burning with ideas

she/her - indie game theorist - FOSS enthusiast

[dreamweaver-357]

welcome to the madness

i like to theorize about my favorite games sometimes, chiefly Deltarune and Ultrakill. i try to stick to the facts where possible and theorize along the lines of the narrative themes and established patterns - in other words, that which would be reasonably consistent with the rest of the game. it's pretty fun to guess where the creators are going.

i'm also a big fan of free open-source software and an advocate for an internet free of ads, spyware, and paywalls. i won't be posting about this as much (save for a few important things) but you'll see some reblogs on the topic.

search the "self post" tag if you're just here for my stuff.

my blog is open to everyone except bigots and fascists. no exceptions.

[dont-touch-the-flower-child]

let's talk about Dess Holiday a little.

for all these stories telling us how awesome and cool she was...

...she wasn't really all that popular?

i mean, Dess has been gone for years and nobody in Hometown ever mentions her. the older teens/young adults, who should be her peers, only talks to Kris about Asriel.

You'd think they're avoiding the topic of Dess for Kris' sake, but truthfully, i don't see Pizzapants and Bratty as all that tactful.

instead, i think they were just never friends with Dess, and paid little attention to her even when she was around.

i think Dess was in fact rather lonely. and we only came to think of her as this cool, badass rebel girl because of how Noelle and Kris saw her.

with Noelle, i suppose Dess maintained till the very end an image of a loving, protective big sister. Noelle remembers Dess helping her win every snow angel contest, and whacking Kris over their head when they went too far with pranks, and promising to take her to a city of shining lights.

but i don't think that's the full story of their sisterhood. rather, i believe Dess had kept her bitterer, more complicated feelings for Noelle hidden, and this was where Kris came in.

but first, let's take a look at what Dess was like.

she was messy and unfocused. she was rowdy and dirty. Susie reminds Gerson of her, and Susie is aggressive, rude, implied to struggle with formal schooling, and very much ostracized by her peers.

so Dess' main friend group was like...her own sister, the boy living next door, and the neighbor boy's gremlin younger sibling.

and two of these people are just. Perfect. Noelle, sweet, polite and well-behaved, cast as the Angel that Hometowners literally worship. Asriel, so academically and socially successful. they are the faces of the Holidays and Dreemurrs, respectively, golden children of the town. they shine so bright that their siblings live under their shadows.

now, i think Asriel genuinely liked Dess, and their closeness wasn't just for show or anything.

but that doesn't mean proximity and the fact that their parents knew each other well didn't factor into this friendship. i think Dess was very aware of how out of her league Asriel was, even if she was the mayor's daughter.

i think she wasn't sure if Asriel would still be her friend if they weren't neighbors.

and then, there was Kris.

Kris was Just Like Her. just like Dess, they were weird, unruly, an outsider. just like Dess, they have a vastly more popular and easily likeable sibling.

and i think Dess leaned on Kris as Kris leaned on Dess. the bitterness Dess couldn't exactly show Noelle? she showed to Kris. the loneliness and insecurity she couldn't tell Asriel? she let it slipped with Kris. because Kris was the only one who could possibly understand her.

well, Kris and someone else. until that someone else is gone.

two of the dark worlds seem like attempts to relive the time when Gerson was alive and her teacher.

i do wonder if Gerson's passing was shortly before Dess' disappearance. if the loss of someone so important to her had shaken her and prompted her to do something drastic.

and I think Kris was the only witness to what happened to her.

[dreamweaver-357]

hhhhhow did i never see that similarity between Dess and Susie before. and how that ties back to Gerson. what. that makes so much sense.

another piece of the puzzle has clicked into place...

[neurodivergentaf]

it's so wild when your parent changes when you become an adult. my dad is very cordial and non confrontational - he regularly helps me with adult stuff like changing the oil or providing insurance tips. he's always smiling when i call him on video and providing jokes when i complain about college

when i was a kid, i would have to tiptoe around his anger issues often, sometimes running quietly past his work table until he got his own place completely separate from our family, locked away for days. every so often he would start screaming in the car and trying to hit me or my brother for talking too loud while my mom attempted to calm him down as he swerved on the road. and now he, smiling, helps me with car insurance.

like oh, this is just who you are when you have power over someone, and this is who you are when you dont have power over someone. no wonder you can have a normal life, friends, work while scaring the shit out of your kids and wife. i see it now. i see why no one would have believed me. that, i think, is one of the core fears of trauma - seeing the outside of it from the perspective of other adults that brushed you aside, and understanding. of course, that understanding gives the opposite of solace; it just gives you more grief with nowhere for it to go

[arachnixe]

I love reading analysis posts about Deltarune that start with a really good, thoughtful examination of the evidence in the game, drawing lines between patterns that are awfully suggestive about possible themes and foreshadowed plot points...

Then you get to their conclusions, and it's the biggest, wettest fart imaginable. Like, the poster just ran face-first into a tunnel they painted on a wall, Wile E. Coyote style. "And therefore the late game reveal will be that Kris has two detachable Thing hands" or "the central thesis of the game is that you—the player—are a piece of shit for puppetting Kris," or "actually all the events of the game take place in a coma dream while you're dying of cancer in the hospital" or some shit.

[lily-the-rockstar]

I am once again turning to the Tumblr people in my phone for answers

So recently I've been wanting to get into Deltarune, cause I was SUPER into Undertale as a kid but for whatever reason Deltarune never caught my eye as much until now. I don't have enough money on my steam account to buy Deltarune, plus I'm slow at finishing games, so I thought I'd binge watch a let's player go through the series instead.

Usually I always go for Jacksepticeye and Markiplier since I like their personalities, they're usually more explorative in games, and their editing isn't over the top and overwhelming. But I found out that Mark never played Deltarune and Jack never finished it either so I'm all out of options 💔 I'm okay with Kubzscouts, LaurenZside, and iHasCupquake, but I doubt any of them have played Deltarune

Does anyone have any recommendations for who I can watch play through the game? Ideally I'd like a full series up until the latest installment, but I could probably settle for chapters 1-3 since 4 like JUST came out. The main thing I'm looking for is editing that isn't extremely energetic and distracting because that style of editing gets really overstimulating and annoying for me 😔

[dreamweaver-357]

if you have to watch someone play it, Penny Parker (aka Snapcube) has an absolute BLAST with it. plenty of funny and insightful commentary, entertaining voices, and just a delightful person overall.

here's the playlist!

DELTARUNE - ALL CHAPTERS

[lunaticli8rarian]

hey so could the more 8rain rotted deltarune fans do me a personal favor? just a lil' one?

can literally anyone point me to when in deltarune anyone directly references "the player" as an ent8ty? whether 8y visual text, or literal text, or hell if someone could manage it even music text?

i'm not talking a8out the [HEART SHAPED OBJECT] either, i mean the meta person who has 8ought deltarune on steam for [$24,99 USD]

at what point was there a monika moment where someone mentioned the person playing directly? i seem to've either missed it or forgotten it in the several playthroughs i've 8een in.

and i also don't mean metaphorical allusions. i mean at what point in the game is it directly acknowledged that the thing moving kris around and picking dialogue options is person who has paid cash money for deltarune?

screenshots, text quotes, chapters and moment marks, and videos are all appreci8ted. thank you for your time.

[dreamweaver-357]

reblogging this because i cannot wait to see what people come up with and i don't want to miss a second of it.

[twilightofthesandwiches]

A lot of Deltarune… isn’t quite a refutation or counterargument to Undertale’s themes as much as it is going, like, “I mean, you’re not wrong… but it’s a bit more complicated than that sometimes”. Or, like, elaborating on nuances that were present in Undertale but weren’t given as much focus as Deltarune, as a much longer and more complex game building on Undertale’s themes, can give them.

And it happens most often with Ralsei. Ralsei’s worldview often seems to be an oversimplified and corrupted reflection of Undertale’s themes. Exaggerating them and stripping them of their nuances so that the other characters (mostly Susie) can respond to them and re-introduce nuances and complications back into them.

Most obviously this is done in Chapter 1 with his ultra-Pacifistic and ultra-nice attitude to conflict. His views at the start were a lot more simplified than Undertale, as even a True Pacifist Playthrough requires one to defeat Asgore and Flowey through violence at least once. Plus a bunch of times where Sparing an enemy required an acknowledgment that they can’t be appeased or convinced to back down from a fight. There was sometimes a bit of trickery involved, rather than just 'being nice'.

But these nuances weren’t really Undertale’s narrative focus, the focus was on selling the Player on the value of Pacifism in the first place. So Ralsei’s oversimplification of the idea is a good basis for Deltarune to start putting these nuances to the forefront of the story and really focusing on them, now that Undertale has already established the baseline of “even Random Encounters can be real people with feelings and you should always strive to non-violence.”

And I think a similar thing is kinda happening with his whole…

Which feels to me very reminiscent of…

Like, okay, it is very thematically important that Asriel can’t be ‘saved’ in Undertale. The Royal Siblings Tragedy is a traumatic shadow looming over so many characters in the game, and it’s not something that can be perfectly fixed by being nice or even with Unkillable Time God Powers. Toriel and Asgore and, yes, Flowey/Asriel himself all have character arcs centered around moving on from the tragedy and accepting the present, and would be weakened if a Player could just… magically fix things.

But that doesn’t mean that doesn’t hurt to hear Asriel be so resigned to his fate. Susie Deltarune’s reaction to hearing Ralsei speak so plainly about the idea that he’s just an illusion and that she should prioritize her ‘Real Friends’ very much echoes the emotional reactions of most Undertale Players seeing Asriel ask them to not worry about him and focus on their real friends because he’s already doomed. And in both cases it’s extremely understandable.

The fact that even with Unkillable Time God Powers, the past is the past and there is a value in acceptance and moving on is itself an important nuance in Undertale’s central theme of Determination. With enough Willpower and Defiance, the Player can defy the concept of a kill-or-be-killed world, and free the Monsters from their seemingly hopeless prison, and resist the laws of death and time… it’s a power that comes from a refusal to accept the inevitable. But if you deny everything that goes against your personal will, you’re gonna end up like Flowey, utterly consumed by grief and denial over Chara’s death.

Flowey has to accept that the game between him and the Player is going to end, Asriel has to accept Chara is dead, Asgore has to accept his family will never truly return to what it was before, the Player also has to accept the game is over and that replaying it will just tear away the characters from their happy ending, and that the Asriel they saw at the True Pacifist Ending is gone.

But even with all of that… that doesn’t lessen the emotional pain of watching a little goat boy asking you very kindly and very genuinely to abandon him. It doesn’t make it any less valid for one’s reaction to be “Well, who said I have to leave and forget you? I’m sure that with the pure strength of my heart and the Power of Friendship(TM) I could save you too!!”. It doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking, even frustrating, that this is the thing the game ask you to give up on.

Undertale already added some nuance to the situation, first things first, Asriel does honestly appreciate it if you go all the way back to the start of the game and talk with him. Although he still feels that he's doomed, at least he accepted that Frisk is going to remember him.

Secondly, with Flowey’s Post-Pacifist Dialogue

And especially that Winter Alarm Clock Dialogue…

…both showing that while there was nothing that could be done to stop Asriel from turning back into Flowey, that does not necessarily mean Flowey is doomed. Despite his claims both in his Flowey form and as Original Flavor Goatboy Asriel, Flowey does still show hints that he cares for other people, that he has been truly affected by the events of the True Pacifist Playthrough, that the heart he had as Asriel isn’t actually truly gone…

We’re still dealing with the fact that we can’t undo the trauma of the Royal Siblings Tragedy but… Just because Flowey can’t be magically turned back into the person he was before his Trauma, doesn’t mean he is doomed. What happened happened, but he is still capable of healing and self-improvement. And although he’s still kind of in the margins of the Post Pacifist Friend Group, it doesn’t seem like he’s just been abandoned or forgotten for the sake of the people who are more ‘real’.

So just like with Ralsei’s Pacifism, I think his fatalism and absolute lack of self-worth is an exaggerated and simplified reflection of Asriel's situation. It's kind of a Very Different Thing between Ralsei believing he's ontologically doomed to matter less than Lightners and Asriel believing he's ontologically doomed to be an asshole, but...

It still creates a basic foundation to add nuances and subversions to the point about the importance of moving on and acceptance. Not rejecting it outright, but demonstrating how seemingly clear-cut situations of acceptance can become more complicated.

Because in Susie we now have an actual character to voice the frustrations many players felt about being unable to 'save' Asriel and argue in favor of the desire to never abandon a friend, no matter how doomed or unimportant or lesser he claims he is.

Because now we can better demonstrate the more toxic and unhealthy manifestations of the idea of ‘moving on’. How it can be just as bad as clinging to the past relentlessly.

And allow more time on-screen to explore the nuanced alternatives that aren't either unhealthily clinging to the past or quietly accepting your own lousy fate.

And now we can create more situations where Susie’s instincts to reject acceptance and reject leaving anyone behind and reject ‘moving on’ are actually the unambiguously correct answers.

Not necessarily always, I do think she’ll have to accept that Gerson is dead. And obviously with this being DivorceRune the Divorce Game, the theme of needing to move on from clinging to a past that will never be restored just as you remember it is still very important.

But she has a point, and just like with Pacifism, I think she actually has an important lesson to teach Ralsei specifically.

[lunaticli8rarian]

there's an unending num8er of reasons why i think the idea "the player" is relevant in any way to the story of deltarune is just, wrong. and has a 8etter explan8tion. 8ut the most clear cut reason is uh. okay so let's assume "the player" is an ent8ty in and of itself, who is influencing kris to do things. and this is not just an interactive gamey story 8eing told where we take on a role to experience the story. "the player" is someone who is forcing kris to do things against their will. cool cool.

so what now? what narr8tively satisfying conclusion CAN the story reasona8le come to? what resolution can there 8e to this narr8tive 8eat that will 8e in any way good? even ignoring the question "how does this tie into the rest of the game in any way shape or form" how COULD it even end?

would "the player" just, stop playing the game? and assume everyone has a happy ending l8er and kris comes out of their shell of "the player"'s control? that sounds kind of lame and like to8y fox didn't want to think of an actual ending, and we all know deltarune STARTED with the ending.

would the solution 8e to just never address it, or have kris just come to accept the fact that for their entire existence they will 8e forced to 8e the puppet of some vague creature that wants to watch a story happen? and the actual "player" in question is just supposed to accept this. kris is our puppet the end don't think a8out it?

perhaps "the player" will simply respect kris as an individual more. which is kind of like the stays a puppet ending, 8ut i guess "the player" would just 8e more kind to kris as they continue to 8e on strings.

all of this reminding that your choices don't really matter in deltarune. well, don't matter aside from what if noelle remem8ers your snowgraves. 8ut y'know, that doesn't seem to solve our solutions. if anything might even make it worse.

this whole thing honestly reminds me of a post i saw at one point when the l8est chapters came out that went something along the lines of "it sounds like you have a deeply unhealthy rel8tionship with fiction."

[dreamweaver-357]

the usual assumption, when there is one, is that somehow the game is building towards making some kind of point about what it means to be a video game protagonist or how you cannot truly understand a character inside and out because you are not them. but most of the time it's very surface level "oh Gaster did it" or "oh maybe Kris needed us for some reason" or something like this.

trouble is, being a video game protagonist doesn't mean anything on its own. "protagonist" is a narrative role. "video game" is a format of media. they are conventions and frameworks that exist to tell stories, and interactive ones in the latter case. trying to deconstruct those leads to completely shattering the very medium by which a story is told, which leads to the entire mess meaning fucking nothing.

also. there has been absolutely zero mention of any entity beyond Deltarune's world so far. there have been somewhat meta moments that play with video game conventions, such as the player's controls and "tutorial characters" (Ralsei, mostly chapter 1), uses of the player's top-down perspective to sell jokes or raise questions (such as optional interactions in chapters 3 and 4), and an unconventional use of a dialogue box to better sell a highly tense moment (chapter 4 weird route), but at no point can it be 100% confirmed that any character has ever spoken to an entity beyond the Deltarune EXE file. all moments that anyone has ever used to "prove" this are inconclusive. weird for an RPG, but inconclusive nonetheless. we are 4 chapters in, just over halfway, and nothing conclusive about the player being involved? at this point any confirmation of said assumption would just feel like ripping away all of the story up until that point and saying it didn't matter.

and then it completely ignores Kris's character too. they're the only human in a town of monsters. they lost a dear friend to an already traumatic incident. they're a child of divorce. they live in their brother's shadow. could it not be extrapolated that they might deeply hate themself for being different, or for never being enough? could it not be inferred that they really don't like a lot of other people too, from how they're constantly Othered and treated like they're unpredictable and weird? do you remember how human and monster souls have a fundamental metaphysical difference that can't be changed, even if personalities develop the same way for both? have you noticed how they would rather be a monster (and maybe how many times they take on dog-like qualities for silly moments)? do you realize that they probably miss Dess more than almost anyone else and would probably do anything to get her back? are you really going to dismiss all of this in favor of an interpretation of Deltarune that reduces all of its complexity to a gray, boring, flat plane of thought that implies we are in the wrong for even booting the game?

there's so many layers to Deltarune and they're all so much more fascinating than this player-possession idea that so many take for granted. in fact i honestly believe this entire idea is only being propped up by this fandom's tendency to moralize the very act of interacting with fiction as a means to tell you what you should and should not enjoy. which is really sad when Deltarune, as a whole, is about the ways we interact with fiction (Dark Worlds) and just how rich our lives can become when we apply what we learn from fictional experiences to our real lives.

gotta love it here.

[lunaticli8rarian]

you know when i saw a huge wall of text in my notifs i thought i was gonna get a real yapper going off a8out how "actually it's super interesting and meta cuz chara undertale was grinding in rpgs and it made you feel 8ad"

so imagine my PURE delight seeing it's someone putting it just as good, if not 8etter than i could've myself.

[dreamweaver-357]

nah i'm yapping this much because this is an extremely personal subject to me. not merely because i relate to being terrified of what i want and how i feel, and struggling to accept my emotions and desires as part of me instead of some base impulse that needs to be overcome, but also because questioning the idea of Deltarune having a player metanarrative literally got me to start questioning other assumptions about my life. and all of a sudden this dark tunnel i've been trudging through seems a lot brighter at the end.

imagine if i got off my ass and finished this damn essay i've been writing about the whole topic. not merely tearing down the player-possession idea but proposing a narrative of extreme internal conflict and the consequences of children being neglected by all their caregivers in the wake of losing a loved one, and how grief can lead almost anyone down some horrifying and tragic paths under the right circumstances.

it may not end up being that grandiose. but Deltarune deserves stronger media literacy applied to it regardless. and i hope my words can help others start to see this game in a fresher, more beautiful light.

[lunaticli8rarian]

there's an unending num8er of reasons why i think the idea "the player" is relevant in any way to the story of deltarune is just, wrong. and has a 8etter explan8tion. 8ut the most clear cut reason is uh. okay so let's assume "the player" is an ent8ty in and of itself, who is influencing kris to do things. and this is not just an interactive gamey story 8eing told where we take on a role to experience the story. "the player" is someone who is forcing kris to do things against their will. cool cool.

so what now? what narr8tively satisfying conclusion CAN the story reasona8le come to? what resolution can there 8e to this narr8tive 8eat that will 8e in any way good? even ignoring the question "how does this tie into the rest of the game in any way shape or form" how COULD it even end?

would "the player" just, stop playing the game? and assume everyone has a happy ending l8er and kris comes out of their shell of "the player"'s control? that sounds kind of lame and like to8y fox didn't want to think of an actual ending, and we all know deltarune STARTED with the ending.

would the solution 8e to just never address it, or have kris just come to accept the fact that for their entire existence they will 8e forced to 8e the puppet of some vague creature that wants to watch a story happen? and the actual "player" in question is just supposed to accept this. kris is our puppet the end don't think a8out it?

perhaps "the player" will simply respect kris as an individual more. which is kind of like the stays a puppet ending, 8ut i guess "the player" would just 8e more kind to kris as they continue to 8e on strings.

all of this reminding that your choices don't really matter in deltarune. well, don't matter aside from what if noelle remem8ers your snowgraves. 8ut y'know, that doesn't seem to solve our solutions. if anything might even make it worse.

this whole thing honestly reminds me of a post i saw at one point when the l8est chapters came out that went something along the lines of "it sounds like you have a deeply unhealthy rel8tionship with fiction."

[dreamweaver-357]

the usual assumption, when there is one, is that somehow the game is building towards making some kind of point about what it means to be a video game protagonist or how you cannot truly understand a character inside and out because you are not them. but most of the time it's very surface level "oh Gaster did it" or "oh maybe Kris needed us for some reason" or something like this.

trouble is, being a video game protagonist doesn't mean anything on its own. "protagonist" is a narrative role. "video game" is a format of media. they are conventions and frameworks that exist to tell stories, and interactive ones in the latter case. trying to deconstruct those leads to completely shattering the very medium by which a story is told, which leads to the entire mess meaning fucking nothing.

also. there has been absolutely zero mention of any entity beyond Deltarune's world so far. there have been somewhat meta moments that play with video game conventions, such as the player's controls and "tutorial characters" (Ralsei, mostly chapter 1), uses of the player's top-down perspective to sell jokes or raise questions (such as optional interactions in chapters 3 and 4), and an unconventional use of a dialogue box to better sell a highly tense moment (chapter 4 weird route), but at no point can it be 100% confirmed that any character has ever spoken to an entity beyond the Deltarune EXE file. all moments that anyone has ever used to "prove" this are inconclusive. weird for an RPG, but inconclusive nonetheless. we are 4 chapters in, just over halfway, and nothing conclusive about the player being involved? at this point any confirmation of said assumption would just feel like ripping away all of the story up until that point and saying it didn't matter.

and then it completely ignores Kris's character too. they're the only human in a town of monsters. they lost a dear friend to an already traumatic incident. they're a child of divorce. they live in their brother's shadow. could it not be extrapolated that they might deeply hate themself for being different, or for never being enough? could it not be inferred that they really don't like a lot of other people too, from how they're constantly Othered and treated like they're unpredictable and weird? do you remember how human and monster souls have a fundamental metaphysical difference that can't be changed, even if personalities develop the same way for both? have you noticed how they would rather be a monster (and maybe how many times they take on dog-like qualities for silly moments)? do you realize that they probably miss Dess more than almost anyone else and would probably do anything to get her back? are you really going to dismiss all of this in favor of an interpretation of Deltarune that reduces all of its complexity to a gray, boring, flat plane of thought that implies we are in the wrong for even booting the game?

there's so many layers to Deltarune and they're all so much more fascinating than this player-possession idea that so many take for granted. in fact i honestly believe this entire idea is only being propped up by this fandom's tendency to moralize the very act of interacting with fiction as a means to tell you what you should and should not enjoy. which is really sad when Deltarune, as a whole, is about the ways we interact with fiction (Dark Worlds) and just how rich our lives can become when we apply what we learn from fictional experiences to our real lives.

gotta love it here.

[theculturedmarxist]

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

[monitor-offist-deactivated20250]

fastest reblog in the west

[dduane]

Yeppers. :)

[the-original-sineater]

reblogging for study later AND to spread the info.

[them-faetale]

Seriously, get and run PiHole if you can. It changes your internet experience so much for the better. I get shocked when I visit a website when I'm someone else's network, by just how many ads the internet is flooded with now. Take back control.

[opalescentfeather]

Deltarune Spoilers ahoy but here's my big brain theory 🧠 (I've only played 1/3rd or so of ch 4 as of rn)

dunno what everyone's thoughts are on deltarune bc I haven't been in any fandom spaces since I was 20 for tales of vesperia. I kinda get the sense the consensus is the opposite of my theory?? Bc my brother is tapped into the deltarune fandom n we autism abt it together

But

I feel like Kris' soul is the real Kris. and whoever throws them out of their body is NOT Kris. It's their unprocessed grief, rage, pain, trauma, lonliness, and sorrow that takes over. And the roaring knight is using that to control Kris

because. the whole thing w studying at Noelle's house? And they were talking to the dark knight on the phone?

That was a huge confirmation for me that wasn't Kris

Bc when Kris went into Dess's room to look for the shelter code? That obviously triggered a lot of grief in Kris. bc they grew up with her as a best friend. They probably haven't been in her room for a long time. Seeing the guitar pick probably unlocked a memory

And that grief and rage and pain and sorrow? that took over for a bit. because it's right after that they talk on the phone to the roaring knight

people are not their pain, trauma, anger, or sorrow. the heart is the seat of the soul in Egyptian Kemetic culture, and in many others. It's no coincidence that Kris' soul is heart shaped

Kris has been through a lot. adopted kid whose parents divorce, his brother being the gifted kid that gets community praise and then going off to college, very socially isolated, small religious town, best friend growing up died and nobody talks about it, and they don't seem to care much for their dad when he shows up (who repeatedly still crosses Toriel's boundaries. Irt coming in to ruin her and Sans flirting, and showing up after church with flowers after her and Rudy were catching up and rekindling)

It's genuinely understandable for them to be carrying so much that they haven't processed. They're like... what? 13 ffs!! in a small town that doesn't seem to have help for any of that

and with the roaring knight being Noelle's mom Carol, who is SUPER abusive and controlling... she most definitely uses that to her advantage to control and manipulate Kris. She already does for Kris' dad

And I think that they don't stay down for long, combined with the fact the deltarune is their family's symbol (why else would she want Toriel kidnapped? She can't control Kris, and Asgore is no longer in the family, even though he's still under her control) is why she wants to control Kris so bad

... I just put together that in Undertale, Asgore kills innocent kids for revenge bc of his unprocessed grief and trauma he takes out on other ppl. it takes over him, no matter how nice or pleasant he may seem. And that's why in deltarune, the physical manifestation of that is the enemy. Not Asgore. in deltarune the manifestation takes control of the mayor of the town. Somebody else in power over a group of people with their own immense unprocessed grief and pain (the loss of her child, December)

But anyway. Back to Kris

The way that their personality shines through when you pick an answer that is more akin to them, like the option to say "nah your drawing sucks Susie" when she asks how it is leads to more fun dialogue. because saying "yeah it's great!" would just be masking who Kris really is, somebody who canonically draws and doesn't give a gaf about what people think abt what they say

On Tenna's TV Time quiz that asks what Kris' fav food is, they cough when you don't choose butterscotch pie. Signaling "BITCH YOU BETTER NOT GET THIS WRONG I love my mommy's pie!!!" 😝

Why would somebody like that open a fountain of darkness in their own home when having a sleepover with their new best friend and mom, while they're sleeping? Kris wouldn't do that. They LOVE them

When Spamton NEO attacks Kris in the castle basement, Susie and Ralsei save them. Right after, their soul enters defend their friends mode. Just like in ch 1, when the trio were betrayed by Lancer's dad, and Kris jumped in to defend them. Kris LOVES their friends. They LOVE Susie and Ralsei. That time at the diner with Susie? When they ate the special together, got free ice cream, and goofed around? drawing with their breath and fingers in the window? THAT'S the real Kris

Love is what makes us who we are. Love is stored in the soul!!! Love is what feeds us, nourishes us, keeps us alive. Love is who we are, hope an extension of that. Hope is part of the prophecy, that the lightner's will bring it when all is thought to be lost. Because those that have the greatest and brightest light are those who have experienced the greatest darkness

[dreamweaver-357]

this is pretty damn close to what i've been thinking recently, though i have a bit of a different spin.

based on what we know of SOULs in Undertale, and how Ralsei describes it as being where their will and compassion resides, i think Kris's SOUL is their emotional core - the part of them that cares. that means their love and passion and hope, sure, but it also means their fear and grief and occasional hate.

the times they remove their SOUL are the times that they feel that grief and rage so strongly that it's unbearable. so overwhelming that all they wanna do is stop feeling anything for a moment. what better way to stop feeling than to sever yourself from the part that feels? and their instinctive self takes over when they do. they act selfishly, logically, coldly.

except, they don't really stop feeling. their SOUL still feels everything, just now it's separated from the body and mind. it does whatever feels right, does its best to make its way back to the body and seek out whatever it has been before. then when it rejoins, all of that emotion rushes back and they get overwhelmed again for just a moment.

alternatively, they take it out each time they're about to do something for the Knight - because they do not like whatever they've been roped into doing. and if it's too important to slack on, then just for a moment they need to not feel anything so they can stop hesitating and get it done. it hurts every time and they wish they had another option, but the Knight is holding something over their head. someone as free-spirited as Kris wouldn't be going along with such a destructive and dangerous idea as risking the Roaring if they could afford to refuse.

and we play as their SOUL, not the entirety of Kris, because we care too. what better way to illustrate just how conflicted and torn they are?

the fandom consensus is that this isn't really Kris's SOUL, it either belongs to some other entity that we play as or it's Literally Ours - but c'mon. the things the SOUL can choose are far too opinionated and specific to come from some generic player. if they were actually possessed they'd be freaking out and desperately trying to tell someone, and even if it was part of some plan what other entity could possibly know them so well as to consistently fake being Kris so well as to fool their mother?

someday i'm going to make my own post about this, but i need to gather a lot of evidence first, and it'll take a while to write. for now, just know you're not alone in thinking this sort of thing, and i think it will pay off in a massive way later in the game.

[farawayfarleyfan]

ROOTS PHRASE

anyone figure out the rearrangement yet? it feels like its so close

the ones ive thought of so far:

Lost children followed where the forest would grow, the pointed tail. [the]

Lost children pointed where the forest would grow, the followed tail. [the]

Lost forest followed the children where the pointed would grow, the tail.

[dreamweaver-357]

Lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail.

[eccentricecologist]

I'm very impressed by many of Deltarune fans' ability to consistently fall for red herrings and never ever learn from those mistakes.

So many people theorizing about how Mike was gonna be the Shadow Crystal holder of chapter 3 and turning out to be very wrong, you would think some of them would at least wait before jumping to conclusions about Carol Holiday's villain status based on like three minutes of screentime where essentially everything she says is only sinister (beyond the bad parenting, I mean) if you're already suspicious of her, but nope, they're already talking like the Roaring Knight turned to the camera and said they were her.

[dreamweaver-357]

the situation with Carol is very very different than with Mike. until a week ago all we knew about Mike was that he was someone Spamton had had contact with before his fall, and not even the Sweepstakes cleared that up - that event just revealed the existence of Tenna. all sorts of crazy theories were bound to happen and not many, if any, could have had any weight. the closest anyone got was a theory that the secret boss of each chapter would in some way mention the main boss of the next chapter, since Jevil did that with the Queen, and as it happened Tenna did in fact become (a) major antagonist in chapter 3! and then Mike turned out to not even appear on-screen, and possibly not exist at all.

but we actually SAW Carol and heard her speak, in a context that i can only describe as concerning.

her actual dialogue doesn't tell us much. it boils down to three things:

1) she is understandably protective of Dess's possessions. this is her missing/possibly dead daughter we're talking about, i think anyone could get this way.

2) she is authoritarian even with her own family (which was kinda implied with Rudy's dialogue already) and has no problem forcibly dissolving friendships if she deems it necessary.

3) her relationship with Kris seems to go beyond "child of friends of the family," as she places a very striking emphasis on "YOU" in her last line.

the first two points are understandable, and the third is a bit too vague to examine at this moment. (ADDENDUM: for the authoritarianism specifically, it is not surprising that someone in her position would adopt this mindset; she has lost her eldest daughter and is likely trying to prevent the loss of her other daughter.) it is the events that lead up to her introduction that tell us that there is something more sinister going on.

up until this moment, Kris has been trying to prevent us or anyone else from seeing the guitar. they specifically pull their SOUL out of their chest just before we finish reading the code written on it. we then eavesdrop on a phone call they make, speaking with someone who is discussing events such as the Dark Worlds in a context only the Fun Gang and the Roaring Knight could possibly know about. and the caller is making a very disturbing sound effect too! since Susie is with Noelle and exactly zero Darkners are capable of communication in the Light World, it MUST be the Knight or some ally of theirs on the other end of this call.

then more shenanigans happen and Susie gets hold of the guitar. and what does Kris do? pull out their phone again and make another call, informing the other person that Susie has the guitar. then the exact same sound effect from before plays as the speaker says they'll be right there. not two minutes later, Carol Holiday walks in the door, and for most of the ensuing scene, the highly disturbing song "C" plays, which consists of what sounds like a raspy breath with echo effects and pitch modulation applied to it. and weirdly enough she has a top-heavy triangular body shape, really spiky horns compared to the rest of her family, at least two separate katanas in her home, and a strong association with winter and the cold overall - moreso than with Noelle or Rudy, who are both more about Christmas specifically. all traits that the Roaring Knight happens to have.

all of this is very clearly implying that Carol is either an ally of the Roaring Knight, or outright IS the Roaring Knight.

the only way that is NOT what the scene implies is if we are supposed to believe that the identical sound effect in both calls does NOT indicate that the speaker is the same. which i find very difficult to believe. is it supposed to be the sound a call makes then? can't be, because Kris takes a few other calls outside this scene and all of them just use the speaker's normal soundbite. is it supposed to be representative of the tension of the scene? that's a weird method of symbolism, and i think the dialogue itself alongside the surrounding events provide plenty of tension already.

Carol Holiday is being set up as a major antagonist for Deltarune overall. whether or not she is the Knight, she is the only Lightner so far to be this hostile and cold towards anyone, and the way she is discussed by the other residents of Hometown ranges from reverence to fear to outright dislike. for once, this is not a fandom hallucination; the signs are there and we would be fools to ignore them.

[brocks-spare-drying-pan]

[flagellant]

kill the shift manager in your brain

[flagellant]

you are not wasting time you are vibing. you are not being unproductive you are literally chilling. make a grill cheese with cheddar cheese and slather a piece of the bread with some honey and maybe you'll relax

[flagellant]

Innes Keeper's Formula For Fantastic Grilled Cheeses (for nearly no extra spoons!)

Are you hungry? Do you have a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches like, way more than a normal person maybe? Great news! I am about to give you the secret knowledge I stole, like Prometheus himself, from the Akashic Records—to bring back to Prudencia! And I’m even doing it without a ten hour long lecture about how the Akashic Records makes me think of idfk, 9/11, and how that relates to sandwiches.

I will, however, briefly say this: You gotta trust me when I say cooking grilled cheeses via this formula WILL grant you Bloodborne Insight. There is no fucking reason that making a grilled cheese this fucking delicious should be this fucking easy. I feel like I’m cheating God every time I do it because it takes (nearly) no extra spoons. And here’s where I show you why.

Scientifically Proven Perfect Extremely Easy Grilled Cheese

INGREDIENTS — SEASONINGS -butter, i usually use 2 or 3 tablespoons per sandwich -garlic cloves, I use 3 usually -a source of heat, like red pepper flakes, or szechuan peppers -a source of spice OR a source of sweetness, such as dijon mustard or honey. slather that motherfucker on a slice of your bread. -a source of herbiness, such as oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc in any combination that goes well together or on its own. if someone tries to tell you that you need it fresh, they’re fucking lying, the 2$ crushed powdered sage is fucking great. experiment with other spices such as ground turmeric if you're spicy

INGREDIENTS - THE METAPHORICAL MEAT OF THE SANDWICH -two slices of bread per sandwich. this is actually a massive influence on your sandwich taste and texture as a whole. a basic white or wheat will still be fucking delicious because like I said, I stole this from the Akashic Records cookbook section and found it under “fucking perfect grilled cheeses forever”. However, if you CAN—getting bread like brioche, texas toast, brown bread, rye, or sourdough will make a sandwich already being elevated super easily to “pay 23 dollars at a fancy restaurant” level of elevation.

-one to three types of cheese per sandwich. you can get away with one type but really try for two or three if you can swing it. this is also one of those massive influences over the sandwich—listen, i know, that’s obvious, but stay with me—what matters isn’t the SPECIES of cheese, it’s the TYPE of cheese. getting the deli at your local Safeway or Walmart or whatever and asking for the cheese they gotta cut (or just in general the fancier, better-quality cheeses) is literally the only major requirement that I ask of you. If you are on SNAP/EBT programs, me too, and I promise you: Please do this. Please trust me when I say do not get the cheap Kraft-type cheese because it’s less money. I know it’s a bit extra but it’s only a bit to get like 1/4 or 1/3lb and you have no idea how much I’m actually getting a little emotional about this, because the “rice with butter and beans or top ramen every single day” life is soulsucking and sickening and it is genuinely one of the greatest sources of suffering to human beings I can imagine, I’m serious. Following this formula will genuinely change your life/mental health just a bit because you know that you have one meal that is super delicious, super filling, pretty damn cheap when it comes to how much you get, and super easy to make on days where the idea of doing more than just 15 minutes MAX is gonna make you wanna die.

super sorry for that paragraph btw i just really cannot overstate how this is a lifechanger especially when youre poor/low spoons/depressed. delicious food makes me not be as depressed. this is that.

METHOD

Take garlic cloves and crush them either with the meat of your palm or the flat of a knife or literally anything that would crush good. Take bread slices and put a source of spice or sweetness if you are using one. take a pan and put it on the stove on low-medium heat (aka a 2 out of 10).

Place the butter in the pan, as well as the garlic cloves, the source of heat, and the source of herbiness. Congratulations you have now literally done ALL the extra effort that you need to make a grilled cheese like this. That’s it. No extra dishes. No fussing with amounts or chopping or whatever. That’s it.

The butter will melt in the pan and soak up the delicious ingredients that you also put into the pan. Take each slice of bread and place it in the pan to butter it, OR just take one slice, place the cheese on it, and then put the other bread on. It’s really just a matter of extra effort.

When the bread is in the pan, turn it up to medium heat (5 out of 10) and just sorta let it sit for a bit. When you can see the cheese start to get visibly melty—or when you vibecheck it—flip it once and just do the same thing.

When you’ve grilled your cheese on both sides, take it out of the pan and put it on a plate (or just a paper towel to save on dish spoons. btw paper plates and plastic utensils are a fucking godsend if you hate dishes and/or can’t do them very easily/takes a lot of effort.)

That’s literally it. I really hope this helps.

[palisadewasp]

outta my way gayboy im making this sandwich

[palisadewasp]

oh. oh my god. holy fuck. what. how. why. this is delicious. i kinda burned my bread and my cheese didnt melt all the way but it's still the best thing ive ever tasted?????

[tiredshadowscale]

oh my god. this is so fucking good. the butter melting and absorbing the spices and herbs already smelled amazing, but then i threw the bread on and it started smelling EVEN BETTER. then i took a bite. holy FUCK this is better than sex. i legitimately believe that Innes Keeper stole this shit from Prometheus, there's no other way to explain why this is so easy to make, yet so FUCKING good, other than cheating a god.

[flagellant]

I didn't steal it from Prometheus he's my trophy husband!

[hyacinthsword]

ok me and my partner went back and made this. exact words upon eating were “we’ve cheated god” and “i feel like my world just got rocked” and then we were both energized to get back to drawing. proof:

please make innes keeper’s scientifically proven perfect extremely easy grilled cheese

[flagellant]

I'M PUTTING THIS ON THE FRIDGE (WHERE I KEEP ALL MY CHEESE)

[lexidius]

Fuck it I'm gonna make the infamous inneskeeper grilled cheese, I'm suspicious of the honey part working but fuck it let's see what happens

[lexidius]

i want this sandwich to impregnate me

[kimberlyeab]

Hey,

i really wanted to avoid having to engage with this petty fandom bullshit publicly but i've had a serial harasser known as @snowcollecter/@brieffamilycat/@krispy-chicken-shipping/@bonniehbunny who until this point has been slandering me within Deltarune circles. i've tried not to engage with it but today they've escalated to targeting my business email with a bombardment of false sign-up emails.

idk what to really achieve with this post but i want you to know this is the degree of harassment that i'm now facing. You'd think that people would be a lil hesitant to engage with this sort of shit after what happened to Predstrogen but here we are. If you get an anon ask slandering my character, please know these are the tactics being used to try and remove me from the fandom.

[imptwins]

Over twelve months of:

calling for brigades against us, and at least 4 other people

block dodging to constantly screenshot and reference our posts

literal libel by accusing us of grooming a child despite screenshots, as well as both statements and direct requests to stop by both the supposed groomed child and their actual friends who witnessed all interactions we had

spamming anon asks to literally every single person that they can find who we ever interact with

using tiktok cen)sor)ship nonsense to get past peoples' blacklists and force this stuff in front of them

using no less than 3 confirmed alts with about 5 more extremely suspicious accounts in attempts to artificially broadcast themself and again evade blocks (when the original account itself is transparently an alt too)

joining multiple random discords to try to shove this stuff in peoples' faces

now spamming Kim's business email at signup services

probably being behind the attempts to doxx and raid us last year on a certain hate-monger website, since the signup spam demonstrates they're cool with bog standard channer troll tactics

They also pretty tellingly refused to even talk to this minor we supposedly groomed, who attempted to tell them personally that we hadn't done the shit they claim we did. You'd think someone who is this caught up about the safety of minors in fandom spaces would jump at the chance to help this kid, to tell them not to talk to us and get them away from us, to convince them to stay away? No, they said 'I don't talk to minors' (this is demonstrably untrue: their discord accounts are in many all-ages spaces) and immediately blocked them.

Of course. Because this was never about the safety of minors. Flip a coin; if it's heads, they're a far-right sock puppet who just knows they can use the 'think of the children' angle to drive a wedge into queer communities. If it's tails, they're just a routine runt who's projecting their lack of ability to do anything about the ACTUAL assholes of this world onto other queer people, wailing and flailing and doing anything they can to have some influence despite getting 3 notes on almost everything they ever post. Hence the anon asks, and Discord spam, and blacklist/block evading. If they can't have a platform - because anyone who looks at their garbage for more than a month at most sees how absolutely deranged they are - they'll just force people to see it.

Do they ever attack actual transphobes, which this fandom is not at all short on? Well, sort of! They did one or two callout posts about a TERF who used to run in these spaces... But didn't say anything about the TERF shit. Just the porn. The porn constantly put behind age confirmations and thorough tags/content warnings. This person spouted generic 'all-powerful trans lobby' 'social contagion' 'please look at this study about desistance I found on a hard-right website' bullshit, but no, it was them drawing aged-up highschoolers (REMINDER: NOT EVEN CANONICALLY UNDERAGE, JUST VAGUE HIGHSCHOOLERS, *AND* THEY WERE EXPLICITLY OLDER IN THEIR CONTENT!) that was apparently the greater evil.

I'm not even really sharing this to call them specifically out or draw attention to them. Regardless of whether they're a chud in a mask or just someone who severely, *severely* needs psychological help about their obsession, they're not going to stop. They've made that plainly obvious. At this point I've basically just accepted I'm going to have this deranged stalker until I leave the fandom, which I don't plan to do anytime soon so buckle up I guess.

No, I just want people to see what these people are like. How they ignore the people they claim are victims. How they employ the same tactics as doxxing websites and old channer trolls, or even outright enlist them. How they only EVER put sustained effort into taking down queer people with small platforms because going after the in-plain-sight actual bigots and scumbags would just be too much effort, a reflection of how this is about feeling righteous and powerful, not actually making the world better. They create nothing, they contribute nothing, they bring nothing but arguing and drama and isolation to the spaces they inhabit.

These kind of people are blights on the fandoms they cling to. And any time you act like their *miserable* Hays Code, Jack Thompson With A Rainbow Flag, no kink at pride, BDSM is abuse, drag queens are indecent, cover those ankles *garbage* warrants any notice at all, you deal another blow to the fandom you are in, because nobody wants to be around these little goddamn nightmares.

[staff]

A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

[dreamweaver-357]

RESTORE ALL THE ACCOUNTS THAT HAVE BEEN AND CONTINUE TO BE BANNED FOR MERELY BEING TRANSGENDER.

MAYBE THEN WE'LL BELIEVE YOU.