil called poverty from the world!" - Partitio Yellowil, Octopath Traveler II / "Elder gods from the whole cosmos have awoken to taste your cookies." - Narrator, Cookie Clicker

"Hello! This is the part where I kill you!" - Wheatley, Portal 2 / "Now we come to the question : Do I kill you? Do I tear you apart to my heart's delight? The choices of the beautiful are unbearable. How's a girl to choose?" - Alice Angel, Bendy and the Ink Machine

"I am Ferdinand von Aegir" - Ferdinand von Aegir, Fire Emblem: Three Houses / "Her metabolic processes are of interest only to historians." - Miles Edgeworth, Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

"It ain't a matter of guys or chicks... I'm just scared shitless of being rejected" - Kanji Tatsumi, Persona 4 / "...also Stanley is addicted to drugs and hookers" - Narrator, The Stanley Parable

“You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” - Happy Mask Salesman, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask / "I have no idea what to do with my life, but that's okay! Because I'm still working hard! Even if it's on nothing at all!" - Papyrus, Undertale

"Despite everything, its still you." - Narrator/Chara/Frisk???, Undertale / "In this world, it's kill or be killed." - Flowey, Undertale

“Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves. Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves…” - Voices of the Paranoid, Slay the Princess / "In the quiet glade, across old bark. In the ancient glade, it's always dark." - Gabbro, Outer Wilds

"You take away all their sins, and people aren't people anymore!" - Rokurou Rangetsu, Tales of Berseria / "Do you even get how it feels to have nightmares about doing tango with raw chickens? Eh?" - Heathcliff, Limbus Company

"Life is worth living, even if it hurts you, even if you hurt in it." - Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid / "I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle... and wonder if we'll ever get the chance to kill him." - 2B, Nier: Automata

“Oh? Is that how it is? Yeah, okay, I like you too. Neat! Still going to kill you, but now we can both enjoy a mutual romantic subtext to the murder.” - The Razor, Slay the Princess / "Now it’s Reyn Time!" - Reyn, Xenoblade Chronicles

"You lost the coin toss. We both did." - Catherine Chun, SOMA / "I like to drink blood. . . and smoke the weed!" - Dracula, Space Funeral

"Pick a god and pray!" - Frederick, Fire Emblem: Awakening / "Can you believe it? Dragons! In your own homeland! What are you going to do?" - Florentia Candidius, Elder Scrolls Online

""Did you get the Broom Closet Ending?! The Broom Closet Ending was my favourite!" ...I hope your friends find this concerning." - Narrator, The Stanley Parable / "It’s dangerous to go alone, take this!" - Old Man, Legend of Zelda

“Close your eyes for a sec, will you Chigasaki?” “You mean physically? Or to the criminal acts I’m pretty sure you’re about to commit?” “Both.” - Chikage Utsuki & Itaru Chigasaki, A3! Act! Addict! Actors! / "You are all about to perish, do as you please. I'm sorry." - Meta Knight, Kirby Super Star

"Boy" - Kratos, God of War / "Take care of yourself, kid, cause someone really cares about you." - Sans, Undertale

"Almost Christmas means it wasn't Christmas!" - Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "Dios mío!” (Draw a cross.) “A LIBERAL!" - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

"That's it. I'm not paying one cent of my taxes!" - Ema Skye, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / ""Trust your partner"... And I do. I can't forgive you, but I trust you." - Neku Sakuraba, The World Ends With You/Subarashiki Kono Sekai

"Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." - Ralof, Skyrim / *clap ... clap ... clap ... * "Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing, so at least we have that" - GLaDOS, Portal 2

"hallOO. chikkEN. OKs?" - BOb, Slime Rancher / "Pretty good plan. You could say it was the greatest—" - Charles Calvin, The Henry Stickmin Collection

"Blood comes in four types: A, B, O, and AB. However! No blood test can determine whether a murder was committed… in cold blood!" - Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "You ain't my partner anymore, man. You're my friend! So trus' that, yo!" - Beat (Daisukenojo "Beat" Bito), The World Ends With You/Subarashiki Kono Sekai

"I always come back." - William Afton, FNaF Pizzeria Simulator / "So -- as you can see, I'm a *pretty okay* detective -- and an absolutely GIANT COMMUNIST." - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

"Ears have a nice mouth feel, very chewy!" - Briar, League of Legends / "This is like taking candy from a baby, which is fine by me." - Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005)

"It's a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming... On days like this, kids like you... Should be burning in hell." - Sans, Undertale / "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?" - Steban, the Student Communist, Disco Elysium

“We are a path in the woods. We have no beginning, and we have no end, but something cold and unnatural sits watching us from just beyond our edge.” - The Wild, Slay the Princess / "Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled Trainers should try to win with the Pokémon they love best." - Karen (Elite Four), Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver

#not polls #round 1 #tumblr tournament

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tvlandofficiall · 2 months

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I'm glad you and a few other people posted and reblogged some good darkner meta that last few days. I just recently watched some newer smaller theory youtube vids out of content drought thirst and walked away with a vague annoyed feeling on account several of them just assumed the FFTA style "seal away the fake fantasy darkworlds" type ending as like, a known fact. I feel like taking the darkners seriously as People is a super niche thing stuck in this circle of like a few hundred tumblr fans.

thanks! i'm glad to hear that my posts have been spreading around – the subject of the darkners is a pretty important one both in the game and to me, so it's well worth talking about! it saddens me that a lot of people seem to work off the base assumption that they don't matter or that their personhood won't be discussed – and there are many reasons i contemplate when it comes to why that is (do players have a difficult time believing in and caring for a world that isn't like the one they live in? do players assume deltarune will end sadly because sad endings are seen as more serious? why are these strange assumptions taken as fact by so many players, seemingly for no reason?) ultimately, i think the answer is that many players simply work off of what they know about these types of characters and plots from other games and stories, unaware of the ethos behind undertale and deltarune that twists and subverts these archetypes.

i've discussed it before, but in video games and other forms of media alike, the idea of a disposable character will arise. the legend of zelda, for instance, usually doesn't prompt you to consider the societies and lives of the octorocks you slay. in games where characters can raise the undead to do your bidding, they don't have to ask the skeletons permission – the undead are just mindless drones to command. robots in sci-fi settings will sometimes act as simple assistants to the human characters. monster movies star protagonists that mow down evil hordes of mindless werewolves or zombies. and in many fantasy stories, there lies the assumption that everyone will return to the "real world" at the end – at the end of the wizard of oz, dorothy doesn't contemplate the existence of the scarecrow or the tin man beyond their resemblance to the people in her real life. at the end of alice in wonderland, alice doesn't consider the personhood of the mad hatter or the white rabbit for long either. they simply fade away, leaving dorothy and alice with only the lessons they've learned and none of their strange new friends.

undertale zeroes in on this first example and twists it – what if the octorocks in zelda were more than just free EXP? what if the "monsters" in those classic rpg games were all just as much people as link and his friends?

undertale asks you to consider this question throughout. is this frog-like monster more than an enemy? what about this vegetable-shaped guy? is it okay to kill a monster if you're not sure how to get past them – or are they person enough to you to be worth finding a way to spare? what if you meet a relentless killer like the head of the royal guard or the king of the monsters himself? what about a killer robot? what about the reanimated corpses of long-dead monsters? what about a soulless talking flower that, just like you, sees the world as a game to be played?

time and time again, the answer is yes. all of these characters are people – and the more you get to know them, the more you learn that they're not just their archetype. monster doesn't automatically mean disposable.

deltarune, then, takes undertale's ethos and twists it again. now it knows that you likely have been primed to extend personhood towards the undertale characters. but what about the darkners – new characters playing on that same idea? deltarune takes the simple premise of undertale and digs even deeper into it – these darkners are objects. you can kill them without much consequence. and the very fate of the world itself says that they're only there to assist the lightners – to happily serve their purposes and be discarded. some of them even appear content with this role – ralsei sure seems to be (after all, what becomes of darkners that struggle for anything else?)

can you still extend personhood to these people? or will you accept the fate that many other characters like the darkners face – the fate of a world erased, a fountain closed, a world returned to "normal" with the people you're already happy to consider people?

many archetypical stories play this fate to its end – which is why i think a lot of players do, too. but if you look at the characters' stories – at our protagonist's distress at ralsei's role to be their comforting servant and at spamton's inability to break free from his as a spam email; at spamton's conflict with his own fate; at spades kings' anger towards the system; at lancer's worry over what he is to his friends; at ralsei's role as servant and guide and his keen awareness of his own inescapable fate; at anything that happens in the snowgrave route – you'll see anything but the archetypes. the darkness may be growing, and many may be scared of the dark – but many found monsters scary, too.

(also, if you're feeling like you're craving deltarune stuff, i'd suggest checking out the newsletters or replaying the game! i tend to do the latter a lot just because i feel i should refresh my memory on characterization quite often, and it's interesting to discover a little something new to think about each time.)

#ooc #deltarune #i deconstruct a lot of this stuff in a lot of my work too which. you've probably seen. there's a lot you can say about the way these storie #usually go #i have a few “aus” ive written that deconstruct some popular theories but a lot of those are pretty personal :'D

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