[intense ethereal whooshing]

Hell god baby damn no! A. || 28 || they/she || French (derogatory)

[algernoninwonderland]

Don’t let anyone kill your inner child. Do it yourself. I bet that little bugger can’t swim.

You live in time.

[algernoninwonderland]

If Noelle and Kris work as both Laura and Donna, is the closest James analogue Susie?? I know her forehead isn’t that big but still.

[algernoninwonderland]

Early 2000s VN about weird stuff happening in a small town in the middle of nowhere (New Hampshire).

[algernoninwonderland]

The thing about Kriselle is that they are both Laura Palmer and each other’s Donna if that makes any sense.

That part of the Secret Diary, the entry for July 22, 1988 (that’s page 147 in the original hardback edition)….

I am not side by side with Donna Hayward. Something has happened to us, we grew up, together, but then I suddenly grew apart from her… certain events aged me, made me bitter.

It’s not a perfect 1 to 1, what these two have, and thank goodness for that, but there’s so much that echoes.

[algernoninwonderland]

If you’re in the U.S. or have a VPN, Adult Swim is slowly putting all of Venture Bros out on YouTube.

I can’t emphasise how great of a show it is, and how consistently better it gets as it goes, how it builds on so much of what it sets up without you noticing. It’s so playful with its referentiality, and there’s always something new to catch when you revisit it. It does generational trauma just right. The way it handles nostalgia is so clever it still feels fresh.

One of the funniest, smartest, most moving shows I’ve ever watched, my favourite Adult Swim show bar none. If you loved Lupin the Third, this is right up your alley.

(The first handful of seasons are unfortunately a bit dated in some ways, some iffy jokes and questionable language, but if you can move past it (and I think it’s absolutely understandable if you can’t or won’t), you’re in for something really special.)

[algernoninwonderland]

Hometown has a very vibes-based, evocative geography, seemingly following in the footsteps of MOTHER and EarthBound… But not quite.

Sure you’re reminded of Twoson (with the fall foliage palette from the Halloween Hack). Toriel’s house is at the top of the map, as is Ness’s in Onett. Police sawhorses are blocking the roads. The architecture seems like generic Americana rather than a specific place (unless you’ve decided that Deltarune takes place in New Hampshire, which it totally does, and I can prove it, I swear).

Just like in most top down 2D games, you get plenty of buildings that shouldn’t exist at this scale if at all, considering the size of the town, and yet it makes perfect sense that they’re here within the storyworld.

Only, Deltarune does things a little differently from the MOTHER games, and the end results are striking.

Whereas you need your hospitals to fix your status ailments, buy your mushrooms or resurrect a party member in EB, Deltarune’s hospital is here purely for storytelling purposes. Kris’s status ailments cannot be expressed through a menu system, or fixed by having a cup of hot cocoa (which does not restore their HP). Hometown is a walking simulator. And the space you’re walking through is different from EB’s towns, too.

While MOTHER and EB display very large maps (let’s call them rooms), often a single screen for an entire location, Deltarune doesn’t do that. If you try to stitch together the different rooms, there’s a lot that appears to be missing, bits and pieces not quite lining up. It wasn’t the case in Undertale. Hometown is aesthetically cohesive, but spatially fragmented. Is it because of the way GameMaker works? A deliberate design choice?

What you end up having is a very story-dense space that has no filler, but is not fully linear as a result, as though entire streets had been skipped. The Light World is supposedly the “real world” and yet Hometown is a sort of dream-town à la Twin Peaks.

[algernoninwonderland]

Now let’s take this further with chapter 5.

From a purely technical standpoint, nothing in DR exists beyond Hometown (and its Dark Worlds).

There are no sprite sheets for the roads leading out of Hometown, no names are given for any other locations, not even the name of Asriel’s college.

The police sawhorses are a permanent fixture you can’t skip past once you’ve beaten up the chief of police, and this is decidedly unlike EarthBound.

You’re stuck here. Noelle feels it more than anyone, and she has every reason to feel that way. She is technically wholly correct!

So of course, being the Gamer that she is, she tries going out of bounds, and here, the tileset really reflects this reading. The lake’s waters become more and more abstract, no leaves or light reflections. Clearly you’re not supposed to be here.

(Where Twin Peaks —the town, the storyworld at large— is ultimately a relatively open space, where people drive long distances, cross borders, thanks to the magic of television, the dream-like qualities of Hometown’s geography ultimately lack this openness.)

[algernoninwonderland]

While Dess occupies a lot of the same roles Laura Palmer did (the Lost Girl, the Girl in Trouble with a darker, more self-destructive side), one of the things that make me reluctant to call her a Laura is that she is no Prom Queen.

Laura’s whole thing in her public life was presenting herself as the perfect girl that everybody liked (now scratching that veneer, things were a lot uglier than that) and she did so much to be liked, to be good.

A significant part of the Pilot is dedicated to people mourning Laura. Arguably the entire show is about reckoning with her death and the ripples it caused in Twin Peaks. Hell, 25 years later, it still brings back memories, the Return shows the cosmological, metaphysical consequences of her life and death.

Outside of the Holidays and the Dreemurrs, no one in Hometown appears to be still missing Dess. Compare her bedroom with her sister’s, or Asriel’s side of his and Kris’s room. She didn’t seem interested in being liked by as many people as possible. No awards to be seen.

It has been years, sure, but you’d think Hometown’s chatterboxes would mention Dess in passing, in some of their anecdotes. Would Carol be able to control what this many people say? I doubt it, really. It’s a sleepy town in which not much seems to be happening, so Dess should be a topic that comes up every then and again. But she isn’t.

In-universe, Dess simply isn’t someone most people like to gossip about, she wasn’t all that popular outside of a tiny circle (family and family friends) so it’s harder for people to project their desires onto her, and that makes her very unlike Laura.

[algernoninwonderland]

One year and a chapter later, and if you’ve read the Secret Diary, Noelle is definitely much more of a Laura.

[algernoninwonderland]

Deltarune tomorrow!

Kriselle Chapter 4 Weird Route one shot today!

It kept running around in my head, the first draft is from early July 2025… and now I’m free at long last.

Read it here!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/87245436

[algernoninwonderland]

Deltarune tomorrow!

Kriselle Chapter 4 Weird Route one shot today!

It kept running around in my head, the first draft is from early July 2025… and now I’m free at long last.

Read it here!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/87245436

[algernoninwonderland]

The Amazing Digital Therapyspeak

[algernoninwonderland]

My main issue with the Backrooms movie is that while I absolutely get what is going on, on paper, and it’s perfectly cogent thematically, “what if there was a giant pirate and he chased you around” is ultimately kind of silly and the film doesn’t want you to think that it is, but it truly is, and it looks even sillier in person, what with the CGI face.

Fun time overall! Great sets! Neat acting, fantastic crop top. It’s a solid 6.5/10. I can’t imagine returning to it anytime soon.

[tinstarbby]

Do we see the vision

[algernoninwonderland]

Holy fucking cannoli the “Mother 1” EB romhack is out.

I remember people talking about it on starmen dot net back in the late aughts. It’s still hard to believe it’s finally out.

[algernoninwonderland]

Inde Navarrette needs to be cast in everything but especially comedies. Her sense of timing is truly impeccable!

[algernoninwonderland]

[Jeff Mangum Voice] Ah luv u cockwaffle

[algernoninwonderland]

Deltarune Chapter 5 will probably be fine, I just didn’t expect it to be Japanese!

[algernoninwonderland]

Ah, yes, Betty Cooper’s second cousin. Special Agent Dale.