Hello! I'm 1moreff-creator, or just FF, and I'm your
Local Min Jeung Kinnie
(Art from DRDT's Sleepy MV, Literature Girl Insane MV, CH1 EP6)
This is a technically multifandom (but generally DRDT-centric) blog, where I mostly do analysis posts and theories, though there's some variety around here. I go by they/them, I'm aro/ace, and I have a sideblog dedicated to the Milgram project, 1moremilgram-enjoyer!
Here's my post masterlist, which I moved away from Tumblr to avoid the 100 link per post limit I was going to run into eventually. Interests and post highlight reel under the cut.
Interests:
(AKA everything you're welcome to flood my askbox with :D)
-DRDT. Obviously.
-Project: Eden's Garden and Danganronpa: One Shot are the next two I post the most about.
-Mainline Danganronpa, DRA and SDRA2, DR (He)artless Deceit.
-Milgram. Though you should probably go to the sideblog for that :p
-FNAF. This thing grabbed hold of me in 2014 and will not let go. Probable cause of my likely insanity, given I'm well-versed in the lore.
-BNHA. The hundreds of thousands of words I've written for class 1-B are the reason for the "fanfic" the "ff" stands for in my name :)
-SCP. Been reading a whole lot of articles, they're very fun.
-Life Series SMP. My favorite perspective ever is Double Life Pearl, if you're curious. I always watch her perspective first :)
Smaller interests also include Slay the Princess, Disventure Camp, JJK, Class of 09 (mainly OG and Re-Up I don't really like Flipside), Reality Resort, Undertale/Deltarune, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe (haven't thought about this one in a while though), and more I'm probably forgetting.
Post Highlight Reel:
-DRDT Secret Masterpost. Generally a good idea to check this out before any of my more unhinged thoughts.
-DRDT CH2 PT2 Analysis. Probably my best post ever, 28k words of mental illness.
-Mai Akasaki Analysis. Really love this one. I consider it a great introduction to Mai's character, and contains some theories I love a lot.
Amendments: Arrow in her numeral (ft cider-est) (Rb) - Matching phone charms (ft wist-eri) (Rb) - Mai flower discovery by the-fox-in-the-socks (0% my post but pretty important)
-Literature Girl Insane Analysis Video. Two and a half hours of sheer insanity, though reading the Mai post first is recommended.
Amendments: Post CH2 PT2 Update (Corrigendum).
-About Page Text Analysis. (Ask). Shorter than the others, but I think it's important enough to be listed here.
Update: where did it go.
-DROS Prologue & CH1 Analysis. Similar to the DRDT CH2 Part 2 Analysis, also pretty good imo.
-DRDT reacts to "I fucked your mom last night." Behold, my most popular post ever.
-Eden!Culprit Levi!Accomplice Theory. Although this was proven wrong, I'm still pretty proud of it and consider it a good theory for the time.
-Proving MonoTVid canon with LGI. Objectively the best post I've ever made.
Recommended Reads
Smaller theories I still recommend you read, especially if you want a full understanding of my beliefs when it comes to DRDT.
-Recap Foil analysis. (Ask) My thoughts on the really good theory that the CH1 recap video shows off some important pairs of character foils.
-DRDT Playlist Guesses. What the fuck is desk rotation???
-Thoughts on Min's secret. (Pre-CH2 PT2 Ask) A bit of Min analysis, and a basic theory on how exactly she pulled off her motive secret.
-"Mai Order" Analysis and observations on the CH2 PT1 QnA. (Rb) This one's just funny.
-Survivor Predictions. (Ask) Self-explanatory.
-Thoughts on Teruko’s plan to end the killing game. (Pre-CH2 Ep16 Ask) Holy shit I kinda got something right???
-The Deal with Whit, according to me. (Rb) I just like how this analysis came out :v
-Mai and The Murder on Orient Express. Noteworthy theory ig.
The white haired person in Ace’s video isn’t Ms. Naegi, it’s Kyo Tawaki, aka TERUKO’S OLDER BROTHER FROM THE ORPHANAGE
So my theory is why in the world Kyo offering Ace the title of Ultimate Jockey? Here’s my idea - Kyo was adopted by the Naegis specifically for his luck. Said luck was transferred to Teruko, which explains her near logic-defying bad luck. Maybe that’s why Kyo is wearing a riff on both Makoto’s and Nagito’s jackets. He was adopted for the specific reason that he was born with luck.
That brings be to another point: IS TERUKO AND KYO A DESCENDANT OF NAGITO GODDAMN KOMAEDA??? That’d explain their luck and Kyo’s white hair. Their resemblance to Hajime is also notable, but that’s not my point. The reason they don’t have “Komaeda” as a surname could also be explained away as Nagito WAS a terrorist, so possibly removing it would’ve made their lives easier. Bit my question is did the Tawaki’s inherit his weird luck?
Their luck kind of warps reality and fate itself - so maybe Hope’s Peak wanted to look into it more, as maybe they wanted to see the extent of that luck. Both Mai Akasaki and Kyo Tawaki could’ve been part of a talent scouting committee in Hope’s Peak, which explains why one of Mai’s quotes in her character page was “She was looking for a girl named Teruko Tawaki”. In fact, Mai’s talent could’ve been the “Ultimate Talent Scout”.
This is all conjecture and speculation, but I need to scream about this AND YOURE THE ONIY ONE WHO’LL LISTEN
It's so weird... the framing of the scene really makes it look like Ms. Naegi given what Ace is saying as the CG shows up, but that's also like 99% Teruko's sibling. Like I have to believe she's trans, why the hell would they look so similar if not?
Kyo (I fear this might be a deadname if the character is trans but I legit have no clue what to call them otherwise) getting adopted by the Naegi family is looking very possible, whether for his/her/whatever-pronoun-I'm-supposed-to-use luck or for a different reason. I'm kinda losing my mind because it's such an insane reveal like what ToT accirax really did a massive favor to the fandom asking about that AU lmao.
The Tawakis descending from Komaeda would be insane, and it's crazy that the hoodie makes it possible. The white hair on Kyo, too. I have so many questions... Like what the fuck do you mean that guy got laid why would Ms. Naegi use the jacket of a known terrorist? It's crazy.
Mai being a talent scout is certainly possible, at this point. Although I'd have to ask how she could be so good at it without an interest in Hope's Peak-
Min [BE 1]: Maybe someone like you who never cared about Hope’s Peak Academy wouldn’t understand. But it’s everyone else’s dream to be an Ultimate.
-, and the whole "an average girl with nothing at all special about her" thing still makes me lean on the Lucky Student angle. Still, Talent Scout is a solid theory!
The other option is that Mai was looking for Teruko because of her connection to Ms. Naegi, given the whole thing she was doing with Xander. I would argue it's the strongest indication of what that line means, especially because "Lucky Student" is technically the one talent that shouldn't need scouting no? I mean, they could've rigged the lottery or whatever, but still. Except then you have the issue that Teruko remembers Mai, and if they met because of Mai's operation with Xander then the CH1 Episode 6 dream would be a Hope's Peak time memory which just raises so many questions.
Also, like. Assuming Teruko doesn't know that her sibling grew up to be Ms. Naegi. Would this be a parallel to the "Diana is David's deadname" theory? Like idk how to articulate it properly but y'know. Identity getting confused as a result of transitioning lmao. Of all theories to potentially get more evidence, even if it's very roundabout... xD
I feel like I'm making zero sense, I'm still kinda reeling lmao. Of all the places the other Tawaki could've ended up, cosplaying as Nagito Komaeda while scouting talent for Hope's after getting adopted by the Naegi family and transitioning is possibly the last thing I could've expected. DRDT is a fucking fever dream I love it so much ToT Thanks for the ask, loved hearing your thoughts!
My first thought when I saw this scene was, "Wait, isn't that Kyo's hair?" (source for Kyo's name). And yeah, when compared side-by-side, it certainly does look like the same hair! So, new theory: Kyo was adopted by Makoto or Komaru (or perhaps a child or grandchild of one of them, considering the span of time between canon DR and DRDT), and is also a trans girl, but didn't figure that out until after getting adopted, which is why we/Teruko know Kyo as a boy.
This also would give some context to the caption for the au drawing, which is, "In the scenario where Teruko and Kyo stayed together. There are also changes to the lives of other cast members, but, I’m too lazy to draw…" Perhaps this means that Kyo is scouting Ultimates in the US to try and look for/reconnect with Teruko, but if they had stayed together as children, Kyo wouldn't have been doing that, so Ace and some of the other students may not have been scouted.
Additionally, the Nagito-esque jacket is making me wonder about Kyo's feelings on Teruko's luck - does she see a lot of herself and her own life/luck in Nagito? Does she even see Teruko as the unlucky one, or does she view the whole luck problem as being hers?
And holy crap, “MS. NAEGI”??!! With that Nagito-esque coat, Seiko-esque hair, and menacing black hoodie? What is going on?
Anyway, thoughts on the Jockey Bros?
IT WAS!!!! I loved the episode a whole lot, seeing Ms. Naegi not only get properly name dropped but also getting part of a design was amazing!!! I've been waiting for so long to know what her deal was, I'm so happy...
And the Jockey Yaoi duo went crazy! I love Taylor, I'm happy to see him too. Ace was great this episode as well, so much fun stuff. He really was about to quit jockeying, huh...? And I'm like 90% sure Taylor must've died in that last race, which is just an incredible tragedy... God, so close to freedom ToT Man, it was amazing. Their relationship was peak, Taylor was peak, everything was peak, I loved the episode!!! Thanks for the ask!
Let's go!!! DRDT!!! I love DRDT!!! Let's do this thing!!!
Spoilers for DRDT. CW: Horse racing.
It's starting yay! Ace episode surely. Will it be with Taylor? With Mai? A secret third option...? I'm gonna be happy no matter what :D
Taylor: ...
Taylor!!! We finally get to meet the guy!!! I'm losing my fucking mind already and no words have been spoken yet. Also Ace is in the outfit dev drew when they took requests, so cute!
Taylor: Is this dumbass...
Three words in Ace Markey has already received an insult. Oh we are so immensely back.
Canon Taylor design and voice!!! I know people are about to go absolutely feral over this. Also he's a bit of a jokester, seems like. Funny!
Taylor: Rise and shine, princess.
One line in and he insulted Ace. One spoken line in and he's already farming thirst traps. Is this the most efficient character in history???
Huh, interesting that noted coward Ace will actually hit Taylor. I guess if they're friends they're more playful around each other than usual, but still.
Bro what the fuck is going on. A body's about to be discovered and we're not even in a killing game ToT
Ace: Oh. The [race] you beat me by half a second...
What. Taylor was that good at jockeying? I mean I guess to an extent the horse plays a factor, but still. Kinda crazy. Like a minute in and already there's lore, Taylor really is the most efficient character in the series lmao.
[Taylor talks about the first pick horse thing] Oh so it was the horse. Which means Taylor has already caused an "FF should just let the video play for two more seconds" moment. The efficiency continues ToT
Ace: Yeah, no, you're a competition-obsessed freak.
Oh my god they were character foils...
[Taylor talks about competition] That kinda character, I see. Wonder how he'd feel about Min if he learnt of the poison thing <- Says the person who is totally not obsessed with Min or anything.
Taylor: That's why you're the only one for me, Ace.
AND it's doomed yaoi, of course it is! But that was known before he even had a line, just from the main series. Truly, Taylor's efficiency cannot be matched.
Taylor: We have an equal amount of wins and losses (paraphrased)
Oh so he really is just cracked actually. Very interesting...
I wonder if we're gonna address Taylor's death this episode or not lmao.
Taylor: That next race is gonna determine who's gonna be the Ultimate Jockey (p.)
... He absolutely died in that race right. Maybe not, but it's the first thing that came to mind. Kinda insane there were two Ultimate Jockey candidates going around at the same time. Anyways, seeing Taylor so hyped is fun!
Ace: What?
Fully aware that this might be an "FF should play the video longer" situation, but Ace how do you not know this.
Taylor: Ms. Naegi is gonna spectate (p.)
MS. NAEGI NAMEDROP!!!!!!! AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!!!! Oh, LGI memories... we're actually so immensely back.
Ace: Yeah...
Damn, Ace doesn't seem happy. Very interesting... I figure this might be were the "someone who wants to change" thing comes into play. He doesn't like being a jockey, and getting the Ultimate title would almost lock him into doing it. Kinda sucks for the guy.
Ace: You'll laugh.
Taylor: I won't.
Not if you sound that serious.
Oh the yaoi is strong on this one huh. Crazy things happening for the Ace Markey fandom lmao.
[Taylor talks about putting it all on the line again] Really don't think that's the issue man.
Ace: I'm scared of winning!
Called it! Not that it was hard to call but y'know.
[Ace talks about being scared] Okay now Taylor how do you not know Ace doesn't like jockeying. That's, like, one of the first three things we learnt about him lmao. Guess Ace probably wouldn't be super forward in talking about it when Taylor is so passionate though, so makes some sense.
Ace: You're an overachiever who actually tries.
Write this down: Everything is a Min parallel if you're delusional enough.
Ace: Doesn't it seem like my whole life was set up for me to be a jockey?
Fate theme baby, oh I love DRDT.
Ace: If Ms. Naegi is picking Ultimate Jockey, you know who she's gonna pick (p.)
FATE THEME BABY, OH I LOVE DRDT!
Ace: I'm not good at anything else.
You know, knowing now how desperate Arei was to be an Ultimate makes their parallels even better than they already were. Ace feels like it's his only option even though he doesn't want to and Arei wants nothing else than being an Ultimate :p
Taylor: Quit being a jockey, duh.
Bruh did you not hear anything ToT
[Ace and Taylor call each other stupid] Yeah these two wanna make out really bad lol.
Ace: I'm scared of quitting more.
Literally everything this guy does is out of fear, it'd be funny if it weren't so sad...
Taylor: Even if you hate yourself, you'll still be alive.
So about that ToT (to be fair quitting would have gotten him out of the killing game so it's kinda true lmao)
Taylor: And I'll still be here (p.)
SO ABOUT THAT.
Ace: You only hang around me because you think I'm your rival...
Brother in Christ how can you make the yaoi this doomed ToT DRDTdev did it again!
Taylor: We'll compete in something else. Something we both suck at (p.)
Augh Taylor... Ace... ToT
Taylor: How about pool? Arm wrestling? (p.)
Arm wrestling is possibly the funniest thing he could've brought up considering Events lmao.
CW: Eating disorders
Ace: You want to have a hotdog eating contest?
... I know this part is silly and lighthearted and goofy but it does hit a little bit that the thing that really makes the guy with the eating disorder snap is that.
CW over
Ace: They ground up human criminals and put them in hot dogs! (p.)
Ace what in the actual fuck are you talking about.
Taylor: Markey-Riley Post-Jockeying era (p.)
My guy is actually one portmanteau away from making up his own ship name lmao.
Ace is blushing bruh it's cooked ToT 15000000 Marley ship fanarts incoming.
Ace: You're dealing with Victoria's death glare.
New character name dropped, Ace lore continues to go crazy.
WHAT THE FUCK???? The Nagito jacket??? Is this part of the official design for Ms. Naegi??? We're losing our minds we're losing our minds we're losing our minds. That hair style... why are there so many narrative ghosts with that kinda hairstyle. Mai, Teacher, Ms. Naegi... shit goes crazy. Fucking insane to contrast what Ace is saying with what we know happened, even DRDTdev is roasting the guy ToT
Alright so why is she wearing the sinister ass hood of malice and evil ToT
Taylor: I got kicked out of the debate club, so that means I'm good at debating.
Bro. Why is he like this?
Ace: Fine! I'll quit!
So what the hell happened here? I'm starting to think Hope's Peak just got Taylor's ass when they learnt he was talking the Ultimate Jockey out of jockeying, but that's a serious step above everything we've heard so far lmao.
Ace: For once, I feel like I'm not as scared (p.)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH Oh Ace you make me sad. DRDT makes me so sad, I love it so much ToT
Ace: You're too ugly to look at for so long!
Taylor: Huh? Why would you say that? I'm not holding a mirror up or anything.
It's actually crazy how good they are at insulting each other lmao.
Taylor: I think you still need to compete in that race (p.)
Oh so that really is when Taylor died, got it. Fucking hell, right at the literal and metaphorical finish line ToT
AUGH THEY'RE SO SILLY AND GOOFY AND HAPPY AAAAAAH
Ace: For this last race, I'm gonna go all out.
Oh my God, Taylor 100% died there. What the fuck could Ace have possibly done for it to end like this? ToT
Taylor: ... so that there'll be no regrets.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
Okay, we don't get to see how the race went. I'm still gonna think Taylor died during it, because come on. We've stated again and again that jockeying is dangerous, and Taylor said he'd help Ace get out of jockeying afterwards and it didn't happen, and Ace blames himself for Taylor's death, and there's so much focus on that last race... Oh it's cooked. I wonder why they wouldn't show it, but I guess it's inferrable enough that they don't really need to.
-
Ouch ouch ouch. This entire ending hurt me so much... Ace really wanted to change and leave jockeying, and he couldn't. Loved seeing Taylor, loved seeing Ms. Naegi, loved seeing Ace again... it's all so peak!!! This episode is so peak!!! I loved these episodes a whole lot, we all love DRDT around here! I'm super excited to learn what the series has in store for us next, it's been an amazing ride! See ya'!
I wanted to ask your opinions on something I've noticed - it *could* be a just a typo/mistake, but I don't like using this as an explanation for anything unless it's confirmed as such. So for now I'll take it at face value.
So we know that in the bonus episodes, DRTDDev always leaves a comment about the character in it, such as "Someone who refuses to change". Interestingly, this is under Arei's bonus episode, which I found curious because Arei did, in fact, want to change in the end: Ace is the one who refused.
So I wonder if it's possible that Arei and Ace, before the game, were about to go down completely different paths? Maybe Arei was refusing change hard while Ace was embracing it, but this completely shifted once they got thrown in the killing game and, because of them losing their memories, all of their progress was just gone? I'm not sure if they lost *that* many memories since Arei's episode clearly takes place before she enters Hope's Peak, but frankly I'm kind of confused about how much they lost. Maybe I'm completely mistaken lol. Please correct me if the timeline is wrong.
Also I'm not sure if Arei refusing change lines up with her bonus episode's content. Maybe she refused later on? Or maybe I'm just reaching an incorrect conclusion, I'm not sure.
What do you think?
I've been fine, hope you're doing well too! I get what you mean, but I totally think that line applies to Arei as seen in that Bonus Episode, and Arei at the start of the main series. Yes, she wanted to change eventually, but I think she only reaches that point after the Bonus Episode. Let me explain.
Spoilers for DRDT. CW: Bullying.
Let's first establish what Arei would need to change in the first place. Obviously, it's the fact that she's mean and inconsiderate towards Wes, who didn't do shit to her. You can also extend that to the start of the main series, since she didn't exactly change all that much from the Bonus Episode to high school graduation. Her memory was reset to right before Hope's Peak like everyone else's (a while after the BE), and she's still mean towards people like Eden who are nothing but nice to her. That's a flaw, and the main thing Arei wants to change once she decides she wants to be friends with Eden in the killing game.
Now, let's look at how Arei felt about the prospect of changing before her character arc:
Arei [2-5]: Someone like [Eden] clearly has never had to fight so that others wouldn't look down on her!
It's not fair! It's not fair that she can be kind and trusting and naive and no one takes advantage of that!
[...] I want so badly for kind people to exist in this world, but they can't! So why does Eden exist? Why couldn't I have been like her?
Here we actually see that the dev did something tricky with the comments in the Bonus Episodes. Arei's comment is "someone who refuses to change", while Ace's is "someone who wants to change." What you may notice is that these things are not mutually exclusive. That's expressed by the lines I quoted. Arei wants to change, wants to be nicer ("why couldn't I have been like her?"), but she doesn't think she can, so she "refuses" to in the sense that she doesn't think it's worth trying at all.
We can actually get a good idea of what I'm talking about by looking at Ace (killer-victim parallels going crazy). He also hated himself, which inherently means he wishes he could change. However, he felt he couldn't.
Ace [2-16]: And I can't even change one thing about myself. Not my shitty job, nor my shitty personality, nor my shitty life.
Like these are clearly the words of someone who wants to be a better person and have a better life, but thinks he can't. In that sense, he's "refusing" to change, because he's given up on the possibility. Arei's perspective was very similar, she just happened to get over it.
The comment presumably refers to Arei as she was in the Bonus Episode, and you can kinda see that "I can't change even though I want to" perspective in it. Arei is still just as mean and defensive as she was at the start of the series, because her personality was developed as a form of defense against the bullying, not the other way around. It's not stated explicitly, but you can tell that becoming a better person wouldn't help Arei with her bullying, which was her main concern at the time, because she got bullied "out of habit" and for things she couldn't control. She became mean and vindictive to fight against the people looking down on her, obviously she's going to continue being that way while she's still in that environment.
Arei's goal in the Bonus Episode is to become an Ultimate so she can have power over the people who hurt her, but she doesn't plan on changing her personality upon becoming one. And she didn't; her personality in the Bonus Episode is very similar to the one she shows at the start of the series, at which point she was already the Ultimate Bowler. In that sense, she "refused" to change, because she didn't consider it worth trying. She felt she couldn't, just like Ace, even though the playground speech makes it clear she wanted to, just like Ace.
It's Eden and to an extent David who help Arei get over her "refusal" of changing. In that playground scene, she realizes there are people who won't look down on her even if she allows herself to be nicer and more considerate, so she embraces the idea of trying to be nicer. Cue character arc. Presumably, a similar thing must've happened at Hope's Peak before the killing game, if the CG we got is anything to go by. But again, the comment is about Arei as seen in the Bonus Episode, which is before all of that.
In summary, Arei in the Bonus Episode was basically the same as she was at the start of the series; she wanted to be nicer deep down, but she thought it was impossible, so she refused to even try to change. That mentality only breaks when Arei is faced with Eden's whole Thing and David's reassurances + the reveal he's also a shitty person lmao.
So, the comment fits! It's definitely true it would have fit Ace as well, just as much as Ace's would have fit Arei, but I feel like it makes sense to put them the way they are. Arei's episode focuses on why she refused to change at the start, showing why her bullying happened and thus implicitly showing why becoming a better person wouldn't have helped at all. Even if she became nicer, everyone would keep bullying her out of habit, the world won't change or something. And it focused on that because the series itself showed us her wanting to change in detail. Meanwhile, the series showed us how difficult Ace found it to change, so we're presumably going to get more insight into what he wished he could be like, thus justifying the "someone who wants to change" comment. That's just a guess, though, I don't know for sure.
Hope that made sense! Thanks for the ask, it's fun to think about these people :D
I’m sure you’re going to cover it anyway, but still….thoughts on Arei and Wes?
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
DRDT Spoilers.
I love them both so much... I loved hearing more about Arei's life before Hope's Peak Academy (HPA), I loved seeing more of how her philosophy around people changing developed, I loved seeing her start as the Ultimate Bowler, I LOVED SEEING HER HAPPY AND SMILING IN HPA TIME WITH EDEN AND DAVID AUGH... My child I adore her so so much. I could gush for hours lmao.
And Wes was super cool for someone with such little screentime! Very interesting to see someone who never became an Ultimate despite trying to, and seeing how happy they are despite that. I wonder what they were aiming for... something to do with exploring probably, seeing the thingy with the cardinal directions on their neck. Or maybe that's there to represent them still finding their path in the world? Idk. Still, I loved them, very goated for dealing with such a difficult costumer and even giving her a discount lmao. And don't think I missed all the very clear Min and Xander parallelisms and the like. They're pretty clear, a lot of what Wes talks about relates to stuff the other Bonus Episodes touched on, it's very cool. Peak, peak, peak!
I'm glad you enjoyed the episode just as much as me, it definitely was a great time! Thanks for the ask, see ya'!
LET'S GOO!!! DRDT is back, at least for these two episodes! I'm very excited to see what's gonna happen here! Here are my immediate thoughts as I watch the episode!
Spoilers for DRDT. CW: Talks of murder, bullying.
I hope we get Mai... I'm a little worried because we saw the Arei text boxes and they didn't have The Flowers, but I would really like to see her again. Or, well, hear her again. I miss her so much...
Also do we think this is Ace or Arei? Min got the first one, so this should be Ace. But Arei got the most pre-drop material, so it could be hers.
(Note: the above was written before seeing the thumbnail, as before the premiere it was generic lol)
It's Arei's! Makes sense, birthdays are more related to her backstory than Ace's. The order is evidently not that relevant lmao. She looks so cute!
A watch on the hand? And first line is a curse I love you Arei.
... Who the fuck is Wes???????????????????????????????????
New character?! We're popping off.
Okay, bowling club owner, makes sense.
Arei: ... not a single person is gonna wish me a happy birthday or do anything nice for me.
Poor girl. This is why we needed Mai in the episode, she would have wished her happy birthday :(
Yo!!! New character design?! We're actually going crazy lmao. The thingy with the cardinal directions... wonder what Wes' deal is. (<- Very obviously avoiding pronouns because I can't tell what Wes' gender is lmao)
Oh my god this is like fully ilustrated. I can see why dev said these ones took so long, and why the next Bonus Episodes aren't gonna be like this lmao.
Arei: You talk to all your costumers with this much sass?
Arei ToT I've missed her so much... Arei you will always be special to me.
GENERATIONAL reaction image just dropped.
Wes: I once got hospitalized in my birthday.
I wonder if Teruko is Wes' sister... no chance, but it'd be funny.
Arei's sisters are awful and Arei is crying... Augh my heart. This is why we needed Mai man she'd make this better.
Wes: I don't get paid enough for this (paraphrased)
Wes come on ToT It's actually completely fair, I just feel bad for Arei lmao.
I wonder if those bracelets in Wes' left hand mean anything... probably nothing big but idk. Definitely no flower tattoo though, that's always a question with these characters xD
[Arei insults Wes] Man she was kind of a bitch even before the whole "Queen of High School" era huh? Makes sense, and I still love her, but it's good to get that clarified. Overall I'm very happy we get to see a bit more of what Arei was like before Hope's Peak!
Wes: Are things alright at home?
Are we deadass? Did you just miss the thing about her sisters? Lmao.
Also haven't been mentioning it but VAing has been phenomenal as usual!
Wes: Is there a particular reason you're getting bullied? (p.)
Well, Wes is trying to help, that's nice! I like Wes a lot :)
... Although, is it bad if I'm still kinda hoping Mai shows up later? I know this is pre-HPA, but still. I'm fine with it if she doesn't, but y'know. I miss her, readers, I miss her a lot.
Arei: I've done no wrong! (p.)
I love her, she was always like this xD
[Arei explains] Augh... New kid syndrome... So her sisters weren't always that bad, interesting. Also, Arei wasn't born in the US? Makes sense, but neat lore drop.
Arei/Wes: This is the way things always are.
Fate, one could say. Goddamn I love DRDT so much man, I've missed it a lot :,D Also I liked the cut in it was cool.
[Wes philosophizes] Hm... interesting. So Arei got the idea to change herself from here I'm assuming, and also is where she started to get a little fatalistic about people always being awful. Then again, that last part she was already thinking, so it's not exactly new.
Arei: Give me a few years, and I'll end the lives of all those worthless scumbags.
OKAY maybe we got a little crazy there lmao xD Wes we may wanna call the police ??? Because I know she doesn't mean murder, but it sure does sound like she's planning murder lmao.
Wes: You're not actually planning to kill anyone, are you?
Okay at least we asked lmao. Goddamn I miss Mai, I know my GOAT could handle this ToT
Arei: Who knows
Bro????
That's another generational reaction image lmao. And yeah what the hell was Arei on???
Wes: Murder, huh! That's interesting! Tell me more!
I love Wes actually, perfectly solid replacement for Mai xD
Arei: Because I'll be an Ultimate!
Okay so several concerning things about that statement.
... Actually nevermind we knew about Levi already Ultimates definitely just get away with murder lmao. Still, interesting that she was actively aiming for it lmao.
Arei: Can you imagine being the person who bullied an Ultimate in high school? This nation practically worships Ultimates.
Okay! So again, pretty standard fare with everything we've heard so far, but trying to be an Ultimate specifically to get back at people who bullied you is crazy work. Spite really works as a motivator, huh?
[Arei spells out the plans] Okay so we're losing our minds actually! We knew Arei could be sadistic but holy shit man, she's kinda going off. Very glad to see it, though, I just miss her so much.
Wes: You specifically want to hurt people? Even kids who want to be police don't say that part out loud (p.)
Yo Wes kinda based? It really is a hell of a thing to say lmao.
Wes: I'm morally obligated to tell you hurting people is wrong (p.)
Lmao. Wes really do be vibing lol.
[Wes looks at the cameras to make sure everyone knows Wes tried to stop Arei] Hell yeah Wes, good for you xD
Arei: Who said anything about murder?
Wes: Uh, YOU???
PFFFT- I thought the exact same thing xD Only took one episode to mentally connect with Wes, peak character lmao.
Wes: I don't think being an Ultimate lets you get away with murder (p.)
Oh my God, this shot. I love you Arei, so so much ToT
It's interesting that she's aware Ultimates can get away with that, though. At the very least, she seems more confident in it than Wes. Does she actually know something? Like an Ultimate she's aware of that has gotten away with stuff? Or is she just guessing? If she actually knows something, either it's something she personally knows (which is interesting in its own right) or it's something that can be deduced from publicly available info, which could explain why Xander seemed to be against Hope's Peak in Visiting Graves.
Arei: There's no precedent for murder specifically.
I should really let the videos play a bit more lmao. Obviously the Levi case wouldn't be a thing until Arei herself went to HPA, but I doubt the public would know about it regardless. Still, it's common knowledge Ultimates get away with stuff, so that could still explain the Xander thing.
Arei: Just kidding!
Lmao. You know I'm not entirely sure she was lying there. Sure she didn't kill anyone, but what she's saying is still a little too close to her motive secret for there to be no truth to it at all.
Arei: I won't have a future, trapped in a dead end job until I die (p.)
Bro Wes is right there ToT But yeah, this is a very bleak outlook, Arei makes me sad :(
Arei: Like working at a shitty run down bowling alley.
Oh it was intentional lmao. Carry on then xD
Wes: You remind me of my high school years.
Classic.
Arei: No way you were cute as a kid.
Classic xD
Arei: Not the old person speech that starts with "when I was your age."
Classic xD
Wes [after speech]: That talent that I had poured years into...
Wow, Wes was also interested in HPA. Interesting, interesting... I can't imagine this being too relevant to anything unless the altDRDT cast was a HPA class that used to have Wes? It's the first thing that came to mind, but it's not really the only option. It's also possible that we'll never hear of Wes again, which is entirely okay lmao. The university Wes mentions might not even HPA.
[Wes continues] Lots of shared themes with Min which makes me happy. Cool to have a character that's going through this kind of life.
Wes: I have enough sense not to tell you I'm into collecting kids' toys.
Pfft. Fine hobby, though I wonder what kind of kids' toys exactly. Although it is funny to bring that up when childishness is, like, a Thing around Arei. You know, with her turning point and death both being in the playground and all, her being picked on specifically for being the younger sister, and sorta becoming a worse person when she "grew out of it" by ruining her sisters' lives...
[Wes mentally complains about Arei never tipping] Lmao.
Wes: I'm not tying myself to some narrow ideal of how I'm supposed to exist.
I no longer think of everyone around me as my competition.
Okay so I'm not hallucinating you are actually just a Min parallel of some kind xD The wording is so familiar I actually wonder if maybe Wes was one of the people competing in the Ultimate Contest for Eminent Students or whatever it was called. Wonder if Min poisoned Wes.
... Wait no that doesn't make sense. UCES candidates all have to be the same age lmao. Wes was probably aiming for Ultimate Explorer or something given the tattoo, disregard xD
[Wes inner monologue] True!!! Very Xander-coded mindset, which comes with the territory of having Min parallels lmao. I'm happy Wes is happy :)
Oh okay so you want me to cry. You want me to weep, openly. Well guess what IT'S WORKING THEY'RE SO CUUUUUTE! AREI'S WEARING THE DAVID HAIRCLIPS!!! Aw it's too cute, it's too cute, my heart's breaking, augh.
Wes: I'll even give you a discount so you become the Ultimate Bowler (p.)
WES THE GOAT! We love Wes around here!
Arei: Maybe this birthday isn't so bad after all...
Arei I love you...
Arei: This pizza's cold!
AREI I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU SO MUCH.
-
What a fun Bonus Episode! Lots learnt about Arei, lots learnt of a brand new character, just peak all around! I miss Mai, but I can wait longer for her to show up. Wes was very cool, I wonder if we're ever gonna see them again. WE LOVE DRDT AROUND HERE!!! Can't wait for the next Bonus Episode! :D
Definitely something interesting going on with the seasons, which makes sense. Seasons are associated with change, which fits the comments already left on the videos. "Without you" gives me hope that Mai will in fact be in the episodes, even when Arei's hair kinda looks like it would be before Hope's Peak time, but idk.
Also, "someone who refuses to change" is on #3, which based on pattern would be Ace's (#1 was the killer, #2 the victim), while "someone who wants to change" is on #4, likely Arei's. Makes sense with what we saw in the series, shit's peak already.
(Btw if you go to the comment section people are talking about Arei in both because it's not super easy to tell which is which, it's funny. I fully acknowledge that BE3 could be Arei's because it's the one dev always showed to tease them lol)
Notably, Ace's birthday is on Halloween, so it may be a Halloween themed episode if that really is his. Or not but you know. Arei's birthday doesn't land anywhere special, but it has been mentioned people gifted her rope, so it could be related to that if that's her episode. Not much I can really gather from "Loser" though :p
We'll have to see, but I'm super excited either way! DRDT TOMORROW!!! (or rather, in about a week lmao)
Never mind previous post analysis mostly void, just hype now!!! Either the Bonus Episodes/Teruko interlude/"additional thing" are happening in summer/winter, or this is about Arei's sisters Fuyuko ("winter child") and Natsuko ("summer child"), or both, or neither, all I know is I'm losing my damn mind. DRDT HYPE!!!!
Alright I guess we're being ominous now, cool! What the hell is up with this?
Silly stuff first:
-Right now, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but the 30th of June (tweet date) usually isn't considered the first night of winter. This fact is also probably unrelated to DRDT, as all important events seem to take place north of the equator.
-I tried putting a few things at the end of https://danganronpadespairtime.tumblr.com/ to see if it was a Mai Akasaki type situation, but nothing I tried worked.
Next up, this could be about Bonus Episodes. gleamingtempest already said it could be about the first winter night after the death of Taylor, Ace's friend. Could also be about Arei for all we know, potentially related to her sister Fuyuko ("child of winter") as accirax brought up.
A possible counterpoint is that the first Bonus Episode happens before spring break, while the second (given Xander and Mai are traveling abroad for a while) seems to happen during spring break, which could suggest the Bonus Episodes are in some kind of chronological order.
(Note the blackboard behind Min saying "Spring break next week!")
Skipping the rest of spring, summer and fall might be a bit too big of a time skip if we're really doing chronological order. However, the trend could easily be broken, so it's still entirely possible. A point towards the "non-chronological" argument is that the Arei Bonus Episode (BE) text box doesn't have the Unnamed Classmate flowers that the first two BEs have, so it could be a BE without Mai and therefore potentially before Hope's Peak time entirely. That would make me sad because I want Mai content but oh well, I'll be happy with any DRDT content lmao.
That said, the tweet could also be unrelated to the Arei and Ace BEs.
Source.
My number 1 guess is actually the Teruko interlude thing, being about either the first winter night without her brother and/or without Mai (assuming they met in childhood). Could also be the "additional thing" or the BEs as said before, of course.
If you want me to go completely insane, "Solitary Winter Night" is actually the name of an album by Winter of Apokalypse. That album contains a song also named "Solitary Winter Night", where the singer...
CW: Blood, death, satanic sacrifices
offers themselves up as a sacrifice to Satan.
And now I stand alone
Alone in the night
In this world that holds nothing for me
I shall be… Satan take my soul
In this solitary grave to be
Alone in the woods
Death creeps in like winter
Uh... idk, if you want I can try to relate it in some way to Mai's death somehow being a sacrifice of some kind... Possibly for Teruko who is someone "dearly unloved" so I guess you could relate her to Satan somehow. Except, I'm not entirely sure Mai "someone dearly loved" Akasaki could be described as:
Alone
In the night so cold
In darkness I walk
So like. It could also be David going along with Xander's "kill everyone" plan, I guess. Or Rose taking a deal with the Spurlings, who are probably the human characters I'm most comfortable calling Satan. Or maybe something about Ace asking MonoTV to execute him, seeing as MonoTV is overall the character I'm most comfortable calling Satan lmao.
But the interpretation that makes the most sense to me goes back to Teruko, and it would be her resigning herself to get hurt by her bad luck, which would be kind of like Satan in a sense.
Or it could very well be a coincidence lmao. I know dev has a pretty incomprehensible music taste (desk rotation?!) but the song is kind of a lot, so I'm not sure their ball knowledge would extend this far. I especially doubt it's for an MV ("additional thing" perhaps?), since it doesn't exactly have the same vibe as the ones we've had before lmao (it's very abrasive metal). But uh... well, never say never, I guess! Maybe!
Overall conclusion? I have genuinely no idea what this is about. But it's very ominous, so I'm sure it's going to be very awesome! Looking forward to seeing where dev goes with it! :D
So I was reading the wiki for the executions in drdt and in the trivia for Thanatophobia it says “on the gravestones you can see the names of Elliot cuevas, felicity Giles, and Taylor Riley on the gravestones” You can only see Taylor Riley’s, not the others?
Maybe I’m not seeing things right can someone give me a timestamp? I’d really like to see this cool little detail if it exists 👀
I know it’s extremely hard to see, but you can barely make out “Elliot Cuevas” on the left and “Felicity Giles” in the middle. It’s a cool detail yeah :> The timestamp is 19:35, though there’s a couple of shots where they’re visible
Ever since CH4 showed us a whole lot about the Delta Rune Prophecy and its contents, said Prophecy has been a very heavily debated topic in the community. And naturally, it's drawn my interest as well! However, in looking at these panels for more time than is likely reasonable, I started to wonder if perhaps we're thinking too much of the future when we think of the Prophecy. If maybe, to truly understand it, we should actually be looking at the past.
You see, I believe the events described in the Prophecy have already happened, and are actually repeating. Or, at least, I believe it's a genuine possibility. As a preface, obviously this theory was mostly made for fun, and I'm fully expecting to get a lot of stuff wrong, but I'm sure you could guess that yourself. It's how theorizing works, after all!
Interested in how this could work? Well, then, join me in this adventure into the Dark, featuring:
Delta Rune symbolism
Final Tragedy theories
A fuckass birdcage
Hammer of Justice foreshadowing
A steep and irrecoverable descent into insanity
And so much more!
Or just read the Closing Argument at the end for a TL;DR if you're interested in only the theory itself and not the discussion. This is a very long post lmao.
Spoilers for Deltarune up to CH4. CW: Loss of autonomy, fire, swords.
The Girl
Because of Course It Starts With the Girl
Let's not beat around the bush here. Susie's in a weird position when it comes to the Prophecy. On the one hand, Ralsei's never questioned her place in the trio of heroes, and the girl is inextricably linked to Susie's signature Rude Buster by the panel which is literally named after the attack in the files.
On the other hand, the Girl is depicted holding a sword, which Susie doesn't use, and Ralsei even says that Susie's "supposed to equip ribbons."
In context, it's even worse. The Girl's panel is the last one shown, right before Susie starts talking about how awesome it is she's part of the Prophecy.
Susie [CH4]: Gotta be honest, Kris. I've never...
I've never really gotten picked...
... for anything before.
No one ever wanted to be my partner in class.
... Even got chosen last in gym.
But this...?
This is like... Something else, y'know?
Something... important.
Kris... before, I didn't think I could be a hero.
I wasn't good enough. I mean, I was... bad.
I still kinda am bad. In some ways, I guess.
But now, I... I got hope crossed on my heart.
Hope, written in truth. Written somewhere...
Written somewhere no one can erase!
By showing you a panel of the Girl with an un-Susie-like sword, then having Susie talk about this, it kinda feels like the game wants you to think Susie is not part of the Prophecy, to add tension to that scene. At least, that's how I felt playing through it the first time.
These weird inconsistencies have led many to speculate that perhaps Noelle is actually meant to be the Girl. It's not something I'll get into too much here, but the idea is that she can equip ribbons, and there's actually some swords she can equip. Not in regular gameplay, mind you, but she can equip the Jingle Blade and the Black Shard if you change your file. Of course, it's possible to argue the Black Shard isn't a sword since the icon for it is a triangle, but the Jingle Blade is 100% a sword.
However, I find this to be pretty weak. Noelle uses rings, the Jingle Blade and Black Shard are exceptions. And if you're going by exceptions, who's to say there won't be a sword in a future chapter that Susie can equip? The Girl also notably doesn't have antlers in her picture. Plus, the Girl is still associated with Rude Buster. And while some argue there might actually be two Girls in the Prophecy (something I'll discuss later), if there really is only one, you need to factor that spell in somewhere. Noelle can't cast Rude Buster, and while you can argue it's like Susie with the sword and she might end up learning to cast it later, having a really nice character whose entire thing is that she isn't decisive use a spell defined by "rudeness," by rejection of what is typically expected of her... would go kinda hard as a climax to her arc actually. I think I kinda disproved my argument oops. Look, the point is that Noelle can't use Rude Buster any more than Susie can use a sword. If they can, it's something we've yet to see.
Because of all of this, I still believe Susie is the most likely candidate for being the Girl, at least in the main route. However, the ribbons are still a problem for her, there's no confirmed sword she could wield, and Rude Buster isn't an unique spell to her. We see Gerson cast it (or at least, a spell that looks damn near identical except for color), so there's definitely a possibility for another girl to end up using it. Again, including Noelle potentially. Thus, if we want to look for other possible candidates beyond Susie, we would need to look at a girl who is "rude" enough to be as proficient with Rude magic as her. This doesn't mean they have to be mean, just irreverent, defiant and generally uninterested in being perceived as respectable and dignified, like Susie and Gerson.
So, to recap all this, for the Prophecy to perfectly line up, you'd need a girl who uses swords and whose personality matches the profile of a Rude Buster user; brazen, irreverent and confident. Ribbons are hard to determine, which is why they're secondary. But given Noelle can't use Rude Buster, there's no good candidate for it, then. Right?
Wait.
The Final Tragedy and December Holiday
(Don't worry I'll explain the antlers)
So, two things. First, I know "the knight which makes with blackened knife" is already a character in the Prophecy. That's something I'll address later, once I've actually explained what I think is going on, so I'll have to ask you to bear with me on that one.
Second, yes I'm assuming the Knight is Dess. Or, at the very least, connected primarily to Dess, regardless of whether it's literally her or a twisted clone or whatever the hell. It's technically not necessary, but it's the way this theory works best. So, if you don't believe Dess!Knight, which is perfectly respectable, feel free not to believe this theory either!
With that out of the way, what am I smoking this time? Am I really about to say Dess is the Girl from Prophecy? Well, yes. I believe Dess was the Girl from Prophecy. If she's the Knight, we know she wields swords, and her personality fits the archetype of a confident and rebellious Rude Buster user. I can't speak on the ribbon thing because Dess has never been in the party, but I should bring up just in case that Noelle feels the White Ribbon item "feels familiar." So... maybe there's a secondhand connection to Dess there. Could also be Kris' paper shuriken or something, though.
But of course, if we're looking at rude women wielding swords, I could just as easily point to Carol. Is there any other reason to believe Dess would be connected to the Prophecy? Well, perhaps.
First, let's establish a little of Delta Rune symbolism. Thanks to the carpet on Kris' Dark World room's floor, we can infer that the triangles of the Delta Rune each represent a Hero. Since Ralsei made the room, he colored the triangles according to who he believes each of the Heroes is. The left triangle is colored purple for the Girl, the middle one is green for the Prince (and pointing down because he's a Darkner presumably), and the right one is blue for the Cage.
... Okay the left's more pink than purple but the point stands. It's the same color as Susie's skin in the Dark World, that's the Girl's triangle.
With that in mind, I'd like to take a quick look at the little bit we have of the Prophecy's End.
So. Interesting use of the triangles here. The rightmost two are tilted but chilling overall, and the left is completely shattered.
Listen I am certainly not the first person to point this out, but if you're talking about a "final tragedy" and showing me the triangle associated specifically with the girl breaking, it's not hard for me to assume that what you're telling me is that the final tragedy is that something bad happens to the Girl. Specifics be damned, that looks like the most obvious conclusion to draw from the panel.
And it's not the only panel that might point to this. Recall the panel with Rude Buster I showed before: "And last, was the girl. At last, was the girl." People have rightfully pointed out that this makes no sense in the context of introducing the heroes, because the Girl is ostensibly the second one. If the Rude Buster panel is part of the hero introduction, you get something like (if you allow me to shorten panels for brevity):
Three heroes stand at the world's end.
First, the Cage.
At last, the Girl.
Second, the Girl.
Third, the Prince.
It's kinda weird. What some people have taken from this is that this panel might actually imply a fourth person, separate from the three heroes. So:
Three heroes stand at the world's end.
First, the Cage.
Second, the Girl.
Third, the Prince.
At last, the (other) girl.
Valid idea! However, to me, it seems weird to refer to two different characters with the same pseudonym. What I find more likely is that the Rude Buster panel is just from a completely different part of the Prophecy. And with the wording of "and last/at last", combined with the Final Tragedy being that something bad happens to the Girl, we can try to put together a picture of what it may mean.
Let's think about what Susie said when she saw the tale's end: if something bad is supposed to happen to the girl, then Ralsei and Kris would try to stop it. So, it's possible that something happens to incapacitate the Cage and the Prince at a critical point, and the Girl must sacrifice herself to stop the end of the world. The panels would end up looking a little like this:
Three heroes stand at the world's end.
Cage, Girl, Prince.
[Some other stuff]
The Cage knelt in quiet, and beaten laid the Prince.
And last, was the girl. At last, was the Girl.
Alone against the dark, she faced her fate.
The last Prophecy. The story's end.
And then. When all hope is lost for the tale, the Final Tragedy unveils.
To save the worlds, there is only one way.
[Something bad happens to the Girl]
Only then, will the worlds be saved.
... Look the tense the Prophecy's written in is pretty inconsistent, it bothers me just as much as you but I've elected to ignore it because I really don't think it means anything.
Excusing my pretty poor rhyming and understanding that the exact wording will be different, you can kinda see the idea, right? And if I haven't completely lost you yet, you can probably tell where I'm going with this. Something bad happened to Dess. Something bad happens to the Girl. It could be connected.
Of course, this wouldn't be evidence on its own. It's entirely possible that, even if Dess' fate is similar to the Girl's, that's only for narrative reasons. Some kind of parallel drawn between the two to enhance the themes of the story, there's definitely a couple ways that could work.
Except. There is a way to connect Dess to the Prophecy's end directly. Because if you backtrack after Susie breaks the panel, you can get this infamous interaction.
Narrator: (It seems the way is blocked.)
(You put out your hand...)
(And, just out of view, just perfectly out of view,
Another hand pressed against yours
And pushed you back.)
As you may know, when that dialogue appears, the game plays the sound of a guitar at 0% volume. Dess is the character most directly associated with guitars, so this associates the message to Dess. Which means there is a clear reference to Dess in the room where we first hear of the Prophecy's End and the Final Tragedy. There are many reasons this could be here, but one of them certainly is that Dess is associated to the Final Tragedy. Possibly, because she was the Girl from Prophecy and suffered whatever fate that Final Tragedy refers to.
In fact, the specific horrible fate Dess suffered is becoming whatever the hell the Knight is, right? She became extremely powerful, but twisted and monstrous. And if you'll recall, part of the Prophecy is that "LOVE finds its way to the Girl." There's an obvious double meaning there. Either we're talking about regular old wholesome love, or we're talking about Level of Violence. And both in Undertale Geno and Deltarune Weird Route, we see how obtaining power by hurting others desensitizes people to violence, turning them into something horrible. Just like Dess.
Not only that, but you could also argue a connection between Dess and the Prophecy thanks to the lyrics of Raise up your Bat. Because of course I'm doing lyric analysis I can't fucking escape it.
[Raise up your Bat]
Come follow me into the dark
With your heart as the ark
Which shall shine you the way
Because I'm with you in the dark
With your heart as my mark
Which shall guide you the way,
through the waves
This is a very Dess coded song, with all the imagery of bats and the like. Specifically, it may be a song written by Dess. And she's asking someone to "follow her into the dark" with "their heart as the ark which shall shine them the way." That sounds a lot like Dess may have been having adventures with someone with a shining Soul capable of shining through the darkness, doesn't it? So, Dess may have been doing Prophecy stuff.
Finally, and most shocking of all! A song commonly associated with Dess is Lost Girl.
... I don't think this is good evidence I just think it's funny.
So, there's some evidence that Dess might have been the Girl from Prophecy, and thus the Prophecy already happened. However, the Prophecy is also happening now, as in, during the period of time we play through. Like, there's a lot of Prophecy panels that are way too close to the events of the game to dismiss. The "lord of screens cleaved red by blade," the Lancer one about him saying "toothpaste then boy," all the panels with the music notes to solve the puzzles in CH4, and that's only some of the examples. It's too much for me to say that our three heroes aren't at least partially doing Prophecy stuff. That's without bringing up that, again, the Girl we've seen doesn't have antlers. Plus, the Knight is a character in the Prophecy ostensibly separate from the Girl, and the way they're described is very similar to how we see them in the game.
To explain all this is, let's finally get to the titular Loop aspect of the theory!
A Story Retold
Look at the actual last panel of the Prophecy.
I said before that the left triangle breaking would imply something bad happened to the Girl, yet the left triangle at the end is perfectly fine. This would be pretty bad for the theory, if it were the only weird thing about this panel.
However, there's also a certain other symbol that shouldn't be here. Supposedly, the Prophecy ends with the Heroes banishing the Angel's Heaven. In fact, there's an entire panel talking about how the Angel itself will be banished and "meet its desire." So, why is the Angel symbol, the circle with wings, still there?
One way to explain this is that it doesn't mean anything. It's the end of the Delta Rune prophecy, so you show the Delta Rune, no matter what actually happened. This is reasonable.
However, it is also possible that it's implying something more. It could be implying that the Prophecy will repeat. A new Angel will appear and a new Girl will join the squad to help banish it, thus we show the Delta Rune with both the Angel and the Girl chilling.
Now, this isn't the strongest evidence, but it does give us a basis of what the theory looks like. The Prophecy is actually a story that repeats over and over with different "characters", and possibly different events altogether.
With this established, it's not unreasonable that "the bad thing that happens to the Girl" is turning into the Knight in some way. Since the story repeats, it's entirely possible for one person to fulfill different roles in each "loop." Dess was the Girl, and now is (to some extent) the Knight. Putting it all together, a possible way for the Prophecy to end is:
And then. When all hope is lost for the tale, the Final Tragedy unveils.
To save the worlds, there is only one way.
The Girl must fall to violence, and grab the blackened blade. A fallen hero knighted to begin the story again.
Only then, will the worlds be saved.
Susie [End of CH4 Dark World]: Like something like that would happen.
I wouldn't let it happen... Kris wouldn't let it happen...
And obviously YOU wouldn't let it happen.
"I wouldn't let myself fall so far, and Kris wouldn't let me. And obviously, you, Ralsei, the one who kept trying to steer me away from violence the entire time, you wouldn't let it happen."
(Admittedly the panel might have to be a little easier to understand for Susie to immediately get it but again exact wording will vary)
So, there it is. The full thesis statement of Prophecy Loop:
The Prophecy is an event (or sequence of events) that has happened several times and will continue to occur unless interrupted. It starts when the Knight causes the world to almost end by bringing forth the Angel's Heaven, and three heroes (Cage, Girl, Prince) work to banish that Angel. Then, the Girl who stops the end of the world in one "run" goes on to become the Knight of the following "run," making the story repeat all over.
This is... a pretty big leap, admittedly. Like, I'd like to say everything I've said is somewhat reasonable at least, but I'm reading a lot into tiny details for my evidence. And unfortunately, there's not that much I can do there.
The Girl is probably the most well defined part of the Prophecy by the nature of having the most panels, and that means working with the rest of the Prophecy to prove Prophecy Loop is really difficult. The Prince is so infamously under-detailed that there's not a lot I can do to speculate who could have taken the role back when Dess was the Girl, and the Angel and/or Player are such a can of worms that I don't really want to discuss them until I can make sure the theory isn't actively falling apart from every other angle.
Really, the Cage having "human parts" is possibly the best info we have on any other potential heroes, but it's still not much by itself. To really use the Cage for this theory, you'd need to find evidence that an otherworldly entity possessed a human character before the events of the game, and it's not like that exists, right?
... Am I really doing the same transition twice-?
The Cage
I bet you expected me to bring the Vessel into it, but it's actually just Kris again
So why does Kris have that birdcage? I could be wrong on this, but I somehow doubt they actually had a bird. Not to mention the dialogue that "it's seen a few crashes" even before we started playing the game, implying it's contained a rebellious version of Kris' soul more than once.
I am not the first to suggest that this could mean Kris has been controlled by something other than us in the past, and has had to use that birdcage to contain their soul in the same way they do when we're around. This could also connect to why they become noticeably more withdrawn after Dess' disappearance (though that could just be trauma, it might also be related to an unknown entity entering their body then leaving), why Carol was obsessed with heart-shaped objects before we came around (assuming she knows of this other entity controlling Kris), why Kris had moments where they would "go still" and go to play the piano without anyone looking (this is odd in general, but the idea is that these were moments where Kris regained control and started impulsively playing the piano like in the Light World segment of CH4), etc. The issue with this idea has always been that it's a little hard to tell what exactly takes control of Kris. Is it Gaster? Toby Fox himself? Chara somehow?
Well, if Prophecy Loop is true, that gives a pretty straightforward explanation to what happened there. Kris may have been the Cage of the old run as well, so they just contained the previous "Player" there.
(Putting Player in quotations for mysterious reasons I'll address later. Again, gigantic can of worms there)
Plus, it is generally assumed they were involved in Dess' disappearance somehow (mainly because of all the weirdness surrounding them and the bunker, and the existence of a save file ostensibly made by Kris). One way to explain that involvement is if Kris was part of an old "run" of the Prophecy.
And here's where I would tell you that this is evidence for Prophecy Loop with 100% certainty, but not so fast. The big issue here is that we know so little about this hypothetical prior entity controlling Kris that there's no way to link it to a Player or Player-like character. All of the evidence I have for Kris being the old Cage is just about them being controlled in general, and I struggle to find anything more specific than that. It could be evidence for them being the old Cage, but it could also be evidence for some other thing, is the point.
However, maybe I'm looking at this wrong. We don't know shit about the hypothetical old "Player", so we can't argue Kris was the old Cage through that. However, perhaps we can compare Kris themselves to the new Cage. Or rather, the thing that was supposed to be the new Cage.
Sub-Theory: Alright I'm actually bringing the Vessel into it this time
This next part isn't strictly necessary to believe Prophecy Loop, but it does add some interesting stuff to the story imo.
Let's begin by taking a step back and looking at the GONER MAKER sequence. We see the red soul appear, and then we create a Vessel, with the help of (someone who is presumed to be) Gaster. However, someone other than so-called-Gaster (judging by the difference in speech) discards the Vessel and puts the soul in Kris, causing them to be the Cage in the version of the Prophecy we play through.
Giving assumed-to-be-Gaster wanted you to create the Vessel, and the same individual calls the game/narrative "their Deltarune" after CH4, it's not hard to assume that the Vessel was actually meant to be the new run's Cage. However, someone decided this shouldn't be so, and instead threw the soul into the body of the old run's Cage, Kris. I presume this is somehow the work of the Knight Conspiracy, so Carol/Dess/Knight-who-is-and-isn't-Dess/Kris/Asgore(?)/ERAM(???)/Secret Sixth Option, because they want to do something with the Prophecy and Kris being the Cage benefits whatever plans they have. I don't think it's too much of a stretch, seeing as Carol is clearly interested in Kris and the soul, so forgive me if I can't explain it in full detail. It's kinda besides the point, anyway.
The bigger takeaway is that the new run's Cage was supposed to be a Vessel, which leads to the question of whether it's possible that the old run's Cage was also a Vessel. Indeed, Prophecy Loop can be somewhat connected to Kris-Vessel theory. If you don't know what that is, I'll leave a link to a SpookyDood video discussing it, but the idea is pretty straightforward; Kris may have been born as a Vessel, but gained individuality after they were "colored in with care" like the monochrome copies of the Flying Aces. The main pieces of evidence come from Egg rooms and associations made to Goners in those rooms; there's dialogue that can be read as calling Kris a "knockoff" and there being grey that they can't wash away (copies are monochrome and Goners are monochrome, etc). The idea is that Kris' arc involves rejecting the role they were born into by becoming an individual beyond their original purpose as a mere Vessel, which sorta parallels Susie and Ralsei directly fighting the Prophecy, etc.
The main problems with Kris-Vessel as it is currently understood (that Kris is the Vessel from the GONER MAKER sequence) come from... well, the GONER MAKER sequence. For starters, the fact that it doesn't do shit. Kris is completely unaffected by the entire process, which is odd if they're made directly from it. More importantly, the fact that calling the Vessel 'Kris' yields the response "AN INTERESTING COINCIDENCE," and calling the Creator 'Kris' has the big WD himself saying "YOU ARE ABOUT TO MEET SOMEONE VERY, VERY WONDERFUL." These responses are similar to things that happen if you name the Vessel/Creator after other characters in the game. Assuming somewhat linear time in the scene, it implies that Kris is already an existing entity separate from the Vessel before GONER MAKER ends.
This is a problem if Kris comes from the GONER MAKER, for sure. However, Prophecy Loop can avoid this by saying that Kris is not the Vessel, but a Vessel. Kris already exists before GONER MAKER because they were made before we arrived, but they're still a Vessel, explaining all the Goner imagery in the egg rooms.
And that leads to a sort of theory symbiosis between Prophecy Loop and Kris-Vessel. Prophecy Loop fixes some issues Kris-Vessel runs into, and Kris-Vessel in turn provides evidence for Prophecy Loop. The argument is that if Kris is a Vessel, and they're not related to GONER MAKER for the reasons stated previously, then the only way this can work is if they were a Vessel created prior to the events of the game, which suggests an old run of the Prophecy. So, evidence that Kris is a Vessel can be spun into Prophecy Loop evidence to some extent.
How much do I believe this? Well, eh... I've always been a bit iffy on Kris-Vessel seeing how detailed Kris' childhood backstory is. But I do think a lot of the evidence for Kris-Vessel is pretty compelling, and I can see the vision narratively even when I know it's controversial, so I think it's worth considering.
With this, I've officially ran through the main arguments about how Prophecy Loop works and why one would believe it. So, before we can go any further with the idea, we have to ask, does this even make sense?
Thematic Implications and Logistical Issues
Overanalyzing Prophecy panels, weird guitar dialogue and birdcages is cool and all, but Deltarune is a story, so our conclusions have to work as a story. What we have to ask is, how would the events of the Prophecy repeating further the themes of Deltarune?
And, well, you're smart. You've seen the way I presented the theory. You know what I'm angling for from a thematic sense, I imagine.
Gerson [Post Hammer of Justice win]: You remind me a bit of someone I used to know.
Susie: ... Who
Gerson: Just a character from that old story...
Susie:... Lord of the Hammer, huh. Hell if I'm reading that.
... though, wait a sec.
Isn't that... what Dragon Blazers was based on?
Gerson: Yep, yep. And so they changed parts of the story.
Of course, the biggest fans got mad... but, isn't it interesting?
The book was already just an interpretation of something else.
Stories can be retold. They can be changed... That's what I believe.
(Hey look it's one of the quotes in the image I used!)
A big point brought up in CH4 is the power of retelling a story, of changing it to bring forth a different vision. The Prophecy is, in itself, a story. It gets retold in Lord of the Hammer, then Dragon Blazers retells it again. What Prophecy Loop suggests, then, is that it is literally retold when it repeats. And maybe some things change. Maybe Dess never saw a lord of screens or a queen's unstoppable chariot, maybe the old Girl had antlers and Susie doesn't, but the main point of the story is still retold (I'll elaborate more on this in a moment, I'll just finish the point first).
And so, with all those potential ways it can be told, it's up to those writing it to define its ending. Except, they never do.
Gerson [During Hammer of Justice Fight]: Yes, the old tale, based upon the prophecy...
Lord of the Hammer.
Susie: Think I heard about it. What happens? [...]
Gerson: There was only one more chapter... After that,
It all stopped.
That next book, it never did get written.
The story, it became so grand, so overwhelming,
Some say it swallowed up the author himself.
The ones who could write the next, the youth, the pen was lying there for them to pick up.
To make the next page.
...they never did.
The bell's ringin' now. Seems we've reached the final rounds.
So... how do you think it all ends?
No, how do you want it to end?
Susie: An ending, huh...
...If I could choose I guess...
I wouldn't have an ending!
It's just better if stuff just... goes on forever, right?
(Oh my Angel it's the other line I used!)
If we assume that the Prophecy never truly ends, but simply resets, we can draw a pretty clear link to Lord of the Hammer, can't we? Lord of the Hammer never got finished, but instead, it got retold in the form of Dragon Blazers. Similarly, Dess' Prophecy run stopped with the Final Tragedy, potentially the sixth and final written chapter of Lord of the Hammer, but that didn't end the overarching loop, the larger story. Instead, the "narrative" of the Prophecy ended up repeating, getting "retold," with Susie and her gang.
And Susie's mindset here is presumably the mindset of every Girl before her. Instead of ending the narrative decisively, stopping the repeating Prophecy in some way, they just let it go on forever. They choose not to have an ending, so the story gets retold from the start. This could connect with some major themes of the game, such as the refusal to move on from the past. The world itself is "stuck" in this loop in the same way that the Holiday home is "stuck in the holidays", Carol and Asgore and Kris specifically being stuck to the entire Dess situation, Tenna is stuck back in the good old days, even Alvin with Gerson, etc.
The climax of the game, the CH7 that goes beyond Lord of the Hammer's final chapter, will potentially include Susie breaking free from this cycle by deciding to make her own ending. That would be why there's so much emphasis on Susie being different from the Girl in Prophecy. It's not that she's not the Girl, is that she's different from all the Girls who came before her.
However, anyone can make a Deltarune fanfic sorta following the themes of the story. The next question to raise is does this actually work from a logistical standpoint?
This is the elaboration of the differences between Prophecy "runs" I mentioned earlier. See, there's some pretty big issues with that idea, which I'm sure some of you are already concerned about.
Before talking about that, is it possible that every Prophecy panel we see applies to every "run" of the Prophecy? Well, no. Dess has antlers, so the images we have of the Girl don't match her. And the Girl is explicitly a monster so we can't even dodge the issue with Human Dess Theory. Thus, at the very least, the Girl's panels must change, and at that point any panel can change.
This raises two issues. For one, the church's religion around the Prophecy. It seems the church considers the Prophecy a one and done event, meaning their knowledge can't change over time, and that's not great for the idea that the Prophecy changes. If they know the Girl is antler-less, then Dess was never a Girl candidate, for example.
The second problem is arguably bigger, however, and that is that the possibility of panels changing kinda throws all our evidence out the window. I said the Girl might be Dess because she uses swords, but I'm ignoring that the Girl doesn't have antlers. So it seems like I'm picking and choosing what is consistent across different "runs" and what isn't to fit the theory, thus making the arguments sorta ass.
There is a way around it, though, albeit not the best workaround ever. And it comes from something Catty says in her church speech.
Catty [CH4 Church speech]: [The hero with horns]'s honestly SO cute.
I mean, there, like, aren't any pictures, but like...
There it is. You see it? The fact that there aren't any pictures in the church's version means the knowledge the church possesses and the knowledge the CH4 panels show is different.
What could this mean? Well, put it like this. If the church only possesses limited knowledge of the Prophecy, it's entirely possible their knowledge is universal to all versions of the Prophecy. The three heroes and the Angel, as seen in the symbol, the horns of the Third Hero... maybe these things are consistent across all versions of the Prophecy. Notably, the heroes plural having swords is one of these hypothetically consistent points:
Catty [CH4 Church speech]: There's, like, these heroes, and they're like, SO cool.
They have like, swords and stuff?
So that particular argument for Dess being the previous Girl stands. The Rude Buster point gets shakier, but you still have the connection between the text box with the guitar noise and the end of the Prophecy, plus all the non-Prophecy panel related evidence like Raise up your Bat. Not to mention the birdcage exists sorta separate from the Prophecy anyway. Basically, yes some points are made weaker by the assumption that the Prophecy changes, but not all of them.
What is it that changes between iterations, then? Well, the specifics. What the Girl looks like, Jockington growing a beard, the piano notes... all of these are things that the Church may not know, because they apply only to our "run." Ralsei presumably has this more specific knowledge as well, but (as far as we know) he hasn't been around to see previous runs of the Prophecy, so he'd have no clue about the "looping" aspect unless the Final Tragedy makes it clear.
The next logistical problem to address is... well, the old "Player." I sorta acted like this theory can explain the previous entity possessing Kris, except, it really doesn't? Like, Kris being possessed by a "Player" doesn't actually tell us much about said "Player" or their nature.
I mean, it can't be a real life human like us, right? Unless Toby Fox himself is gonna end up inserted in the story as the old Player, I got no clue how that could work. So it could be a fictional character who still views Deltarune as fiction, so like, a layer of reality above the Deltarune story, but still below ours.
... Goddamnit, the best candidate is Gaster. It sorta works with the way Gerson describes retelling stories, right? Gaster "played through" the Prophecy, and now he's helping us experience our own version of it. He's the Dragon Blazers devs, who read Lord of the Hammer and made the video game after it. It's kind of a massive reach that has basically no evidence, but it kinda works as a bandaid fix? If you ignore Undertale lore because I have legitimately no idea how to tie that into this???
Yeah listen this is certainly the biggest hole in the theory for now. If you wish to disregard this theory on that basis, feel free to do so. The reason it isn't terribly damning for me is... well, there's a difference between "it can't work" and "I can't figure out how to make it work," and this to me feels like the latter. Like, the issue isn't that it's physically impossible or that there's evidence disproving a previous Player-like entity- if anything, the birdcage is evidence for it. And Gaster specifically being the old Player feels like it could work, even I struggle to connect it to Undertale lore. The issue is that this whole thing is such an abstract and confounding concept that I can't theorize anything about it without just making shit up. So, it may work if it gets approached from the right angle, but I can't tell what that angle is.
Is this all shaky? Oh, definitely. I never said this theory was perfect. There's not, like, an abundance of evidence, and there's probably even more logistical problems I'm not thinking about. I just think it's a possibility worth considering considering, as there is a bit of evidence, it's issues aren't completely damning, and I think it makes for a cool story if nothing else, especially given the narrative emphasis on retelling stories and being stuck in the past.
So, we have the general concept of the theory, we established why it can work narratively, and we addressed some of its potential issues. However, there's still a bit more to be discussed in regards to what this theory could mean for different aspects of the narrative. The rest of the post should be treated more as sub-theories of Prophecy Loop than part of the main argument. Basically, I'm about to go completely insane, so feel free to disregard the following theories while still believing Prophecy Loop, if you're so inclined.
But if you're willing to put up with my mad ramblings, then I'm happy to oblige. After all, there's a couple characters from Prophecy I haven't talked about yet, aren't there? The Prince, the Angel, and the Knight. I have my own thoughts about who each of the old versions of these characters could be, but they're... pretty out there. If Prophecy Loop is true, I fully believe Dess is the old Girl and Kris is the old Cage, but I am not certain about these other roles. But I'll still talk about them, of course! I'll go in descending order of sanity, starting with a guess that is... funnier more than it is likely.
The Knight
All your theories are TRUE!!!
So, I originally didn't think much about the old Knight when putting the theory together. Frankly, I just figured that we wouldn't know who they were. Like, as much as the Angel is the one who gets banished in the end, I somehow doubted that the Knight who "dueled with the Heroes strife by strife" would be around as well. So, I believe the theory works even if we have no clue who the old Knight is.
But, well. If we're going for completionism... Carol does have a blackened sword.
(To be clear it could be a sheath but Asgore does talk about Black Shards while standing directly in front of it so)
I mentioned it offhandedly before, but it's true. If your metric for who a Girl from Prophecy could be is "a girl who is rude and uses swords," then Carol would fit the description. And because the Girl turns into the Knight at the end of the Prophecy per this theory, then if Carol was the Girl of the run before the Dess run, she would be the Knight when Dess was the Girl. It would explain the sword, but it could also tie into her obsession with the Soul. How? No clue! Even if this is miraculously true, there are some things I doubt we'd be able to answer right now, and this is one of them.
Of course, Carol as the Knight of the old run would have to have a very different MO from the Knight we see in Deltarune. Given she and Dess coexisted to some degree, it would be impossible for Carol to be off aura-farming in the dark the whole time like our beloved Knight does. But as I said before, details of the Prophecy can change between runs, so this isn't super damning.
Do I fully believe this? Eh, not particularly. I just think it'd be extremely funny if Carol!Knight and Dess!Knight turn out to both be true to an extent. "Everyone wins" type ending.
In any case, we know so little about Carol that I can't say much more, which is why this is more a funny aside than a full on sub-theory. However, the next part is gonna require a bit more thought.
The Angel
Or: watch as I fumble around with the easiest theory layup in history
So, I do have some things to say about the Angel in regards to Prophecy Loop, but they require a good deal of introduction before we get there. Basically, I need to tell you what I believe about the Angel in a general sense before going into the theory specific stuff. Bear with me for a second, I swear I'll circle back to Prophecy Loop (heh) eventually.
Let's review what we know of the Angel. They're a powerful, eldritch being who unnerves anyone who stares into their visage. There's an interaction with the Angel doll in Rudy's room in CH1 where Kris is unsettled by its lack of facial features, and the gang does not enjoy what the Angel looks like in the Prophecy panels.
Susie [Angel Prophecy Panel]: Hey, below the words, that picture...
What the hell... is that supposed to be...?
Ralsei: That... that's the Angel, Susie.
What... to my understanding, it actually looks like.
Susie: ...
I... I dunno about that, man.
Interacting with the Prophecy Panel again: (It's a prophecy...)
(...Looking at it made you feel strange. You did not investigate further.)
The Angel is also usually described as "watching over" the world of Deltarune.
Catty [CH4 Church speech]: Oh my god, so like, the Angel,
that's watching over all of us?
Combine that with the Soul being hidden under an Angel doll in CH4, and the door in Ralsei's castle that has a heart surrounded by wings, and it seems easy to deduce the Angel is just the Player.
And yeah, this works well enough. We're otherworldly, we're "watching over" the world in the sense we're looking at it from the outside, the save points constantly reference a vague power of ours, and the featurelessness can be attributed to the fact we're all different. So, yeah, there's nothing complicated about the Angel, at least in the current run of the Prophecy.
...
Enter Noelle.
Noelle [CH2, Ferris Wheel]: It's a dream, right?
I'd grow big angel wings,
And fly as I can, gazing back at it all...
Noelle [CH4 Holiday Home]: Um, oh, haha, those? I've had those since I was a little kid...
They're from when I was the Angel in the Holiday Pageant.
... But I liked them so much, I just... kept wearing them.
Noelle [CH2 Weird, FreezeRing scene]: Huh...? A ring...?
Faha, sorry, I don't think WE need something like that!
Addison: C'mon, angel! You can't get stronger without good equipment!
Spamton [CH2 Weird, 0 left]: [Angel], [Angel]
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THE [Ring] of [Thorns]?
[Snow] When it snows,
Me and my sister and everyone have a contest
To make the biggest snow angel of all.
We lie on the ground and spread out our arms
And wave them until we get a shape just like us.
I'm the smallest
Even smaller than Kris
But I don’t lose.
Because, after we stand up to look
Dess always tells me,
"Hey, look, Elly! Yours has more hidden underneath!"
And pushes away all the snow I couldn't reach
So I have the biggest wings of all.
I wish it could snow
whenever I wanted.
Every other Angel reference in this damn game links back to Noelle in some way and it is confounding. That's without mentioning this bullshit:
"Ring" of Heaven's call, specifically showing a circle with wings so it can be interpreted as a double meaning with the ring of a phone call and the rings people wear on their fingers. And Noelle is the ring user.
And, like, this all feels like a layup for Prophecy Loop, right? Ostensibly, if there are two Girls, two Princes (we'll get to that), and there were supposed to be two Cages, there would also be two Angels. And it just so happens there are two big Angel candidates, us and Noelle. Easy, right?
Except, there's obviously some big problems there. For one, both us and Noelle would be Angels of the new run, so we still don't have an old Angel. For two, Noelle and the Player are extremely different entities with entirely different powers and roles. As much as she's connected to the Angel, the actual descriptions of the being as an eldritch entity that's unnerving to perceive just don't fit Noelle. So, let me tell you a few possibilities about how I believe this issue can be resolved.
Possibility #1: Noelle as a Symbolic Angel
It is entirely possible that Noelle will only be symbolically tied to the Angel, and that no events in the story will literally make them the same thing. How? Idk, but it's possible. We just don't have the understanding of the Angel we would need to definitively state whether Noelle works as a parallel to it or not. If we're going with Player Angel, then Noelle being a gamer interested in secrets and glitches could certainly be relevant, at least. Additionally... uh...
Okay I can't actually comment that much more about this. If the connection is only symbolic, we'd need to know more about the actual Angel to connect it to Noelle. The real reason I'm bringing up the possibility is so you know I'm aware of it, and you should be aware of it too in case it ends up being the real reason for the connections. However, when narrative analysis becomes impossible, we turn to theories!
Possibility #2: Noelle as the Angel's Servant
"The ring of Heaven's call" isn't something isolated to the one Prophecy panel. There is also an Organikk in the Sacred Moss hallway that says:
Organikk [CH4 Sacred Moss hallway]: Who will call the girl who snows?
Combined with the ring imagery in the "ring of Heaven's call" panel, it's not hard to assume that Heaven will call the girl who snows, aka Noelle. From this, a possibility is that Noelle won't be the Angel, but rather do something on the Angel's orders. Maybe it's something that will come up later in the Normal Route, maybe it's Weird Route exclusive, but the point remains the same.
This is certainly a possibility, but one I don't find all that likely. The lines that connect Noelle to the Angel don't imply that Noelle will be at the Angel's side, they all imply Noelle is the Angel. She's the one growing wings, the one wearing the costume, the one Addison refers to as "angel"... Spamton could be debatable as speaking to the Player instead of Noelle, but given the only time he talks about the Angel directly is when Noelle's involved, that would be a little strange.
Which leaves us with the possibility I'm probably leaning on the most.
Possibility #3: Noelle as an Ascended Angel
To summarize our conclusions so far, Noelle will be the Angel, but she currently doesn't possess the Angel's characteristics. From this, it could be deduced that she may become the Angel. In other words, the Angel is a position that a character will "ascend" into, as opposed to something like the roles of the Cage and the Girl and the Prince of the Dark which are more pre-ordained. Again, whether this will happen in Normal Route, Weird Route, or both, I have no clue, but that's beside the point.
This certainly fits the idea that Noelle will be "called" by Heaven in some way, a sort of divine calling to be the Angel. Symbolically, it also makes sense with Dess specifically being the one to make the wings of Noelle's snow angels bigger. The idea there is that the Knight is pushing forward the Prophecy by doing Knight things, which could include pushing Noelle into the Angel's role, "giving her wings."
And this even fits with the way the Angel is described in the Undertale version of the Delta Rune Prophecy. Given Undertale and Deltarune are "parallel stories", I think it's not an insane stretch to say that the Angels described in both their versions of the Prophecy may be similar. In case you need a refresher, here's that game's version of the Angel:
Waterfall Plaque [Undertale]: However... There is a prophecy.
The Angel... The One Who Has Seen The Surface...
They will return. And the underground will go empty.
(I wonder if anyone's checking the links and seeing the moment I kinda gave up and started linking text dumps as a whole lmao)
The general understanding is that this can either mean "the Angel breaks the barrier and monsters leave the underground" for the Pacifist Route, and "the Angel kills everyone" for the Geno Route. Now, Frisk/Chara/The Player can to an extent be said to apply for those two routes, but Undertale has more than two endings. The underground doesn't empty on a Neutral Route, implying that if you do that route, either the Prophecy fails, or the Angel is just someone not seen in the game. In other words, the Angel may be a different person in Neutral than in Pacifist and Geno, at least if you assume that the Prophecy can't straight up fail.
And it's not just the Neutral Route, actually. Note the wording of "The One Who Has Seen The Surface" returning to the Underground to empty it. For Frisk and the Player, the "returning" part only applies if you take resets into account, but I personally feel like that's very iffy (the rest of the world wouldn't see it as "returning" if they can't remember they left), especially since doing a Geno route first technically would invalidate the Prophecy.
So, perhaps the Angel is just Chara, who has both seen the surface and been to the Underground before the events of the game, so they're "returning" no matter what. And for Geno, this works quite well. Although we're the ones guiding Chara at the start, they definitely help a bit, walking through puzzles and swinging a few times there at the end. The idea of a "fallen Angel" also fits with Chara calling themselves a "demon."
But in Pacifist, you could argue there's actually a better Angel candidate than Frisk, Chara and the Player. Asriel. He has also seen the surface, as he walked out with Chara's corpse that one time, he returns by coming back to life, and he's the one who breaks the barrier to empty the underground. Actually, he fits both sides of the Prophecy, as he first empties the underground by taking everyone's souls, then also empties it by breaking the barrier. And not only does it work, it almost feels like the direct implication, as Asriel takes a very Angel-like form at the end, with infinite power and big ass wings.
To recap, the best candidate for the Angel Pacifist is Asriel, the best Geno Angel candidate is probably Chara, and Neutral needs a different person to take the role. Which means that the title of "Angel" might not be something you're born into, but something you obtain. In particular, you could attach it to the idea of "reaching the absolute."
Chara [Undertale Geno Ending]: Now, we have reached the absolute.
Check Asriel: The Absolute GOD of Hyperdeath!
What's noteworthy is that both of these characters require Player intervention to become "absolute." You can't reach the Asriel fight without resetting after a Neutral Ending, and Chara can't do a Geno route without you guiding them to guide Frisk into killing everyone (or something, the possession system in Undertale is weird lol). So, the Player guides an in-universe character to obtain massive power, which turns them into the Angel. Sound familiar?
YOU [CH4 Weird Route]: Noelle will get stronger.
This interpretation of Noelle becoming the Angel because we made her stronger helps solve all the issues we had before. The Player is connected to the role of the Angel because we're the ones who make it happen, explaining the Angel doll on our Soul and the wings on the door with the Soul. But Noelle is still the one actually turning into the Angel, explaining all her connections to growing wings and just the Angel in general. To put it differently, the Angel is an in-universe character, but the Angel's power comes from us.
Now, does this happen in the Normal Route, Weird Route, both? I have no clue! But it doesn't matter. I don't blame you if you've forgotten, but the point of this whole thing was to talk about the Angel as it pertains to Prophecy Loop, and which route Noelle becomes the Angel in doesn't really matter for that theory. Because the important takeaway from all this rambling is that people can become the Angel, which gives us a better idea of what to look for when thinking of the Angel which Dess, Kris and the old Prince supposedly banished in this theory.
Ignoring what I said before, my first idea was Gaster, because of course it was. He's got demon connections with the abundance of the number 6 around him and the whole connection between the Depths and Hell, so you could say he's a fallen Angel. And that could connect to this book which appears to talk of the origin of... something darkness related, probably Shadow Crystals.
Peculiar Book [CH4 Roots room]: And so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears.
Then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew.
It looked like glass.
Fallen star, fallen Angel, word association, boom, Gaster. Plus, Shadow Crystals may be connected to him, and they're born from tears, and an Organikk before the "who will call the girl who snows" Organikk says:
Organikk [CH4 Sacred Moss hallway]: Why does the Angel make its cry?
So you can see how my mind went there. I certainly think this is a possibility, especially because Gaster is literally the only person I can think of that would constantly be watching over the Deltarune world (even the Player has a limited perspective, after all), and the only one guiding fate as some lines from the churchgoers imply it does.
Alvin [CH4 Start]: The poor man. It seems the Angel has made a difficult path for him...
However, it's possible the church is just wrong. I mean, this theory in general makes them wrong about the idea the Prophecy is a one and done event, so why not this as well? I don't love the argument, but there is legitimately no good way to reconcile the Angel watching over everyone with Noelle's associations, so allow me to sorta disregard this detail.
But, uhm. There might be a better candidate. Except I almost don't want to bring it up, because I think this probably enters top 5 most insane things I've said in this blog and that's a very real accomplishment. Still, there's no shame in theorizing I suppose. The same way there's no shame in an Egg.
The Forgotten Man as the Previous Angel
So I'm definitely losing my mind here but I swear there's connections I see them in the walls.
By the way, to clarify, I don't believe the Forgotten Man and Gaster are the same person, which I imagine should be obvious given I'm bringing them up as separate guesses :p Feel free to believe they're both the old Angel if you think they're the same, but their speech patterns are just way too different for me to be able to believe it without issue (heh). Among other things, really, but the speech patterns are the big one. I could accept Forgotten Man being Deltarune Gaster separate from Voice-from-GONER-MAKER-Gaster, but I don't see those two being the same.
That aside, let's go over some characteristics here. The Forgotten Man is someone that Kris doesn't like thinking about, and whose face Kris impulsively covers with a tree when they draw him. So, unnerving for Kris to look at, that's similar to the Angel's visage being unsettling. Plus, it's sort of implied that this man is connected to something traumatic in Kris' childhood, given the whole therapy motif of the fourth Egg room. That could hypothetically be the banishment of the previous Angel since it lead to Dess'... situation, so it's another potential connection. The Forgotten Man is (kind of) sometimes seen looking at us through windows and stuff, so you could kinda argue he's "watching over" Kris, if nothing else. The Forgotten Man is also... well, Forgotten, which for all we know may be what happens to the Angel if it gets banished. And both Noelle and the Man are heavily associated with easter eggs and video game mysteries in general, so there's a loose connection between our potential new Angel and the Man.
But these could easily be coincidences. There are some bigger pieces of evidence here. See, I said before that the Girl and the Cage were the only things that really provided a bunch of evidence for this theory. I lied. It's just that the other piece of evidence is kinda out there. Let's look at the Forgotten Man's CH3 appearance, and this particular story he tells.
Forgotten Man [CH3]: ONCE UPON A TIME, THE WHOLE WORLD LOOKED LIKE THIS.
DO YOU THINK SO?
[Prompt: Yes / No]
[If yes] REALLY, YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING SO ABSURD? / [If no] OF COURSE NOT. IT'S JUST A STORY AFTER ALL.
[If yes] I'M HAPPY TO HEAR IT. LET ME CONTINUE / [If no] NOW, LET ME CONTINUE...
WELL, THE WORLD CHANGED, SOCIETY WAS DEVELOPED.
THE EARTH WAS COVERED IN WATER, DINOSAURS APPEARED, AN ICE AGE.
HM... ACTUALLY, THERE ARE STILL DINOSAURS... IS IT MIXED UP?
IN ANY CASE, THIS ISLAND IS THE ONLY PLACE LEFT I CAN TALK.
Listen I feel like I'm going more and more insane the more I look at this damn dialogue, but there's a way you can spin this into Prophecy Loop evidence. Let me explain how I interpret these events he's describing:
-The whole world looked like this: Since the "place" in question is stylized like an old videogame and connected to Kris' childhood, I interpret this to mean "to you, the world used to look like this."
-The world changed, society was developed: Kris grows up, I guess.
-Dinosaurs appeared: Somehow I doubt this is about Alphys, so it may be referring to Susie entering Kris' life.
-The Earth was covered in water: Here we get to the Prophecy Loop stuff. See, there's an association in Deltarune between water and darkness. Darkness comes from Dark Fountains, Shadow Crystals "move like water in your hands" and probably come from the tears of the fallen star (note also that Titan Spawn "smell like rotten glass"), shadows slip off the Shadow Mantle "like water", the texture used in the GONER MAKER sequence is called DEPTH and is a picture of the ocean, Jevil talks about "Hell's roar bubbling from the depths", and there may be more associations I'm forgetting. So, the Earth getting covered in water could actually be an allegory for the Roaring, where it gets covered in Darkness.
-An ice age: The most speculative, but the idea is that Noelle has ice magic, so the Angel as a concept may be connected to "Ice Ages." This is especially likely because of the idea that the "light in your Soul" will still be "shining in the cold" even when "the shadows start to grow" from the lyrics of Don't Forget.
[Don't Forget]
When the light is running low
And the shadows start to grow
And the places that you know
Seem like fantasy
There's a light inside your soul
That's still shining in the cold
Shadows start to grow -> Roaring. Roaring + "Still shining in the cold" -> Roaring is cold.
Alternatively, Dess presumably had ice magic as well, so it could be related to her final actions as the Girl or something.
So, when you take it like that, what's it mean? At first, it kinda just feels like foreshadowing of the Prophecy. Not necessarily talking about a previous loop, just something that may happen in the future. However, the key line here is "there are still dinosaurs." The implication is that it's surprising there are still dinosaurs after the Ice Age, which naturally implies that the dinosaurs must come after the ice age, whatever that is. Which means if the way the Man originally tells it is mixed up, a "fixed" version could be:
The world looked "like this" (Kris' childhood).
The Earth is covered in water (old run Roaring).
An ice age (Angel and/or Dess make it snow).
Society developed (Kris grew up - this can go wherever btw).
Dinosaurs appeared (Susie shows up).
This would suggest a prior loop. The only reason I don't consider very strong is that it's so vague that you can take it many other ways. If Dess' death isn't actually related to the Prophecy, the "ice age" could be her death, and the Earth being covered in water could actually come after the dinosaurs, so Prophecy Loop can easily be argued around here.
But if the ice age is related to the old run, that could mean the Forgotten Man knows of the previous loop, at which point him being directly connected to it by being the Angel feels more likely.
And for the last piece of evidence, the one thing that made me decide this theory was substantial enough to mention, is this little passage from Noelle's blog in the Sweepstakes.
Egg blog post: A white egg showed up on my screen, but there was a message with it. "SPECIAL" [...]
The next day when I opened the game, the egg was gone, with a message that said it "left home due to happiness."
Usually the message is "(pet) left home due to sadness" and only happens because you neglected your pet. It's not supposed to happen because you were nice XD
One last thing!
The egg actually had a name but I don't remember what it was.
So, this egg is obviously connected to the Forgotten Man, down to Noelle forgetting the egg's name. And this egg leaves the world because it becomes happy. Does that remind you of someone?
The Angel also leaves the world when it becomes happy, when it meets its desire.
I'm actively losing my mind.
And you wanna know the craziest part? Forgotten Man as the old Angel already makes negative sense. And Gaster as the old Player, that thing I mentioned before as the best option we had, also makes negative sense. But if you take that negative logic and multiply against itself, you achieve positive speculative power, a Reverse Theorizing Technique if you will.
Because Gaster and the Forgotten Man have connections even if I don't believe they're the same person. The way they show up, their connections to Easter Eggs, idfk the egg in Papyrus' date scene??? And just like we and the current Angel might be connected, it would make sense for the old Angel and the old Player to have these connections as well.
????????
Okay look I've officially lost the thread. Let's pull it back. Do I believe the Forgotten Man is actually the old Angel? No. We need to go like nine levels of theorizing deep to actually reach that conclusion, the likelihood that I somehow managed to nail each and every prediction along the way is obscenely low. But hey, it's fun! Theorizing's fun and makes me happy so even if I'm wrong! I like making these insane ass connections! I swear I'm mentally stable!
... What do you mean this isn't even the most insane guess of the remaining old members of the Prophecy???
The Prince
Mr. Prince please take off the hood
Okay, so like, what do we know of the Prince? Well, they're probably male ("prince", not "royal heir" or "princess"), are a Darkner of importance (at least I assume they're not some random Guei or something), and (assuming it isn't a Ralsei specific thing) have fire magic. Additionally, from Catty's retelling we can potentially infer they have horns.
Catty [CH4 Start]: There's, like, these heroes, and they're like, SO cool.
They have like, swords and stuff?
And there's one with like, ummm, horns?
He's honestly SO cute.
I mean, there, like, aren't any pictures, but like...
Tbf the horn point is debatable because "there aren't any pictures," but I'm taking that's more about the cuteness than the very specific attribute of horns. She knew about the swords, if nothing else, so there's gotta be some descriptions there.
So, cool, fits Ralsei. He has horns, we see him use fire magic in the LightUp ACT against Balthizard, he's a prince and a Darkner of importance. The constant use of the hood in the panels is peculiar, but the relevance is debatable since Ms. Prophecy Breaker Susie is the one who asked Ralsei to remove it.
The first question is: Is it possible that Ralsei is the old Prince? The same way that Kris is also the old Cage?
Ralsei [Start of CH1 Dark World]: I've been waiting alone here...
Um... my whole life for you two to arrive.
Okay so no. We gotta find a different guy.
With it all on the table, though, there's really not many other people it fits. I mean, forgive me if I'm a little presumptuous, but I somehow doubt Lanino is the old Prince.
What a reasonable person would tell you at this point is that we likely haven't met the old Prince yet, even if Prophecy Loop is true. We have three chapters left, plenty of time to introduce this hypothetical character.
...However, I am actually insane. I think I've already proven that, at least. So there is a potential guess here.
Because if you're talking fire magic, "horns" and a figure hidden under clothes, there is one Dark World resident that could take up the mantle. In a very literal sense.
Hooh boy.
i'm not dignifying this with a proper title what in the hell am i talking about
(Allow me to ignore the FRIEND allegations for a bit, I'll address them later)
So, ERAM! That's what I'm calling this thing because it's the coolest name it has! What a guess!
Like I said, I'm only really confident on Dess as the old Girl and Kris as the old Cage (if Prophecy Loop is true at all, anyway), and I'm a lot shakier on Carol as the old Knight, maybe Gaster as the old Player and the Forgotten Man as the old Angel. But I will be genuinely shocked if ERAM as the old Prince ends up having any credence. It literally started from the observation that this thing has fire attacks, which really isn't strong at all. And while I brought up its sprite having horn-like things, it's very debatable whether those really are horns or if I'm hallucinating. The best point of the ones I mentioned is probably the fact we've only ever seen them hidden under the Shadow Mantle, the same way the Prince is always depicted wearing a cloak, and that's a pretty crazy reach as well. However, there is a little more to note here, so let me tap into the insanity a little more.
The main argument for this is, perhaps surprisingly, ERAM's strange amount of knowledge about the Weird Route. On a regular run, ERAM says this upon starting the fight:
Do you honestly think it'll get you what you want...?
... no, part of you is just... enjoying this, isn't it?
Oh, don't make that sour face.
I can see in the dark, you know!
However, in the Weird Route, two extra lines are added.
Do you honestly think it'll get you what you want...?
... no, part of you is just... enjoying this, isn't it?
The same part of you that enjoyed yesterday.
Knowing you could say it wasn't really you.
Oh, don't make that sour face.
I can see in the dark, you know!
This is noteworthy because ERAM is the only character who seems to be aware of the Weird Route events without being directly tied to them.
In my mind, there's two ways to explain how this happens. One, it could connect to the whole "I can see in the dark" thing, potentially implying ERAM possesses a higher degree of awareness of what goes on in different Dark Worlds than other Darkners. Two, perhaps ERAM is able to move through different Dark Worlds at will, and just so happened to be watching from the shadows when Noelle was getting stronger. And both of these possibilities are very real, because a certain other character displays these traits.
Ralsei [Start of CH2]: I felt a dark presence and hurried over!
Ralsei [Start of CH3]: I felt a dark presence and hurried here...
And when I said before that ERAM was the only person who knew of the Weird Route without being involved in it, well, I kinda lied. Again. Because Ralsei's dialogue also changes.
Ralsei [CH3, Ask how Ralsei's doing -> Go to Festival with Noelle]: Noelle...?
Um, I'm sure if Susie was with you, too...
Noelle would probably really appreciate it!
I'm sure the three of you would have a lot of fun!
Umm, if it's... the three of you.
Ralsei [CH3 Weird Route, same place]: N... Noelle?
Kris, I...
I think that's...
...
A bad choice.
I mean, I'm sorry! A bad choice to, make alone.
Noelle, might want to go with Susie...
I hope you can... figure out a nice solution!
This isn't even the only example, just the first one I grabbed. So, a question arises. Did Ralsei figure out what's going on by seeing how Noelle and Kris acted, or is he using his weird "dark presence intuition" thing to "sense" that something's off there? Because if it's the latter, if Ralsei can "see in the dark" in the same way that ERAM somehow "saw" what Kris did in the Cyber World, that's a clear connection between the new Prince and ERAM.
To expand on this idea of ERAM possessing strange knowledge, you know how Ralsei is very aware of the Player? Which means we could potentially argue the Prince is just generally aware of meta elements? Well... ERAM appears to ostensibly be working with Kris, and yet still kills them if we lose the fight.
ERAM [After defeat]: Haha... well, enough of that! We both have work to do!
Because of that, you could argue it's possible ERAM knows about resets. There are fights in the game where you don't die on a game over (Susie-Lancer tag team, Hammer of Justice, Knight), so it's entirely possible to beat Kris without killing them. And yet, ERAM still does it, potentially implying ERAM knows Kris will come back safely even if the Soul breaks.
The issue with this as Prince evidence is that... well, Kris had a save file. They probably know about resets, and thus ERAM might have learnt about it from them. You can actually use the same "working with Kris but still kills them" argument while looking at the Knight knife barrage right before the start of the Second Sanctuary to argue for the Knight knowing about resets (which I do believe but that's besides the point), and the Knight is certainly not a Prince.
However, as I said, it might not be vague omniscience explaining ERAM's knowledge, it could also be inter-Dark World travel. In fact, you could argue that ERAM must have inter-Dark World travel no matter what, as they apparently managed to steal the Shadow Mantle from Seam before the TV World opened. That means ERAM was in Castle Town to steal the Mantle, then traveled to TV World mysteriously.
Seam [CH2 Talk]: ... Unless you use the power of the Shadow Mantle.
Here, it may look like an old scrap of cloth, but...
... eh?
I can't find it. Did someone... take it...?
Again, that also connects to Ralsei directly, but there's an even deeper connection. Because if you're talking about someone with a strange amount of knowledge who is capable of easily traveling between different areas, then the Prince's hood starts looking very familiar.
Listen we gotta address this at some point. I get that maybe this is just how Toby wants cloaks like these to look like, but why would the CH4 panels bring attention to it if it means nothing?
What I'm suggesting is that the Prince's cloak looks like Undertale's Riverperson's because they're connected by their strange knowledge ("man who speaks in hands", "man from another world", "the Angel is coming", "the song from the sea," etc. for Riverperson, all of what ERAM and Ralsei know for them) and their ability to "fast travel." You can even connect the fact Riverperson moves through... well, a river, to the idea that darkness in Deltarune works like water, which I mentioned before. Fuck, you can connect this to (as silly as the name is) toilet theory, the idea that the sewers of Hometown have some kind of Dark World connection that allows for fast travel between Dark Worlds. "Fast travel through water that a cloaked person uses," what a peculiar concept!
I will mention, btw, there's a very strong counterpoint to this. The fact that Lancer and Rouxls also seem to possess Dark World fast travel. Last I checked, Kris and Susie never took them out of Castle Town before CH3, and yet they show up in TV World all the same. So if these two can do it, it's very possible Dark World fast travel just isn't that important, and it's something Darkners can just do.
That said, the counterpoint to the counterpoint is that Lancer might be able to do it because he is technically a "Prince from the Dark" even if he lacks the horns of the actual Prince from Prophecy, and Rouxls might be able to do it by the nature of being the Rules Card. Or Kris just brought them over during the hand washing scene. Everything we know about this mysterious ability to go from one Dark World to another without going through the Light World is very iffy in general, so take it as you will.
As a final piece of potential evidence before we talk about what this could mean, note the vending machine in the Star changing room. From this machine, you can buy TV Slop, and a "SMILE." This option disappears after completing the Sword Route. You could technically argue it might be ERAM smiling, as the main things that change between the start of the third game and the end of the Sword Route are Ramb and ERAM's presences in the Dark World, and Ramb isn't in the vending machine. And what is the SMILE option labeled?
Always at your humble service.
A very Ralsei-like line, to be sure.
So, we have the theory, and the evidence, regardless of how shaky it is. What could this mean for the story?
Well, note how ERAM is pleased when they see Kris being violent. This is a clear contrast to Ralsei, who generally prefers peace.
ERAM [After defeat]: There! That's what I wanted to see!
Flickering red, like pretty little flames...
Your eyes can't hide it, Kris. Without play...
The knife grows dull.
The idea that "the knife grows dull" implies the knife was sharp at some point, so ERAM has seen Kris being violent. Going with the idea of Kris having been through the Prophecy's events at some point or another, that could be referring to Kris helping Dess increase her LOVE for the Final Tragedy. Of course, that has the issue that ERAM talks about the knife growing dull even if you've been doing a violent route, but, uh. I don't know if there's any way to make the line make sense in that case, unless you mean Kris fighting alone specifically is what prevents the blade from going dull, for some reason.
What does this mean? It would mean that ERAM works as a sort of thematic opposite of Ralsei, a character foil if you will.
The Prophecy requires violence for LOVE to make its way to the Girl, right? That's why Ralsei believes being peaceful could help change its course. By that logic, then, ERAM wishing for violence is them going along with the Prophecy. This would set up an interesting conflict if they ever meet, where ERAM believes, for one reason or another, that violence and continuing the Prophecy cycle is good, while Ralsei wishes to fight it. But of course, we're reaching the point where this is more straight up fanfic than theory, so perhaps I should leave it here for now.
So, with it all together, how likely is ERAM as the old Prince looking? Well... not very. A lot of these points are kinda fucking insane, and I'm assigning to the Third Hero a lot from Ralsei's abilities that may very well be related to Ralsei himself and not his status as the Prince. Even with things we know about the Prince from the Prophecy itself, the fire and the horns and the cloak, ERAM fitting could easily be a coincidence. It's sort of a demonic entity, no shit it has fire attacks and horn-like things on their sprite, and it's a mystery, so it makes sense to hide its form. But, if Prophecy Loop is true, and we've already met the old Prince, ERAM would be my first guess as to who they are.
Finally, to address the pink and yellow elephant I said I would, what if ERAM is just FRIEND? I'm not getting into it because it's not really relevant to the larger theory, but it is true that there's a lot of connections there. And, like, I guess it wouldn't be completely impossible for FRIEND to be the old Prince, but there are a lot of Prophecy segments that read weird if they are, and certain things about them that don't exactly fit the idea of a more or less regular Darkner. Like, the general assumption is that FRIEND is a cat and their tail is the "tail of hell", and that Dess and Kris followed them before whatever happened happened, right? So, what, Ralsei is secretly hiding that he's a demon or something?
Ralsei [Upon equipping Jevilstail]: I'm a good devil, OK?
... Th-That doesn't count it's just because of the item! I cannot be going this fucking insane!!! Next I'll tell you that the "pointed tail of hell" might be a scarf and that's the connection!!! Don't believe my lies I'm actively losing my mind!!!
To actually make a point that makes sense: I'm not that convinced ERAM is FRIEND, frankly. And by the way, yes, there are "new run" Prophecy panels that may be talking about FRIEND. But that can easily be explained. If the "tail of hell" led Kris and Dess to the bunker, well, maybe the "tail of hell" will also lead Kris and Susie to the bunker. In other words, FRIEND is not too important for this particular theory. Which is good because I have no clue what the hell their deal is.
Closing Argument
I know that was a lot, so let's do a quick recap of everything we talked about in this post. Of course, some things are more important and likely for the theory than others, so here's how we're gonna do this.
In regular text, the main arguments of Prophecy Loop, as well as a bit of dramatic flair. If you're gonna walk out of this post believing anything, believe this. Of course, it's still a theory and may very well be wrong, but if anything in this post is correct, it's likely the stuff written like this.
In italics, sub-theories. Things that fit pretty well with the theory, but aren't necessary for it to function.
In italics and bold, insane reaches I'm making just to fill in the gaps, which I suspect to most likely be proven wrong even if the rest ends up being accurate.
-There is a story whispered among shadows, foretold by space and time. A story of three Heroes which take arms against a Knight to banish the Angel's Heaven. Most believe this to be a Prophecy of one particular point in history.
-However, in reality, the Prophecy never "ends." It repeats. Whenever an Angel is banished, whenever a Knight is defeated, new ones take their place. And just like before, three new Heroes appear to stop the end of the world once more.
-Meet Carol, the oldest Knight we have knowledge of. She raises her blackened sword, and works to bring forth the Roaring. However, she will not go unopposed.
-In an alternate world, a scientist investigates a darkness powerful enough to generate negative photon readings. Unfortunately, he falls into his creation, and becomes shattered across time and space. Due to this event, he reaches the world of Deltarune. But to interact with it, WD Gaster needs a Vessel to inhabit, becoming the "Player."
-This Vessel is named "Kris." They are as colorless as the rest of Gaster's followers, but their existence grows beyond the "Player's" design by the love of those around them.
-After a playful early childhood, the "Player" eventually reaches Kris, and they become the Cage with human parts. They begin learning to live with this new foreign entity inside them, getting a birdcage to contain the Soul whenever it gets too annoying, and occasionally playing piano when they get control of their body back.
-But the Cage has a destiny, to fight the Roaring alongside the Girl. And that is none other than their dear deer friend December Holiday. She leads her younger friend into the dark, using Kris' shining heart as the ark to shine them the way.
-There, they meet the Prince of the Dark.
-This is ERAM, a being made with knowledge of the Prophecy, and the power to wade through the dark like a ferryperson travels atop a river's stream. They know their role, to help the Heroes earn the LOVE needed to fulfill their destiny. They need to get stronger. And so, they encourage Dess and Kris to find enjoyment in fighting.
-LOVE, as in Level of Violence, finds its way to the Girl. Dess becomes an extremely strong fighter.
-In the background, Gaster in some way leads a certain Man to earn power of his own. This Man reaches the absolute, and turns into an unrecognizable eldritch being who is unnerving to look at. The soon to be Forgotten Man becomes the Angel.
-The final showdown begins between the Heroes, the Knight and/or the Angel. At world's end, the Heroes are incapacitated one by one. The Cage kneels in silence, defeated lays the Prince.
-And last was the Girl. At last, was the Girl. She stands alone, facing her inescapable fate. The final Prophecy. The story's end. When all hope is lost for the tale, the Final Tragedy unveils. To save the worlds, there is only one way. The Girl turns on the light, and the story starts again. Only then, will the worlds be saved.
-The Knight is defeated. The Angel, banished, finally meets with its desire. It leaves the world due to happiness. But in exchange, Dess' body becomes distorted and irreparable, and she turns into the new Knight.
-Of course, Carol and Kris aren't too happy about this. Kris struggles to live, both due to the grief of the loss of Dess, and the lack of strings making it hard for them to function. And Carol begins obsessing over the Soul potentially able to drive the darkness back, to "fix" her daughter perhaps. ERAM is satisfied. Gaster feels ???
-But the Prophecy must begin anew, for the story was never finished. In destroying the Girl, it consumed the "writer" whole, after all.
-Gaster contacts us to become the new Player, the one with the power to drive the darkness back. He originally means for the Vessel we create to be our Cage, but something goes wrong. For some reason, someone decides Kris will be the Cage once more. And so it was.
-With this, a new Prince of the Dark is born. Ralsei, shaped after the Cage's brother for Angel knows what reasons. However, perhaps because of this connection to Asriel, perhaps not, this Prince wishes to fight back against the Prophecy. There can't just be one ending, predetermined by fate. The Girl won't fall to violence, Ralsei will ensure it.
-And he's in luck, because the Girl this time around is none other than Susie. Different from what the Prophecy expects, and fully ready to ignore what people want her to be like.
-The events of Deltarune unfold. The new Heroes go through the Prophecy, and for a while, everything aligns. But as Susie learns more of the Prophecy, as Ralsei becomes more confident, their burning desire to fight fate itself grows into an inferno.
-In some way, the Player causes Noelle to reach/almost reach the absolute, becoming or coming close to ascending into the status of Angel.
-The final showdown begins. But this time, the Heroes won't accept the hand fate lent them.
-Kris, the "Cage", born only as a Vessel for someone else to interact with the world, has grown past their creator's initial intentions. They are their own person now, with their own desires and skills, and they would really like their hands back, thank you. They need to play the piano for Susie and Ralsei to hear, after all.
-Ralsei, the "Prince", born only as a guide and servant to the lightners he accompanies, a simple tutorial for violence and nothing else, has grown beyond a simple shadow on the wall. He is Kris and Susie's friend, dang it, he means something to them, and he will make sure everyone's still around at the end to enjoy the friendship in full.
-And Susie. Susie, who everyone expected to fall to violence like every other Girl before her. The rebellious and aggressive and lost and lost and lost Girl, expected to fail to write the ending, expected to just allow everything to go on forever. She will show them wrong. She will take that pen of hope she carries, and will finally put an end to the cycle of grief and violence. I don't know how yet, but I'm not worried. I trust Susie's ideas.
-The Prophecy, as a story, has been retold many times. It is the Lord of the Hammer, it is Dragon Blazers. It is the story of Dess and Kris, sung in Raise up your Bat and Don't Forget. And it is the story of Deltarune, of Kris and Susie and Ralsei growing alongside one another. For years, people failed to write an ending. The story consumed the authors, and so it just got retold and retold and retold.
-Until now. Now, there will be only one ending. And it will be one written by the greatest Heroes of all time: the $!$? Squad.
Okay so that was more dramatic than it needed to be probably, but I needed to cover up the theory in narrative flair to hide how nonsensical parts of it are lmao. I'd say I hope it wasn't too cringy, but honestly I don't think I care if it was.
In any case, some closing thoughts. This isn't the most likely theory I've ever proposed, but I also don't think it's my most insane one. Well, the main idea at least, I don't know about all the bold and italics parts. The themes of stories being retold in different ways, the Gerson foreshadowing that it might have to be Susie to finally give an ending to the story, and all the other shit going on with Kris and Dess are a solid enough foundation for me to put this out there for peer review, if nothing else.
... Angel above this was meant to be on the shorter end of my posts. What's worse is that it genuinely might be. I just kept finding shit to talk about, this game's too fun to theorize about ToT
What do you all think? Am I cooking? Am I burning down the entire kitchen? Have I completely lost the plot? All very possible, of course! In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading my mad ramblings, regardless of whether I've made you genuinely consider the possibility of a looping prophecy or not. If you made it this far, you deserve your own Prophecy panel! Hope you get a cool one! Anyway, see ya'!
hey idk how much it'll help in the future, but if you every run into a problem where a song's in a forenge language and an English translation is a bitch to find, if it uses a vocal synth I'd recommend the Vocaloid Database: https://vocadb.net/
It's not always the easiest to navigate and it can't help much if the song doesn't use a vocal synth, but a large number of songs that otherwise are a pain to find translations for have options on there, and if not they usually have the kanji, which can be thrown into google translate as a last ditch effort
(unfortunately new/more obscure songs are harder to find lyrics for, but you'd be surprised at what is preserved)
it's also got a great tagging system, and even if the song itself was deleted you can usually find an entry, and sometimes even links to reuploads which can be very useful ;-;
again it's not a perfect resource but if nothing else works throw it at the database lol - LGI Watcher Anon
Thanks, this seems very useful! I did see the database in firefoxxing some of the songs, but I probably should've thought to search through the database itself lmao, so it's good you brought it up. Thanks for the recommendation!
Long ago, in a playlist page far, far away, the DRDT YT channel held a playlist containing 16 songs. Each of these songs were said to be connected to one of the characters in the series. This playlist has long since been deleted, existing now only in fanmade recreations like this one by venus-is-thinking. How seriously we're supposed to take it is obviously up in the air, given the deletion and all, but it's still a fun exercise to try and assign these songs to our favorite goobers! And today, we're going to go over this challenge, so I can give you my thoughts on who each song belongs to!
Of course, though, the exercise is fun until you realize how insanely difficult it is. There's a reason I've been sitting on this for literal years lmao. I tried my best, but... well, you'll see!
Spoilers up to DRDT CH2. CWs: Animal death, suicide, alcoholism, smoking, mention of WWII, betrayal.
Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know that I've already analyzed a playlist like this before, right? I didn't struggle for literal years putting together the Danganronpa One Shot playlist guesses, and I even managed to get like half of them right.
Well, there's two reasons for that. One is simply that I did the DROS one when DROS was starting CH3, which is technically a bit more context than we have for DRDT right now. Two is that the DROS playlist... made sense. This one doesn't.
What do I mean by that? Simply put, every song in the DROS playlist had not only plenty of lyrics, but also either a very specific message it conveyed, or a story it followed. There were exceptions, but they were far and few between, so you could assign most of them on lyrical analysis and then sort out the rest with some vague process of elimination.
There's three songs in the DRDT playlist that, even when put together, don't have any more than 7 lines of actual words. There's also one or two that are in Japanese and don't have easily accessible translations, not to mention the possibility of conflicting translations. There's several songs that have either a vague message or just very little imagery to go off of, which makes them hard to assign. All this and more makes the DRDT playlist a bit of a headache.
So! Instead of assigning only one character to each song right off the bat, I'm going to do something a little different. I'm first going to talk about every possibility I can see for each song, then only at the end try to arrange them in a way that makes sense. I feel like letting you see my entire thought process instead of just the end result is going to be the best way to communicate why exactly I reach the conclusions I do.
I'll start with the songs that I find are relatively easy to assign, then slowly make my way to the harder songs. The song number refers to their placement on the playlist, which I don't believe is particularly important, but I'll keep track of it regardless.
Though, before we start, huge shout-out to demodraws0606, gleamingtempest, googledetective, venus-is-thinking and accirax for making their own posts about this before me! There are definitely more out there, but they're the ones that helped me the most when reaching the conclusions I'll present here. Check out their posts in the links, they're very good!
They're calling it the most Rose coded song in history. Not only is it about the singer feeling detached from reality and the world, but it expresses the point through a bunch of drawing and animation allegories.
Abstraction's how I live my day to day
Sketchy lines upon an empty page
Hard to explain, and to express
Forever just a work in progress
Can't tell you how I feel when nothing seems real
It's all just cartoons in my head
And everything's unseen like the fastest inbetween
It's all just cartoons in my head
Rose is an artist, and she regularly has issues with memory and telling apart what's real and what isn't.
Rose [2-5]: My dreams are strange. My memories, my imaginations, my fears... They all mix into one until I can no longer tell what's real.
I mean, yeah. This is Rose's.
You might be wondering about the "Reaching" section thing. Basically, in case I run out of characters or songs, it's nice to write down any character that's even tangentially related to the song. Teruko has talked about herself and others in the context of "characters in a show" in a couple of occasions, which arguably fits the idea of "none of this is real, just cartoons in my head."
Teruko [2-1]: You all have the misfortune of being "characters" in a story where I'm the "protagonist." Because of that, you're all doomed.
Hehe I found a way to get yellow text back >:)
Again, this is an insane reach, don't take it too seriously. I really doubt Teruko genuinely doesn't think of this whole thing as real. The point is that if I'm absolutely forced to put Rose somewhere else, I have this to fall back on, even if it's silly.
Song #7 - Shun-ran (Spring Storm)
Prime Suspect: Arei
Reaching: David
Translation used linked here.
Shun-ran opens by telling us that the singer lives behind a facade.
I was covered in false images, just like God
In particular, they project an aggressive image, always looking for a chance to take out their anger on others.
I won’t pay attention to small fry
For one such as I, affecting composure, to speak
Is because I become angry easily, watching hawk-like for my chance
They "summon a spring storm" (presumably lash out in some kind of way), but they're upset at their violence.
I summoned the spring storm and then cried. My heart was wounded.
They feel the need to continue their aggressive act, even though their anger has long faded. They've forgotten how to live without that facade.
My rage and other such things vanished long ago
but though I perform my act, I’m ignorant.
However, the song has a happy ending. The singer is able to destroy their facade and live in peace.
I pledged a ceasefire. My personality peeled off and fell
because I have the courage to accept disappointment.
And just in case this wasn't already reading like the most Arei coded song in history to you, the song ends on the note that the reason the singer was able to shed their false images was because they met someone they considered an idiot for going against their worldview, but who eventually helps them "wake up."
I called you an idiot. Like smoke, you made me uncomfortable. I looked at you and woke up.
Arei [2-5]: I can't stand that naivety of hers! I can't stand how easy it is for [Eden] to make friends!
Someone like her clearly has never had to fight so that others wouldn't look down on her!
It's not fair! It's not fair that she can be kind and trusting and naive and no one takes advantage of that!
That's not how it works! That's never been how it works for me!
Do I need to actually explain this? We've all watched DRDT, I take it. Arei put up a mean and insulting front so she wouldn't get hurt, but eventually grows past that facade and becomes nicer thanks to Eden. If I didn't know better I'd think Arei was deadass written after the song. Hell, her sisters are called Fuyuko and Natsuko, which respectively mean "winter child" and "summer child", so her getting the "spring storm" makes sense even from that angle.
David's here because of the constant mentions of facades and because technically you could replace Eden with Xander and the song doesn't completely fall apart. But David's pre-killing game persona is not that of an aggressive spring storm, so the whole "ceasefire" thing doesn't work for him as well as it does for Arei. Thus, our favorite Bowler gets this song!
Song #11 - Hi-Fi Evolution Theory*
Prime Suspect: Veronika
Reaching: Xander, J, Future Context
*Song name translated from Japanese, exact wording may vary
This is one of the songs that doesn't have a translation I could easily find. Thankfully, even with just Google Translate to guide us, it's not that hard to see who gets this one. This song shows the singer talking to someone, asking if they're tired of living the way they are. They consider the way of living of that someone to be kind of pitiful and awful, and essentially tells them that they don't plan on living like them (at least that's how I interpret "if you want to die, do it alone").
Hey hey, are you getting tired of it?
Hey hey, why don't you stop always hanging your head?
Your brain is rusty
Doing tasks you don't want to do
"This is a happy way of life"
I don't know anything else, if you want to die, do it alone
Instead, the singer proposes moving past society's expectations and living according to their own desires. This is the "evolution theory" of the title, as the singer believes those who live according to their whims to be stronger than the rest.
It seems this world is dominated by the weak
Bending reason and raising their voices
"That's just how your life is"
I don't know about the others; expectations are futile.
At this rate, we'll drown
A yearning that won't fade, driving us mad
Unable to spread our wings now
Do we look like clowns?
History changes like that
Let's keep evolving from here
The Earth too
A high-fidelity, easygoing view of life
But it's fine to have fun, right?
I have no clue what "high-fidelity" is meant to mean in this context, but it's there.
It's not hard to see how this fits Veronika. Although at the start of the series she's a bit more self-conscious, she slowly shifts into a character who truly has no regard for people's expectations of "normal" behavior. She regularly acts purely on whims, and generally has a pretty easygoing view of life. Thus, this is most likely Vero's song.
Xander and J are mentioned because they, too, go against society's expectations, but I wouldn't call either of them particularly easygoing. The focus on "fun" in the song fits Vero far more than those two.
What you might be wondering about is the "Future Context" thing I put in the "Reaching" department. Basically, I believe there are many songs here that may refer to events later in the series, which would make it impossible for us to correctly assign the song at this time. This is what "Future Context" as a possible suspect means, "there is a chance we can't properly assign it right now." Think of Shun-ran, and how there would've basically been no way to give that to Arei during CH1 unless you hard read her character arc. Technically this could apply to all the songs, but there's some where this is a bit more likely than in others.
In the case of Hi-fi Evolution Theory, because the song is so Veronika-coded, it is also inherently mastermind-coded. There is a non-zero chance that (provided they're different characters) this song is meant to go to the mastermind, who may also be acting on their whims against society for all we know. Because we don't know who the mastermind is, we can't assign it safely.
Do I believe that's likely? No. Veronika fits the song so well that there's really no need to bend over backwards with assumptions about the mastermind and their motivations to explain it, even when the video has a famously black and white chess board front and center. I'm happy to just let Vero have this!
Song #9 - Undead Enemy
Prime Suspect: David
Reaching: Min
For whatever reason, he put on a mask symbolizing
the leading role he had yearned for in the past. And from the next day onward,
the unhappy boy's smile did not falter,
he was even loved by someone.
So like do I keep going or is that enough to convince you this is David's.
I mean, an "unhappy boy" puts on a mask that allows others to smile and laugh, making him loved by people. He desires their love even though he also resents them.
Laugh and sneer, you prisoners,
at the good fortune that came to those who smiled, and its messengers too.
Slander and criticize,and then,
I won't need anyone else. Just leave me alone.
I can hear it from far away,
sobbing choked up tears stained by angry roars.
Just stop it everybody.
Don't leave me alone.
David [2-11]: People who are born lazy, useless and stupid will stay that way until they die. If you were able to "improve" yourself into a better person, then it only means you were a better person to begin with.
Aaaaand with that, my career is officially in the trash.
I mean. It fits him even better than Literature Girl Insane, and that's an achievement. The only reason to even consider Min is because of the repeated theme of perfection and references to school in the song.
An equation on the abacus, connections rattle and clatter.
1 mark? 100 marks? 10 marks? Oh my, a failing mark?
1 mark? 100 marks? 10 marks? …and how about you?
But like. Everything else about the song is so incredibly David coded that there's no reason not to give it to him.
These first four are the songs I'm most confident on. That means that if there are any other songs that fit these characters in a vacuum, I will push them to the Reaching tier no matter what, because the song would need to fit better than these. That's difficult.
However, there are two more songs that I find have one prime suspect that stands above other characters. I could see myself being wrong on them, which is why I won't just default to the Reaching tier with them, but still.
Prime Suspect: Teruko
Reaching: David, Future Context
The song talks about how the singer loved someone who hurt them and left them.
I can't go on livin' alone now that you're gone
You done me wrong, so here's your song
Now sing along, baby
Well, I know you know that you're killin' me
But it's worth it just to see you smile
Tell 'em to carve my name in the barstool, baby
You know I'm gonna be here a while
So, Teruko with Xander and to an extent Min. This line in particular fits very well with her fatalistic attitude and generally pessimistic outlook on life.
Compromise is made out of peace
But history's made out of violence
After the war of the worlds has ceased
All that's left is the deafenin' silence
(All that's left is silence??? -> Silence -> Mai dislikes silence!!!- I'm insane)
David could actually work pretty well with Xander and possibly Arei too, but he's so locked into Undead Enemy that any other song you want to give him is gonna be a reach.
However, "Future Context" is actually very relevant for this particular song. At the end of the day, the only thing we have here is someone feeling bitter at someone even after their departure (which in a killing game is probably gonna be death). Do you realize how likely it is that this ends up applying to multiple characters? Already, it might apply to Levi feeling frustrated at Ace's behavior before his death. Eden's also lost people, and the only reason she's not mentioned is because she's not really bitter towards them. I still think Teruko is the most likely, because betrayal is something that's pretty integral to her character and is likely to continue being that way for a while, but there's certainly a possibility that someone else ends up making more sense here.
Song #6 - A Mistaken Belief of Love
Prime Suspect: Arturo
Secondary Suspects: Future Context
Reaching: Whit, Xander, Charles
Alright so those of you who've already read other people's opinions are probably raising your eyebrows because whaaat is this guess. And yeah, at first glance it looks weird, but I swear it makes sense.
The first thing I need to establish before we go any further is that the song isn't strictly about romantic love. Like, yes, you can take it that way because all songs can be interpreted in many ways, but it's not what the song is originally about. Instead, the song is actually about the love between a cat and its owner. Yes, like, deadass a pet. Although the cat is represented as a cat-person throughout most of the video, the ending makes it clear that it is indeed a straight up cat.
In fact, the song might actually be based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Black Cat." It helps with context, but I'll mostly focus on the actual song.
To put the story in chronological order, it starts with the owner being neglectful towards the cat, no matter how much the cat loved them.
“Hey, do you still love me?”
The answer to this pantomime-like question
Is still smoldering beneath the surface
I’ll always be suspicious about it
Tonight, the anti-satisfactionist sneers, “you won’t return to the gap in your bed, or your clean and tidy little room.”
The cat doubts the love because the owner doesn't return to "the gap in their bed," their place in their shared room. This neglect comes from the owner's problems, namely alcoholism, though the video shows a few other vices visually, like smoking.
With your ego swelled by a feeling of omnipotence, don’t drink for three straight days
Just about everything is drunk and unsteady
This eventually culminates with the owner... presumably killing the cat in a drunken rage. It's not ultra clear in the video, but that's what it looks like, and it's what happens in The Black Cat, so. The cat dies, is the important thing.
Just about everything is drunk and unsteady
I’m not there, I’m not there, “that’s right!” you say
I’m the one who coughed up blood!
However, the cat's spirit lives on, and begins haunting the owner. This is actually what's shown during most of the video. The cat's anger comes from its mistaken belief that its owner loved it enough to care for it.
Weak, without exception, if we just play peekaboo
Then, I’ll kill you at our rendezvous
I just wanted to mistakenly believe that you loved me
There’s no mistake, you’re no exception, hey, if I die,
I’ll leave you my precuneus, my pennies, everything
I just wanted to mistakenly believe that you loved me
The precuneus is a part of the brain which (among other things) deals with self-consciousness, including comparing your own personality to that of others. Feel free to interpret that however you want, it's not that relevant for us. All we need to understand is that the cat leaves a part of itself with the owner.
Now, it's hard to apply a lot of this to DRDT directly. As far as we know, no one has drinking problems, and no one's killed a cat. However, I believe the main points we can take away are these:
The owner killed the cat.
The cat believed the owner loved them.
The owner is haunted by the cat's death.
You can see why "Future Context" is such a big possibility here. A situation like this can easily happen within the killing game. For example, imagine that in CH3, somehow, Hu ends up killing Nico, but doesn't get executed for some reason or another. Nico fits the cat theming, would've believed that Hu at least liked them, and their death would obviously haunt Hu. At that point, the song would go to... well one of them, I'm not sure which one :v
Do I think that particular scenario is likely? Not really, but it helps to illustrate that an event like the one in the song can happen.
However, it's not necessary. Because I'd argue that there's a character who already fits this song. Arturo, because of Felicity.
Let's review this. The cat loved the owner, just like Felicity admired her brother, as stated in a deleted part of a Q&A answer. However, the owner often left the cat on its own, neglecting it, similar to how Arturo abandoned Felicity. And while Arturo didn't directly kill Felicity, he certainly blames himself for her death. It haunts him, just like the cat's death haunts the owner.
Arturo's Motive Secret: Your younger sister killed herself because of you. You should have never left.
It's not crazy to say, based on what we know, that Felicity committed suicide because she "mistakenly believed" her brother loved her, and stopped believing that when he left.
The counterargument here is that it's a little strange for the song to have large sections sung from the perspective of a side character, as opposed to the singer being the DRDT character related to the song like in most of the other songs. However, given some of the other songs we're gonna see, I wouldn't rely on patterns for these things lol.
As for Xander, Charles and Whit, well. They're some of the only characters who we know have dead people in their backstories who could've had "a mistaken belief of love" (so no poison victims for Min because they presumably didn't know her) and who might actually be haunted by the deaths (so no Levi because he's remorseless). However, we know fuck all about Elliot, Xander doesn't strictly blame himself for his family's death so much as he just feels survivor's guilt over it, and I don't really think Whit's mom could have "mistakenly" believed he loved her, seeing as he does appreciate her very much. So, uh, unless future context gives us extra possibilities, I'm going with Arturo!
My confidence in my guesses is about to take a dive off a cliff. Here we get to the songs that really caused me to procrastinate on this post for years lmao.
Prime Suspect: Whit
Secondary Suspect: Min
Reaching: Charles
Officially the first song with a whole two suspects! Asymptotic is a silly little love song, themed around math, about two lovers who can never get together.
I think you're curvilinear
A real nice graph to see
You're a cutie face in x-y space
Not imaginary
We're asymptotic, we're on it
Till the end of linear time
Asymptotic, divided
By the smallest slimmest line
Asymptotic, obliquely
Here's the point of this speech
As close as we could ever get
You'll be just out of reach
In case you're not caught up on your math, an asymptote of a curve is a line that the curve infinitely approaches, but never intersects. For example, take the function 1/x, graphed in the image for the song, and make x tend to infinity. That means, make x a big ass number. Then, 1/x becomes really close to 0, right? In fact, if you tell me any positive number larger than 0 (call it ε), and I can tell you a number x' such that not only is 1/x' smaller than ε, but 1/x is smaller than ε for any x larger than x'. However, what you can't do is name a value of x such that 1/x is exactly zero. So the curve 1/x approaches the straight line y = 0, but never touches it.
And yeah, this is pretty Whit coded.
Whit's Profile: Unfortunately for Whit Young, he seems to lack all luck when it comes to finding a relationship himself.
Whit can try all he wants to get into a relationship, but for one reason or another, he never actually manages to establish the relationship. So he and his crushes can always get very close, but they never end up "touching". Additionally, Whit has some connection to math, or at least computer science and data analysis.
Whit [2-7]: Machine learning! We both like machine learning!
Charles: Machine learning is the use of computer algorithms that have the ability to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. [...]
Machine learning also has its uses in matchmaking, or any fields in which one may need to process a large number of individuals.
However, there's a much easier way to connect math to Whit. It's also the reason Charles is in the "Reaching" part. The Ultimate Chemist is Whit's most plot relevant love interest at the moment, and Chemist -> Science -> Math. Sure, chemistry is (to my understanding and depending on the specific branch) not the most math heavy of sciences, which is why Charles is in the "reaching" tier, but it's close enough.
And the song really does make a lot of sense if you take it as Whit singing it to Charles. Like, you look at these corny ass, immensely pun dense lyrics and tell me they're not some bullshit Whit would say to try and put the moves on Charles.
I think you're curvilinear
A real nice graph to see
You're a cutie face in x-y space
Not imaginary
The limits are infinitely great
I wish that we could cosine
But that'll have to wait
It's derivative to say
You're integral to me
We're off on our own tangents
Fading constantly
So, the Matchmaker gets what is probably the most explicitly romantic song in the playlist. Makes enough sense, right?
Well, eh. There's an issue with it, which is that it feels reductive. Like, Whit definitely has some other shit going on. Giving him a song based exclusively on one line in his profile, which hasn't even come up in the main series yet, feels very strange.
But you could argue this is a problem with asymptotic itself, as opposed to specifically the Whit guess. DRDT characters are all very complex and have a lot of shit going on, giving any of them a love song that has very little else going on is always gonna feel like a disservice.
And when taking that into account, you could argue that being reductive actually fits Whit, in a way. A big part of his character is that he always ignores complicated situations and feelings, right? So why not give him a song that brushes aside all his other issues and focuses only in his misfortune with romance, arguably the least of his issues?
The other argument you can make is that... well, these songs don't have to be a full encapsulation of the characters. I'll point you again to the three songs that have almost no lyrics; those ones can only hope to encapsulate a character's vibe, and little else. It'd be unfair to ask every song to capture the entirety of a character when those three could never do it. And for what it's worth, I'd argue asymptotic's silly goofy sound fits Whit pretty decently.
Still, it's worth keeping our options open. And while giving the Matchmaker a love song makes sense, it makes just as much sense to give the Student a math song. The question is, how would it work? As much as I love Terumin, their relationship doesn't have the same kind of explicitly romantic undertones that Charwhit has imo. And none of the other Min ships are particularly prominent in canon, either.
But perhaps we don't need the romantic undertones. It's possible this is meant to be about Min and Teruko in a more general sense, in that Min wanted to be closer to Teruko, but Teruko was distrusting as ever and ends up pushing her away, especially after the first trial. That could certainly work, especially as Min's secret quote is directly about Teruko. However, I'm not super convinced by this possibility because Min... just didn't actually express that much interest on getting close to Teruko before her death, imo. She wanted to save her, sure, but that was an impulsive decision. She doesn't really express the sort of eternal yearning the song talks about. They hung out, like, once before Xander's murder attempt, and Eden and Rose were there too.
On the other hand, you could abstract the person the song is about to just be an allegory of Min's goals. Not being the Ultimate Student, because she did achieve that, but rather making something worthwhile with her life, like becoming a teacher. The issue I have here is that while this fits the whole "the lines don't touch" idea, it sorta fails at the "infinitely close" aspect of an asymptote. Min doesn't fail at becoming a teacher because she could never have reached her goal even with infinite time, as the song would suggest, she fails because she dies before she can.
What I'm arguing is that the situation looks like this:
I'm having fun with the math song >:)
Per Whit's profile, he's "fated" to have bad luck in relationships. No matter how hard he tries or how long he spends trying, he just has bad luck with romance. Meanwhile, Min could have reached her goals, only she got killed before she could. Arguably, she could have also gotten closer to Teruko, if you consider that her goal. So she's not asymptotic, she's a curve cut short. Does that make sense?
However, I am being a little pedantic, and the song itself already does some amount of math butchering (why are you talking about "divided by the smallest thinnest line" then showing two curves that diverge in literal opposite direction on screen-), so you can probably get away with the wiggle room. These are both still very good interpretations, even if I personally prefer the Whit one. That's why Min is still a secondary suspect!
Also I would be lying if I said I'm not a little biased. I don't really like asymptotic that much and Min's my favorite character so I'm more likely to look for reasons to give it to a different character xD
Also Charles is here, should probably elaborate. Well, I mentioned it before, but Chemistry -> Science -> Math, is the logic. The issue here is that from Charles' perspective, there's no reason to believe he would be "asymptotic" to the Charwhit endgame. If he wanted to date the guy, he could just ask, no reason to believe they would always be separated and parallel. The one who has bad luck in romance is Whit, after all. So, uh. Moving on!
Song #3 - RUNAWAY
Main Suspects: Future Context, Charles
Secondary Suspects: Teruko
Reaching:
Chat we have a problem.
I find that everything I am is
Everything I should be
Chat this line disqualifies the entire cast how do I proceed.
Indeed, this song has the peculiar problem of being too damn happy for this cast of 16 crashouts (and before you mention Eden, fork). That's why I genuinely considering finding a way to put Mai in the playlist, because she's just the happiest and least troubled character here, or she was until They Got Her ig. Twas' not but a fleeting thought, however, since the songs are ostensibly about the main cast.
However, let's not panic. What is the song actually about, if I'm saying it's so happy? It's effectively about facing your flaws, acknowledging them, but still loving yourself despite them. The song starts with the singer pointing out their own flaws, and feeling bad about them. They're silly flaws, but flaws regardless.
I've been searching, nothing's working
I've been tripping, no one's perfect
Chasing vision, just the surface
Shirt's on backwards, not on purpose
I've been learning, something bigger
Expectations, feet were failing
However, they then face themselves and decide that despite these flaws, everything will be okay. They don't need to be perfect ("redirecting my perfection somewhere else"). That's "the promise"... I think.
Staring into my reflection
Redirecting my perfection somewhere else
(Ohh, ohh, oh)
When there isn't any progress
Lean on truth inside the promise, it is well
(Ohh, ohh, oh)
Despite these flaws, they see a bright future for themselves, filled with empty pages ready to be filled. They are content with themselves, even in their imperfections.
I hold my life out in front of me
Dreams of who I want to be
I'm seeing every empty page
I find that everything I am is
Everything I should be
I don't need to run away
With this, they finally begin growing past their doubts, and learn to love themselves.
Something's working, heart is turning
Vision's clear, and still I'm learning
That what I am, what I am, what I am, what I am
Is something more than I can plan
So... it's cooked. Like, it's way too happy a song for anyone here, right? The only thing that makes sense is that this is talking about the end of a character's arc, thus, Future Context is the only real possibility.
Or at least, that's what I thought, until I read googledetective's post where they called out Charles as a possibility, and I saw the vision. Just like the singer, Charles originally had very high standards for both himself and the people he interacted with, dismissing most of his classmates out of hand because of their talents. After CH1, however, Charles is arguably the character most willing to confront his flaws without running away from them. He acknowledges his original attitude of a loner was bad, he gives the secret he receives to Teruko to account for the possibility of getting incapacitated by his hemophobia/necrophobia, and he even starts learning basic adulting skills like cooking and laundry with the help of Whit. Sure, he's still arrogant about his intelligence, but to be fair to him what competition does he have beyond Teruko and maybe Rose?
Additionally, out of every crashout in this cast, Charles is arguably the one most comfortable with himself. He's never really showed much self-doubt after CH1, trusting his abilities while still keeping his flaws in mind. And if you argue that the RUNAWAY haver must 1. Confront their flaws, and 2. Be comfortable with themselves, it becomes clear why Charles is one of the only options. Characters like Whit may be pretty happy with themselves, but avoid their flaws, while people like Eden can face their issues, but don't feel fantastic (thinking about Eden's guilt over Min and Arei's deaths here).
Finally, there's one last reason to give this to Charles, but it's related to some "deeper" lore. I know I talked about the storyline in A Mistaken Belief of Love, but that was because it was directly included in the lyrics. RUNAWAY's video has an extra story sort of running in the background of the song's more general statement, so whether or not dev took it into account is certainly up in the air. However, I still wanted to address it because look at this description:
1960 - 26 year old Jessica Avet opens a stack of 20 letters from her father, J Francis Avet, addressed to her before he was drafted in 1940. Francis left his 6 year old daughter knowing he might not ever return, so wrote with the intension [sic] for Jess to read a letter on her birthday every year for 20 years. Jess never read a single one, until her 26th birthday.
So, this person has a family member who died when they were young, but they kinda ignored them for years and only faced them when they were much older? That's so Charles coded it's incredible. I'm this close to outright theorizing that CH3 is gonna have him receiving a letter from Elliot or something.
Charles is not the only option, however. Again, at any point a character could just... have an arc where they face their flaws and suddenly they fit here too. That's why Teruko in particular is a suspect; if anyone's getting a happy ending, it's probably her due to protag privilege, so she's the likeliest to have an arc that fits RUNAWAY. Something to watch out for, I guess.
Song #8 - Yesman
Prime Suspects: Ace, Nico, Min
Secondary Suspects: Arturo, Xander
Reaching: David
Me when I'm a DRDT character and my recap foil gets a song-
Okay so we have a problem chat. It's the everlasting problem that has plagued, like, every song analysis post in my Tumblr backlog. The issue that translation is very hard! Because there are quite a few different translations online, but a lot of them have some pretty big differences with the official English captions of the original video (the one on the DRDT playlist is a cover). There's a decent chance some of these translations have slightly different meanings, which could change interpretations of the song. I'm making the executive decision to use the translation in the captions on the og video for this analysis, please don't kill me if you prefer to take other translations into account T_T
Anyways. The song is a dialogue between two characters, which I believe may have names within the storyline of the song but which I'm going to call Flower and Miku after the Vocaloid used for their lyrics, because it's funnier that way. Flower is the titular "yesman", someone who behaves exactly the way society wants them to without pushing against it, even if they hate that life.
Flower: Hiding a selfish, angry laughter
Pitted malt of selling complaints
Hiding a casual abstention
It's okay if I dance forever, right?
"I just want to live normally
Isn't that lovely?"
"Ordinary person, extraordinary person, there's not much of a difference, right?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, if I just nod it'll be fine
I want to live fair and square
Do you understand?"
Miku, meanwhile, is someone who isn't like that. She calls flower out for being "caught in the trap" of disillusionment.
Miku: Yes, face to face with things I hate
"I have no euphemism, I hate this"
The you that says these is still a ghoul, truly great
"Well, I didn't have motivation from the beginning
By now, there's no meaning of going back"
Saying these, you were caught in your own trap
The "ghoul" imagery connects to the chorus, where Flower is directly compared to the living dead.
Undead, Undead!
Beside you
Undead, Undead!
Dancing 'till the morning
Undead, Undead!
Peace at any price
I'm just a performing blockhead
Side note, because this is kinda relevant for DRDT related discussion, the word translated here as "blockhead", 朴念仁さ (read: bokunenjin), can also be translated to something like "introvert", which you might see in other translations.
In any case, Flower initially dislikes Miku for being the "disappointment" society believes Miku to be, but she eventually realizes that she doesn't want to feel that way. That's the view of a critical "adult."
Flower: The "disappointment" label that was attached to you some day
I can't get it out of my head
Somehow, by the time I realized
I turned into one of those useless critics called adults
Then Miku... does some yuri stuff? I think? Idk what's actually going on here.
Miku: Being surrounded and taken care of wasn't an ideal
I'm okay with being inside of your heart, when it's not lonely
I want to lower the curtain as if I am going to sleep
Regardless. In the video, the character Flower represents ends up breaking everything around them, as if finally being free from those expectations. However, the lyrics don't seem to reflect this all that much? So I'm a little confused at that part.
Undead, Undead!
Same as usual
I'm just a dancing blockhead
Moaning/singing* x2!
Begging 'till death
Moaning/singing x2!
I want to finish with you
Moaning/singing x2!
Don't fall into here
Into a waiting blockhead
Ah, this life is the best
*In the video, the Japanese writing says "moaning", but there's also English writing saying "singing'". This works because homophones rule
Look, the details aren't completely important. What we need to look for, assuming we take Flower to be the "main character" of the song, is a character who is a "yes man" and does what people expect them to, even if they hate it.
When I first got that, my immediate thought was Ace. He's stated he hates horse riding, but still does it out of performance anxiety whenever he's forced to. So, a complete yesman in that regard. Adding onto that, he's the character that best fits the "undead" chanting, having survived a murder attempt. Even LGI calls it out, with his numeral being attached to the phrase "a cat has 9 lives."
However, Nico works well too. They're also forced into a particular role by society, having to hide their gender identity, even if they hate being called a boy or a girl. They arguably also work better with the idea that the singer ends up rejecting society's pressures in the end, as they have come out as nonbinary, while Ace never got a chance to quit horse-riding. They're not as connected to the "undead" imagery, but they do work better with the "introvert" translation of 朴念仁さ.
But if you're talking about introverts who succumb to societal pressures, you have to mention Societal Pressure Girl. Min shows clear contempt towards her talent in her Bonus Episode, so the connection is made pretty clear there. Additionally, she works best with Flower's insults towards Miku, because of Xander. Flower and Miku beefing over different ideals on fighting against expectations is extremely reminiscent of Min's clashes with Xander throughout the entirety of their stay in the killing game. Especially since, like Miku and Flower end up agreeing on how much dancing to society's tune sucks, Min and Xander actually sorta agree on how pointless the Student talent is.
In fact, Xander also manages to sneak in as a suspect just because of these clashes. If Min is Flower, then Xander is Hatsune Miku (put that in the "out of context theorists" compilation), so he is technically connected to the song. The only reason he's secondary is because I'd expect Flower to be the one connected to the DRDT character, as she's the titular "Yesman," but still.
Why did I put Arturo as a secondary suspect. I'm writing this a few hours after writing his name there, so... I forgot why I did it. Like, I think I was cooking something about beauty standards and how they could be related to societal pressures, but like. Arturo doesn't hate beauty standards. Chat I've reached the point where my theorizing is incomprehensible even to me, is it all over?
Anyways, at least David as an option is a bit clearer. All the reasons he fits with Yesman are the same for why he fits with Undead Enemy, the only reason he's in "reaching" is because Undead Enemy just fits him better overall.
Song #12 - tip toes
Main Suspects: Min
Secondary Suspects: Hu, Arturo, Charles
Reaching: J, David
At the risk of sounding a little pretentious, you know how our world has a bunch of superficial symbols of status? Well, the singer is someone who achieved something like that, and indeed feels pride over it. However, they're not super happy with it. They wish they could be more earnest and follow their real desires instead of these symbols of status. They want to be "set free from wanting things they don't need." Think, like, a famous singer living a luxurious life, but hating how superficial it all is.
Demanding my mind be set free
From wanting the things I don't need
My pride is hiding its lies behind all the dreams
Living inside
Delusion is weighing me down
It's taking the hope that I found
And giving me nothing back
The feeling is creeping in slow
It's feeding my need to be known
And giving me nothing back
The "delusion" here is a delusion of grandeur taking away their true dreams and passions, it's the "need to be known" that's "giving them nothing back". However, it's not easy for them to let go of the pride associated with these superficial status symbols, causing an internal conflict they describe as a "heart attack."
Heart attack, so now I'm on my
Tip toes, trying to see past my ego
I'm reaching for something more than this feeling of being important
Leaving my heart behind, it's bleeding
But still my pride is screaming
My future will listen to me
Listen to me, listen to me
Will I always know this divide?
Living most of this war inside
Take this ghost of me with the tide to die
And release my heart to come alive
They want something more substantial than this meaningless status, this "feeling of being important" that's making them "leave their heart behind", but their pride is making it difficult, "screaming" for them not to give that up. They lament over this divide, wishing they could take this superficial "ghost" of themselves to die and fully follow their heart. And we don't have any more lines so we kinda gotta work with this.
With the way I described the song, you can probably guess which character I'm angling towards. Because if there is a symbol of status that someone has that they feel is superficial and meaningless, that has to be the title of the Ultimate Student. Because an Ultimate title, a spot in Hope's Peak, is obviously an extremely important symbol of status. And yet, in her Bonus Episode, Min makes it clear that she doesn't find her title to be as meaningful as others', because it's sorta inherently unsubstantial. She expresses a clear desire to grow past the title, to do something more with her life, something more than this title that does little more than make her appear important and well known.
And yet, Min doesn't just completely dismiss her title. Whenever Xander expressed his clear hatred of the title and what it stands for, Min was always quick to defend her lifestyle and argue for the importance of her talent, even though she fundamentally agreed with Xander. This is where the "ego" comes in. A part of Min does still feel proud of her accomplishments as the Ultimate Student, even when another part of her thinks it's an useless title, so it's hurtful when someone insults that. And it's not something she lets go of easily, as illustrated by the fact she continued studying even within the killing game.
This is why I put Min as the only main suspect, because I find her to be the best example of the song's conflict. She clearly expresses both the pride and the feeling that the thing she's proud of is stupid and worthless. However, the song is much more vague than I've been treating it as, so other options can definitely fit here as well.
In particular, Hu and Arturo could both easily fit this song in the near future. "The feeling of being important" is something that Hu explicitly looks for, wanting to be seen as reliable by the others. And of course, Arturo chases status more so than he chases beauty, as he quickly went from not thinking about J at all to immediately becoming obsessed when he learnt who her mother was.
However, they share the same problem; this song only works for them if you assume they'll go through a certain character arc. Currently, neither Hu or Arturo actually feel conflicted over their "pride." Hu sees nothing wrong about wanting to be seen as reliable and important, and Arturo has expressed regret over very little beyond his sister's death and catching Veronika's attention. For the song to work, then, you need to assume that either Hu will begin loving herself regardless of what others think of her, or Arturo will look past his desire for status and search for something more meaningful. And even if you feel comfortable assuming that, the fact Min effectively starts the killing game already fitting the song makes me lean towards her more than these two, you feel?
Charles, meanwhile, has already grown past his pride as one of the only "real" Ultimates that he expressed during the Prologue, so he fits a bit better in that sense. He realized the Ultimate thing was not the most important thing ever in the face of stuff like basic adulting skills, he "looked past his ego" and learnt to rely in others.
But there is a reason that he's not a prime suspect. His blinding pride and his desire for something more meaningful never truly coexist. In CH1, he's arrogant and self-important, but he doesn't show a desire to grow past that. And in CH2, he's already pretty much completely let go of his "feeling of being important" as one of the few "true" Ultimates. And even if you argue it could be referring to how he still considers himself smarter than anyone else, we then run into the same problem as CH1, because he has no desire to let go of that. The conflict, if it ever existed, ended before it became relevant.
On another note, David once again faces the funny situation of being really fitting for a song, but getting put in "Reaching" because of Undead Enemy. He feels his talent is just as useless as Min considers hers, and he definitely looks for something more meaningful by following Xander. But again, Undead Enemy.
Finally, J is here as someone who let go of a whole lot of status to follow her passions, but like. If she ever felt conflicted about leaving her status behind, we sure as hell never see it. The only reason I'm even mentioning her is that the only other song I mentioned her in is Hi-fi Evolution Theory so I kinda have to start giving her some options lmao.
Song #16 - Good Grief
Prime Suspects: Eden, Whit
Secondary Suspects: Xander, Teruko, Future Context
Reaching: David
Stated directly by its writers, this song is about how confusing grief is. The song is about someone who lost someone else.
Watching through my fingers x2
Shut my eyes and count to ten
It goes in one ear out the other, oh
One ear out the other, oh
Burning bright right till the end
Now you'll be missing from the photographs
Missing from the photographs
Watching through my fingers x2
In my thoughts, you're far away
And you are whistling a melody
Whistling a melody
Crystallising clear as day
Oh, I can picture you so easily
Picture you so easily
They're "watching through their fingers" either because they're scared to confront the death, they're crying with their hands on their face, or both. Now, this loss makes them feel very sad and hopeless, of course:
What's gonna be left of the world if you're not in it?
What's gonna be left of the world, oh?
Every minute and every hour
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Every stumble and each misfire
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
However, because of how intense their grief is, this sadness isn't simple. It's interrupted by moments of intense emotions in general, including a weird euphoria when being reminded of the lighter moments in that person's life. That's why when they're "caught off guard by your favorite song", they begin "dancing at the funeral." It's representing the way people might laugh and joke about silly stories of the dead to celebrate their life, for example.
Caught off-guard by your favourite song
Oh, I'll be dancing at a funeral
Dancing at a funeral
Sleeping in the clothes you love
It's such a shame we had to see them burn
Shame we had to see them burn
You might have to excuse me
I've lost control of all my senses
And you might have to excuse me
I've lost control of all my words
So get drunk, call me a fool
Put me in my place, put me in my place
Pick me up, up off the floor
Put me in my place, put me in my place
Which gets us into the very obvious problem that a song about grief in a killing game might as well be a song about water in a school of fish. It can end up applying to basically anyone, provided the right people die. Hence why Future Context is a suspect. But if you ask me, this idea of laughing about better times to celebrate a person's life in the wake of their death makes me think of one conversation in particular, at least for now.
Eden [2-3]: You know, being in this kitchen, it reminds me of that time that you, I, Rose, and Min were baking together. You remember that, right?
Teruko: ...
Of course I remember.
Eden: We had a ton of fun back then! Baking, decorating, and chatting... I could tell everyone really enjoyed it!
But then... When you dropped that cake, and Min had to clean up the mess... Because of that, she ended up having to kill Xander.
The conversation continues, but you get the idea. Combine that with Arei, and it looks like Eden will be doing a whole lot of grieving in the near future. And with her being an intensely emotional person, it makes sense that she'd embody the entire massive spectrum of emotions grief can bring. Also this is literally the first time I've brought her up I need to give her some songs already.
However, Eden works if you take the intended meaning of the song. Because if you read the lyrics divorced from the writers' statements, then you can actually interpret it as someone ignoring their grief. The dancing in the funeral, the shutting eyes and looking through fingers, the "picture you so easily", the sleeping in clothes they loved, the losing control of the senses... It certainly gives off Whit "looking away" from his mother's death energy. The fact this is grief he felt before the killing game also arguably gives him points, as it is an integral part of his character from the start, as opposed to Eden who only starts feeling grief during the killing game. But at the same time, the fact that the song does acknowledge the death at all ("you'll be missing from the photographs", "I miss you more") is a little strange when Whit ignores the issue so much he deadass forgets his mom is dead at all. So. There's that counterargument.
Similar to Whit, Xander also feels grief before the killing game, which is why he's here, but unfortunately we just don't know enough about how he feels about his family to make him a prime suspect. And Teruko is here on the basis that she will definitely feel a good amount of grief over the course of the killing game, on top of whatever the hell she's going to feel about Mai's very likely death. But because it hasn't been shown yet, I don't want to put her as a Prime Suspect for now.
And David is here because look at tally 5 dawg my guy's grieving. But for the fiftieth time this post, Undead Enemy pushes him to the Reaching tier. I'm starting to wonder if maybe always disqualifying him was a bad move but oh well.
Song #10 - Drawing Pins
Prime Suspect: Levi, Nico
Secondary Suspects: Teruko, Hu
Reaching: Min, Rose, Future Context
This song is about someone who feels stuck in an awful situation, "held down by drawing pins."
I'm held down by drawing pins
They pierce the skin
Additionally, the singer feels they can't understand the person they're speaking to. Apparently, this person has done something to them, and the singer can't understand why they did it.
Lights are on but no one's in - When you talk
I don't feel like I belong - Here at all
Tell me what you did it
What you did it
What you did it for
'Cause I can't figure it out
Finally, the singer wants to be loved by the person they're speaking to.
What do I have to do
To be loved, loved by you
And... that's it. You can see why this is so difficult to determine. The song's very vague, and the emotions it expresses are pretty common amongst the cast.
Still, if you're talking about people feel like they "don't belong here at all", you're probably looking at Levi and Nico. They both have issues understanding people and their actions, fitting the whole "lights are on but no one's in when you talk" and "tell me what you did it for" thing. And they've both been stuck in unfavorable positions, being unable to freely discuss a part of themselves. Particularly, Nico didn't feel comfortable sharing their gender identity at the start, and Levi didn't feel comfortable sharing his low empathy. The desire to feel loved can then be abstracted to being accepted for Nico and being seen as a good person for Levi, though I give the slight edge to Levi here in terms of who it fits more.
As for secondary suspects, we go to Hu. She fits with the desire to be loved while being stuck in the unfortunate position of mental health issues which led her to attempt suicide several times, and you could argue she struggles to understand Nico's and David's actions for the chorus. However, I feel like that might be recency bias, if that makes sense? Like, Hu not understanding people isn't as core a part of her character as it is for Levi and Nico, the David and Nico situations are just particular cases where she struggles to see the other person's perspective. It feels to me like that aspect of lack of understanding only feels really relevant because it's one of the last things we've seen of Hu's character as of the end of CH2.
The same can be said about Teruko, but at least "why did Xander try to kill her" seems to be a highly important question for the storyline as a whole, so it would make a bit more sense to draw attention to it with that chorus. And her misfortune is certainly something that "pins her down," so it tracks. She's not a primary suspect solely because I think this fits Levi and Nico better, not because there's too many problems with it.
Going to the final category, Min and Rose work in the sense that they're the most directly "under drawing pins" in the sense that XF-Ture Tech and the Spurling Foundation have forced them into horrible positions, but they really struggle with the "tell me what you did it for" thing. Also, cartoons exists, so Rose has better options. On the other hand, if we're going to accept that said chorus is about a particular point in the killing game, like Xander's attempted murder or the Nico and David situations, then we have to acknowledge the possibility that something like that will happen again, and more suspects will enter the list. So, Future Context.
Song #13 - Polygonal
Prime Suspects: Teruko, Ace, Hu
Secondary Suspects: Nico, Levi, Xander
Reaching: David, Charles, Arei
The second song without an easily accessible translation, so we're gonna have to put our faith in Google Translate once more. And unlike Hi-fi, this one's a little hard to understand.
This song is about... uh... it's, like. So it's. Hm. Uh... self-loathing?
Ah, a life full of failures
And so time melts away again
Ah, a life full of regrets
And yet another anchor appears
The scenery I can't see is still
Stained bright red
Everyone wants to laugh with someone
Okay, that's a start. The self-loathing causes the singer to grow jealous of... just, like, someone. From my understanding, they call themselves a mirror, because they... presumably are trying to replicate behavior?
Narrow-mindedness. You saw the "white" personality and dreams
Unable to love them properly
This rotten mirror
Was jealous of someone
I hate you, who grows straight and tall
My understanding here is that the "white" personality and dreams are, like, a facade of "good" born from the singer trying to replicate the person they're jealous of ("rotten mirror"). Or the "white" personality is actually the real personality of the singer, but they feel it cannot be loved regardless. The main idea is the whole "reflection" and "unable to be loved" thing, at least from my interpretation. The singer's trying to be a "mirror" of good people to be loved?
This pain that we can see
"Melting away like a mirage"
In a prison no one sees
Alone, we
Rot away
Okay, okay. We're making progress. Again, the singer doesn't feel "seen", their pain is sorta festering away from sight and causing them to rot, right? That's what's going on? Maybe we can understand the chorus now?
Ah, this light that shines only on me
It hurts so much I feel dizzy and want to vomit
The auditory hallucinations that never stop today, endless delusions
Beyond the never-ending nightmare
The urge to scream and someone's amplified sobs
It's on the other side of the mirror
Many voices that seem about to burst
Resonating through the mirror, that's my pain
What the fuck is happening.
Okay let's take it one line at a time. "Light that shines only on me" is a spotlight, so the singer feels put... on a spotlight. They feel like the center of attention, but they don't like it ("it hurts so much"). Because of the whole "delusion" talk, it reads to me in a sort of self-destructively self-centered way, if that makes sense. They feel like everyone's judging them, basically? That's presumably what the "auditory hallucinations" would be, the thought that other people are judging and talking shit. Am I making sense or making shit up.
What's on the other side of the mirror? Well, if the mirror is sort of the singer pretending to be similar to other people... then they are the person beyond the mirror, screaming and sobbing with a voice about to burst.
Okay, okay! Again, hidden pain, etc.
The lingering echo, terribly dull
Those eyes reflected in loneliness
It turned "purple"
A bruise I don't remember getting
A green corpse
And this memory that is eating away at me, a melancholy that frightens me
Why are we bringing memory into it. Why is purple in quotes. Am I losing my mind.
Uh... would you all forgive me if I just let this little part go as "the singer is vaguely depressed about the past"? I'm struggling with the imagery around here.
Okay, uh. So as a summary, the singer feels they can't be loved, put on a spotlight and constantly judged. So they put up a front of a "mirror" which you take however you want. They hide pain behind that mirror. They're jealous of the people who can stand themselves. Memory bullshit.
I think why you can see why this is such a problem. Unlike other songs, which are so vague that it's impossible to draw much meaning from them, this song is so detailed that no character can fit it perfectly. And that's without mentioning that a lot of the song is up to interpretation, so a lot of what I said might not even apply.
Arguably, Ace fits the best here. He does feel constantly judged as if he's on a spotlight, he hides his fear of death, he wants to be loved even if he tries to put distance between himself and others, he expressed jealousy over Arei, and... the memory thing can maybe go with Taylor?
But that doesn't mean he fits perfectly. Even beyond the stretch for the memory connection, Ace's issue is that the mirror, in his case, is only concealing things. I wouldn't really argue he's "reflecting" anything. Unless you say he's replicating everyone else's aggression, but... he's usually the one starting shit, so I don't think that works very well.
Teruko here is essentially the same thing as Ace, with the feeling of being unloved despite wanting to connect to people, the hidden pain, and the feeling of a spotlight (see: her referring to herself as the "protagonist"). She's a stronger guess in the "memory bullshit" department with all she's forgotten (incident of her back scar, Mai's name, prosopagnosia), but she arguably doesn't care as much about being judged (outwardly, at least, but also she doesn't respect a lot of people's opinions). And she still has the issue of the mirror not making a whole lot of sense, seeing as she generally does her own thing.
Hu, meanwhile, fits perfectly with the mirror imagery.
Hu [2-6]: You see, when my parents were younger, they often visited a local lake.
Supposedly, the water was so still that it perfectly reflected the sky and the many butterflies that flew above the lake during those quiet morning hours.
They had many fond memories of that place and wanted to work it into my name. My last and first name can be translated into something like "still lake."
See? It's not just that, but Hu also (arguably) goes along with David's ideas during CH2, in a way "reflecting" them. She's mirroring the actions of someone she considers good and upstanding, even if "jealous" is maybe too strong of a way to put how she felt about David before 2-11. And the reason she does this is out of a desperate desire to be loved, to be seen as reliable. She is extremely worried about what other people think of her, far more than Ace and Teruko imo, to the point where the main reason she doesn't want her secret revealed is that she doesn't want it to make her seem less reliable. So, the "hidden pain" part is obvious.
Finally, the memory thing sorta works with the idea that she's hurting either herself or others without realizing, as she does by talking over Nico. "A bruise she doesn't remember" might just mean she doesn't see the damage she did to her relationship with Nico until it's too late. A little bit of a stretch, but not the worst imo.
And speaking of "not noticing you're hurting someone until it's too late," that's where our secondary suspects of Levi and Nico come in. They both struggle to understand how others think, and as a result end up mostly "reflecting" behavior of those they respect, though Levi much more than Nico given the Pet Therapist mostly does their own thing. The "hidden pain" and "constantly judged" things works better for Nico, but the "memory bullshit" part might work better with Levi "oh yeah I forgot I killed my dad" Fontana. It works, but I don't see it as much as the first three.
So... what about Xander? Well, he's kinda a suspect mainly because the imagery fits him extremely well. "Rotting" gets brought up a lot, and Xander's family was described as "rotting." The video shows someone... not having the greatest time, fitting that again. And his family's deaths are the clearest idea of what "a memory eating away at [the singer]" could be referring to.
"Hiding pain" behind a "mirror" would need some assumptions, but you could argue that following the Chariton incident, Xander became more like his idol David pretended to be; a "mirror" of his idol to hide his survivor's guilt. Shaky, but works. The spotlight and "feeling constantly judged" thing... are ever shakier, but Xander has been known to do some bad things because he trusts himself (see: attacking Teruko), which could be seen as a sort of self-centered attitude. In this case, feeling bad about the spotlight is a little defeatist, like he hates that he's the center of all these hard decisions, but he's only like that because he trusts his judgement over others'? Something like that. There's a lot of assumptions made there, some of which I don't believe mind you, which is why he's only a secondary suspect. However, you can work around it all, so he's not "reaching."
Speaking of that category, though. David and Arei actually fit extremely well given they're foils of Teruko and Ace in the relevant aspects, and the only reason they're not prime suspects is because Shun-ran and Undead Enemy exist. Finally, Charles is here because "a bruise I don't remember getting" sounded like Elliot to me on a first listen (or, first read-through of the lyrics), and even though the rest of the song doesn't fit too well imo, it's enough to consider it at least.
With this, we've officially run out of songs that make any degree of sense. The next three songs are the "quasi-instrumentals" that have basically no lyrics, which means we're gonna have to do this by vibe check alone. Save me.
Prime Suspects: Xander, J, Ace
Secondary Suspects: Levi, Teruko
Reaching: Charles
This song is pretty "punchy" and groovy. It's energetic and somewhat aggressive. I'm struggling to describe the vibe, but from that alone you can see why Xander, J and Ace are options.
Teruko is a secondary suspect because I think the vibe fits well, but not as well as the other three, and because the idea of something being "unbreakable" fits her whole Ultimate Luck making her survive anything. Levi is here because he's big and muscular like Jojo characters, and the vibe doesn't not fit him.
Charles is here because diamond is, uh, a material, so like chemistry and shit.
Oh dear God the quality of the guesses somehow fell even harder than before T_T
It's the same suspects I'm not making a new graphic lmao
This song has (count them!) two lines.
If I was in World War Two they'd call me Spitfire
'Cause you know that I can
... Well then!
The song is loud and extremely abrasive. It has its chiller and more melodic moments, but it's mostly just a bunch of screaming over harsh sounds. So, again. Xander, Ace, J, and to an extent Levi and Teruko. Though, if it helps, the Spitfire was a British plane, so... Xander evidence? I don't fucking know man.
Veronika and Arei are here because I've lost control of my life.
Song #15 - desk rotation
Prime Suspects: fuck if i know dude
Reaching: Nico, J, Whit, Charles, David, Eden, Arturo, Min, Veronika, Rose, Teruko
And here we have it, the song in the playlist without any lyrics at all! dev this song has 23k views on YT what is this incomprehensible ball knowledge you posses?
Anyways, the song is- I don't fucking know, it's a bunch of noise and it's sorta kinda upbeat? Not to say it's bad, I think it kinda bangs but my music taste is sorta trash so idk if I'm the best judge of that.
Look you saw the list. The song's vibe is so absurdly indescribable that it can basically fit anyone if you look at it a certain way. And what the fuck else am I supposed to say here? Min could have it because Student -> Desks -> desk rotation? Nico because it has no words and they have trouble communicating? We've completely lost the thread. It's probably going to have to come down to process of elimination. It is what it is, I guess.
With all of this, we can reach a conclusion I'm decently comfortable with. Sort of.
See, for a lot of these songs, even if I think there are multiple people that fit well, it's convenient to choose one person over the other for the playlist overall to work better. I think Yesman works great with both Ace and Min, but Min is a great choice for tip toes. Meanwhile Ace's other songs are all pretty heavily contested, so I'm giving Yesman to Ace, which in turn means I can also give Polygonal to Hu without too much issue. Similarly, I could see Good Grief for Whit, but Eden's been absent basically the entire post while Whit at least has asymptotic, so to Eden Good Grief goes.
The surprising issue is Drawing Pins. Nico and Levi haven't shown up a lot aside the quasi-instrumentals for Levi, which means the playlist can work well with either of them on the song. Ultimately, I'm going to give the song to Levi because I think it fits a bit better, but I'll also give an alternate solution with Nico on Drawing Pins to cover my bases.
With that stated, here's the final list!
Diamond is Unbreakable (Main Theme) - Xander.
Confidence Rating: 2.0/10
Sing Along - Teruko
Confidence Rating: 7.0/10
RUNAWAY - Charles
Confidence Rating: 4.5/10
cartoons- Rose
Confidence Rating: 9.5/10
asymptotic - Whit
Confidence Rating: 5.0/10
アイアルの勘違い (A Mistaken Belief of Love) - Arturo
Confidence Rating: 6.5/10
春嵐 (Shunran) - Arei
Confidence Rating: 9.5/10
イヱスマン (Yesman) - Ace
Confidence Rating: 5.0/10
アンデッドエネミー (Undead Enemy) - David
Confidence Rating: 9.0/10
Drawing Pins - Levi
Confidence Rating: 2.0/10 (low because of Nico, not because it doesn't fit)
And there we have it! Clearly, I'm not particularly confident on most of this, but I think it's a pretty reasonable solution. I wonder if the dev will ever reveal which was which, or if we'll never get to know just how wrong I was.
Hope you all enjoyed reading, regardless of whether you agree with me on these picks or not! It was certainly fun to go over all of this and try to figure out a way to make it work. If you made it this far, you deserve your own playlist song! Hope yours at least gets lyrics. Anyways, see ya'!
