#deltarune analysis

[tmblr-sexy-garbage-man]

Alright, Chapter 5 is barely 24 hours old, so I apologize if these takes turn out to be lukewarm or obvious in hindsight, but I need to throw this out there or I'm gonna explode.

I wanna talk about Flowery.

Everyone fucking hates Flowery. Why?

Everyone is comparing his reveal to Tenna's, but those circumstances could not be more different in terms of narrative. Tenna is, from the jump, supposed to be light-hearted and fun. He is the personification of the Fun Gang letting loose and having a good time. This is what makes his eventual reveal that he's working with the Knight into an actual betrayal. If we didn't trust Tenna, that moment wouldn't work.

With Flowery, the vibes are rancid from the moment he's revealed. He's charming and charismatic, but something is off. Not to mention that Ralsei absolutely despises him.

So, why make Flowery unlikable? What's the point?

Well, the point is that Flowery is the exact opposite of Tenna.

With Tenna, we like him, but he's wrong.

With Flowery, we hate him, but he's right.

Everything that Flowery does to Asgore is an exact mirror to what Ralsei did with Kris and Susie at the beginning of the game. In fact, the entire chapter is a complete mirror of Chapter 1's dark world!

Flowery gives Asgore a home, gives him friends, tells him that he's special. And yet, we spend the entire chapter trying to get Asgore out of that situation, with the understanding that it's dangerous.

But what about it is dangerous? The denial of reality? Because Susie is now living in a dark world. The exact thing that Asgore gave an entire heartwarming speech about not doing.

When Flowery tells us that we could close Castle Town instead of his dark world and we would be no closer to the Roaring, we hate him because he's right. When he says that all the flowers want is to live and a chance to make Asgore as happy as he's made them, we hate him because he's right.

And, at the end of the chapter, he tries to defeat us with the power of friendship. The other flowers never turn on him. He uses a mercy attack against us, and Kris responds by hitting him with a sword.

Y'all, were supposed to hate Flowery. And we're supposed to feel uncomfortable about why we do.

[twilightofthesandwiches]

What's really evocative to me in all the new revelations and hints about Kris' true nature and intentions in Chapter 4 is the impression that... Kris is never free.

When they are free of our direct control, they are still not acting 100% of their real desires, they are following the orders of some evil Voice(s?) on the phone.

The ending seem to imply some sort of emotional conflict between them wanting to help out Susie, who is very dear to their heart, and following this plan which is probably not beneficial to her. A plan that they have to follow cause...

When Kris is not controlled by our very literal puppet-strings, they are instead controlled by the coercion and emotional manipulation of their mysterious benefactor. No matter which option they go with, Kris just cannot be free.

[the-irreverend]

AAAAAAAHHHHHHH watching Kris flee out of the room when they find out we're with them KILLS ME every damn time, and perhaps the detail that hurts the most is how their expression changes and how that adds a new understanding to how Kris sees us.

The moment they realize they and Noelle are in terrible danger, the netrual, reserved expression we're so used to seeing from them changes into one of ABSOLUTE TERROR as they flee out of the room; terror which I firmly believe is rooted in the psychological, emotional, and physical trauma we have caused them and Noelle.

The things we made them do in the Snowgrave/Weird Route made them realize just how much harm we're capable of causing them and the people they care about, and how great our capacity for evil truly is. They already resent us for depriving them of their agency, and now that they've endured us abusing said agency in the worst possible way, their hatred and fear of us has increased a thousandfold.

Deltarune isn't some cute little otherworldly adventure; it's a goddam cosmic horror story, except the twist is we're the eldritch being that brings ruin and madness wherever we go.

[kraftitain]

This guy just fuckin cracked the code

like dude just look at this shit

LIKE BRO????????

og post.

also the comments have some great points too, like someone suggested the locked classroom to the left of the supply closet may be a music room

[eggrooms]

i've connected the dots if anyone cares

[xjackjackx]

Ramb is the funniest Toby Fox character of all time actually. This random reskin of a Chapter 2 NPC shows up out of nowhere with zero foreshadowing and acts like he's actually known literally every single major Darkner from the previous chapters drops the words "chaos" "big shot" and "freedom" three sentences away from each other like he was in a "i remember youre genocides" meme except fully unironically says he's gonna show Kris "some REAL fun" and give them Freedom only to traumatize them with an evil ass zelda knockoff that railroads them into killing people and John Mantle and then has the fucking gull to die on you no boss fight no crystal no resolution no nothing before being spirited away by god knows what. if you don't pursue his evil ass sidequest he gets off-screened and some hater talks about how he sucked ass and nobody loved him right next to his own fucking corpse. kris and susie don't even take him to castle town they actually just leave him to die. he helps your gay uncle imprison your mom in a hampster ball. he's british and he lives in boston.

[softichill]

A big part of Noelle being attracted to Susie is, like I've already said once, a sort of "you're everything I don't have" kind of deal. But in light of chapter 4 I think part of it is also letting yourself move on to new experiences

A lot of the Holidays as a whole seem practically frozen in time. Their house is always decorated for christmas. Paper snowflakes are bronzed and kept safe at home so they could never be lost or harmed. The missing eldest child's room is kept exactly as she left it, all these years later. Everything is the same; Noelle has always gone to school with the same people, in the same town, everything is the same. Don't acknowledge what's different; it's painful.

And then in comes this new girl who seems to change the atmosphere of a room with her very presence. People don't give her the time of day. She's rough, she's rude, she eats weird things, she kicked a ball into Undyne's car window. Sure, Catti is dark and standoffish, and Kris is a quiet weirdo who likes to pull pranks on people, but they have rapport. Kris is a Dreemurr, and people like the Dreemurrs. People like the Cattenheimers. They're established as part of the community. Susie? She's an outsider who couldn't get along with people and now might as well be kept out by the entire town, minus a few kind souls.

Point is, she's new and that's scary. And to Noelle, there's something alluring about that. And when she learns more about her-- the movies she watches, the games she plays, what she does for other people, it only draws her further in. How could anyone hate her? She's new, and she's wonderful. Talking to her feels so natural after getting over that initial fear. Over that common belief that Susie should be avoided.

The biggest example of this is their conversation in Dess's room. A room that's been untouched for years, out of... respect? Hope, that one day she might reappear? Refusal to acknowledge that she's gone? Whatever it is, it's been made very clear over time that her room is NOT to be disturbed. And Susie, knowing none of this, barges in and sits at the foot of Dess's still-messy bed, inviting Noelle to sit with her. Clearly this is breaking a rule of some kind, but Noelle decides that maybe, there can be some new memories made in this room.

Maybe some new memories made with that guitar she misses hearing.

Idk. I have no idea how well this is articulated. I like suselle

[localcoffeeshop]

couldn't find a comprehensive list anywhere of susie struggling with spelling and reading, so in the name of appreciating what toby fox is trying to say, here is my best attempt. dialogue with spelling errors is almost always from susie specifically and in chapter 1 ralsei corrects her, implying that we're supposed to interpret those as intentional misspellings on toby's part.

this is further made obvious by the fact that in the holiday newsletter 2024 toby mentions that testers also point out spelling errors, and sometimes those spelling errors are on purpose (in this case it's in a Funny Way) - so we should assume it's not an oversight when "typos" like these get left in.

a couple other things i didn't include:

susie's s-action against bibliox is "susie attempted to read" and does only 15% mercy (compared to 100% on proofreads and 30% for r-action) - it was probably supposed to be a longer interaction because on the text dump site it continues on to say she fell asleep because there weren't any pictures, but the redundancy and futility of this action as a whole is probably the reason i haven't been able to trigger it in game.

when susie looks at Lord of the Hammer in chapter 2, she'll say to kris "Heh, can't believe you read things with, uh... words."

in chapter 2 dark world susie writes ralsei's name phonetically as "ralsay," which doesn't really count as an "error" to me because there's no way for her to really know it's not spelt like that to begin with. but it is another example of toby fox showing us susie spelling things out phonetically

if i missed anything else let me know

this post is not meant to look down on susie, struggling with her spelling does not undermine her intelligence and her strengths! gerson says "Long as you got the point, the words don't matter" for a reason. i wanted to just have this all in one place for how i feel it informs susie's character — her relationship to school, society, and the story overall, and even, i think, to characters like noelle and berdly, whose entire history revolves around a spelling bee and the misbegotten search for praise for "being smart" because you can spell when it's not actually indicative of intelligence, or more importantly, integrity.