Deltarune is full of siblings haunting the narrative and how that affects who’s left.
Obviously there’s Dess. The void left behind by her is a gaping chasm that no one in her family (the holidays AND dreemurrs) have been able to recover from. Dess’s disappearance broke her mother and crystallized her trauma into extreme control and emotional coldness. Noelle felt like she had no one in her corner to protect and uplift her—not only was rebellious Dess gone, but Rudy was sick as well. Noelle misses Dess greatly, associating her sister with her hopes and dreams for the future, feeling like both are out of her reach. How can Noelle even look towards the future when Dess promised to be there with her?
Without Dess, Noelle is even more isolated and trapped, meek and unconfident from her learned helplessness.
Asriel is at college. It feels like everyone is holding their breath waiting for him to come back. With the way Asgore talks about getting the family back together, it almost seems as though folks think things will fall back into place, will be normal or happy or easier, with his return. That things will be “right” again. Kris is constantly reminded of his absence, not only with objects they’re surrounded by (his half of the room), but by people bringing him up to them. People talk about Asriel. They miss him. They don’t talk about Dess.
Without Asriel, Kris, too, is alone. Toriel tries, but she’s too passive and permissive, allowing Kris to get way over their head with the knight and sneaking out. Asgore is useless with his fixation on winning back Toriel. Without Dess or Asriel, who does Kris even have to go to for advice and guidance? Who do they feel they can rely on and talk to?
But unlike Dess, Asriel isn’t out of reach. Kris even tried looking up when his vacations were to see when he’d come home. Azzy’s out living his own life….who’s to say he even wants to come back the way everyone else wants him to? Who’s to say he doesn’t want a room of his own?
And, of course, while it’s portrayed as a joke: papyrus doesn’t show up in deltarune. He’s mentioned and referenced in similar way to Asriel. We know he’s there, alive, and doing something, we just can’t see what. I think this is very interesting considering Papyrus’s backstory in UT; he was shy until Flowey began building his confidence. Functionally, papyrus is still shy because Asriel is alive and well and not a manipulative flower.
But meta-wise, papyrus’s absence has HUGE effects on sans’s character. Sans and papyrus were designed as a duo; they complement and balance each other, with sans playing the deadpan straight man to papyrus’s exuberance. Without papyrus, two main things occur:
1) sans needs a new target for his pranks. While he does joke with frisk in Undertale, the majority of his more annoying bits are targeted at his brother (ex: the sock thing, “what’s in front of the rock”). Without papyrus, those jokes end up messing with Kris and Susie. Instead of playing jokes on his brother, he’s messing with some random teenagers, which isn’t as endearing.
2) without papyrus, sans comes off as MUCH less sincere. Even before we find out about the Toriel thing, sans’s negative traits (laziness, contrarian for fun, annoying on purpose, etc) are mellowed out by how much he obviously cares for his brother. The second papyrus walks away, sans is talking about how cool he is and referencing how much he’s humoring papyrus’s antics out of love. Without that, we’re JUST left with sans’s jokes and contrarian nature. He comes off as so much more frustrating in DR, because of how much he’s changed when not in the context of his brother
So it makes me think: how much more confident and playful is Noelle with Dess? How much more carefree and happy is Kris with Asriel? We see the places where these people aren’t, but we don’t see how everything changes to follow when they’re around. Definitely curious to see where they’ll go with Asriel
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