#deltarune analysis

[thesnoringknight]

the basic idea that the dark worlds are escapism and the light world is reality fails under the weight of the light world and lightners' complete and continuous repression of their problems and dealing with them as well as the reality that events in the dark have long term, lasting consequences in the light btw

no fountains = everyone lives in a world where they repress all their issues all the time forever

[tmblr-sexy-garbage-man]

something i noticed about flowery; hes the only chapter boss thus far to actually have eyes. sure, theyre closed most of the chapter but they are there.

Ooo this is an interesting idea! I didn't notice this!

It could also be implied that his eyes are the more darknerish part about him since they are the only part of his dialogue sprite that is in color, when usually colorful dialogue sprites are exclusively for darkners and the lightners are in monochrome. His being a mix of the two shows his unique status as both lightner and darkner!

Maybe that's why he keeps them closed? He seems to know a lot about how the game functions, so I wouldn't be surprised...

[milesedgy]

Susie, the player, and escapism: a Deltatune analysis/theory

I don't usually post fan theories or anything like that, so this is my first time sharing a theory...

I wrote a character analysis for Susie, and I have a theory that she's meant to represent someone who's so invested in a game that she fell into it and is now trapped.

As of Chapter 5 we got an even bigger sense of the Light World being a game, and some characters becoming aware of it. In this analysis I explore what Susie's role could be, as well as the themes of escapism that the story is hinting at with her.

(Needless to say, this analysis contains spoilers up to Chapter 5, for both normal and weird routes. It will also focus primarily on Susie.)

Read it on my Neocities page:

[sbtorms]

something i find so funny is when certain parts of the Undertale/Deltarune fandom so desperately roll to try to find a flawed character that's irredeemably, inexcusably, inexplicably evil

Flowey, Chara, Gaster, in Undertale as well as Asgore, Alphys, Undyne at times Toriel in Deltarune for a bit because of Chapter 4 and calling her a bad parent and. of course, more Deltarune with more Gaster, Carol, and FRIEND…

this isn't exclusive to Undertale and Deltarune, but it's still a very interesting situation

[justa-side-blog]

New Deltarune/Undertale hot take:

Toby Fox has lots of strengths; but he's not good at writing (healthy) romantic relationships. Also, before you read, please keep in mind that I am a lesbian. I want to see well-written wlw ships in media, just as much as you do. However, I also believe that any piece of media should be viewed critically.

Undertale

• Toby's romance weakness affected Alphys' character + her arc in Undertale. Alphys' arc is pretty serious, exploring themes of guilt, accountability, suicide and mistakes you cannot undo. Her arc is best written in the neutral routes, particularly the endings that imply she lost the battle against her guilt without Undyne to support her. However, in the pacifist route, the conclusion to Alphys' arc is mishandled, and taints the community's view of Alphys. Frisk discovers the amalgamates in the true lab, and then the tone of the scene shifts to become overly sweet. Instead of the scene being about accountability and having to face your biggest mistake, Alphys talks about how she needed to 'believe in herself' and love herself like her friends do (and how Undyne loves her). This speech clashes in tone and turns Alphys' arc from 'stop running away' to 'love yourself'. Now, 'love yourself' isn't a bad message, but it doesn't fit the context here. The amalgamates have been living in the dark for years, and instead of the scene focusing on that, Alphys is making the situation about her. This puts the amalgamates and their family into the background and essentially turns them into set pieces for Alphys' monologue.

After the botched monologue, we never hear about the amalgamates again (save for a reference at the very end) and we instead need to set Undyne and Alphys up. Again, nothing wrong with the Alphys/Undyne ship; I think it's better written than Noelle/Susie. But the timing is inappropriate. Alphys has only just started to make amends and look to the future. The fact that Alphys is a nerd and needs to accept herself/her nerdy habits is not really the point here. Alphys didn't fall into depression because she's a nerd and everyone thinks she's lame. She fell into depression because she made a grave error (and Asgore, and the institution) and she struggles to live with the horrific consequences. Pivoting all this to self-love and romance continues the old rom-com fallacy that all someone needs to 'heal' is a romance that will 'save' them. I've never heard anyone make this point yet, but I think Mettaton should've played a bigger part in Alphys' arc. He represents the best parts of Alphys; her kindness, and how she uses her talent to help others achieve their dreams. If anything, Mettaton, not Undyne, was the person best positioned to 'save' Alphys. I'm not sure how you'd rewrite the Undyne/Alphys ship in this context, but I'm sure you could make it work.

EDIT: I misremembered the order of events a bit here. It's actually Alphys + Undyne's date and THEN the True Lab. Nonetheless, I think my points still stand. The pacing of Alphys' arc is still bad, and her date with Undyne doesn't really complement the True Lab scenes very well. With how muddled it got in my head, it only seems to reinforce how it feels like Alphys' arc got split into 2 tonally dissonant stories ('love yourself arc' vs 'you can only forgive yourself when you make amends'). The amalgamates and their families are still an afterthought after the True Lab, and Undyne's romance with Alphys doesn't really interact with those themes. Thinking about it, I wish we got Undyne's reaction to the amalgamates. What would've been really great is it Alphys confessed to Undyne that she 'shouldn't' love her because she 'doesnt know' Alphys or 'what she's done'. Then Undyne's love is tested and they overcome the horror of the amalgamates situation because Undyne is still here. Knowing Alphys at her very worst hasn't scared Undyne away, and she doesn't condemn Alphys. Instead she supports her and Alphys takes initiative and makes amends.

• One of my favourite ships in Undertale (not in Deltarune) is Sans and Toriel. They're the only healthy romantic couple where their dynamic is very natural and well-written. It's not romanticised like the Undyne/Alphys ship. With what we learn from the neutral routes, we know that Sans joins Toriel as Queen not because he cares about politics and the Underground; he does it out of a pure, sentimental sense of love and loyalty. It's very morally grey. When monster-human relations are good, Toriel is a competent leader. But when monster-human relations are bad, Toriel is out of touch with her people, and she's not able to bridge that gap. Toriel and Sans' relationship in this sense is complex. Sometimes, they are more codependent. They enable each other. In some neutral routes, you get the sense that Sans is keeping Toriel in the dark and 'protecting her', which is not ideal. Toriel does not need to be coddled, and Sans' tendency to hide from people only ensures that he remains stagnant and miserable. But in other timelines, Toriel and Sans are very good for each other. Sans helps Toriel to stay in touch with the world because he's able to communicate with her without casting judgement, or making her feel defensive. Likewise, Toriel uplifts Sans and makes him feel seen. While it's good that Sans cares for Papyrus, it's not healthy for him to make Papyrus his entire world.

Deltarune

• My favourite (and only) ship in Deltarune is Spamton and Tenna. I think Tenna got the short end of the stick in terms of his character arc - Chapter 3 is poorly paced and optimised, and we should've learnt a lot more about Tenna, his employees, the 3 Mikes, and the person Tenna was making a 'deal' with. Luckily, there are plenty of Deltarune fans that are able to flesh Tenna + TV World out in fanfiction, although it is a shame that Tenna doesn't get enough spotlight in his own chapter. Regardless, I think the subtext of the Spamton/Tenna ship is well written. When the romantic arc is tragic, Toby Fox has no trouble writing a compelling story. Both Spamton and Tenna come across as flawed, complex people, and they are similar in that their pride led them to trust untrustworthy people. I don't have time to analyse the Spamtenna ship, but I'm sure there's lots of good posts out there explaining why their relationship is compelling.

• I really wanted to like the Susie/Noelle ship, but to me, it just isn't very compelling. They're teenagers - I'll admit, that's a bit of a roadblock for me. I've never been super invested in coming-of-age stories. So when reading, keep my bias in mind. Noelle and Susie come from very different backgrounds - some fans have already pointed out the missed potential here. There should be points of conflict; how much does Noelle really *know* about the world, considering she's rich, sheltered, and has a controlling mother? How does Susie imagine her future, and how does she imagine herself next to Noelle? Does Susie want some kind of career, or is she more of an anarchist? How do they both feel about their current society? What do they agree on, where do they clash?

Unfortunately, we don't really know the answers to any of those questions. Some Suselle fans go into a great amount of detail, but personally, I think they're doing all the hard work of writing and then crediting *their* thoughts to Toby Fox. But Toby hasn't laid any of that groundwork himself. There was a little nugget of intrigue with Noelle's love of horror established in Chapter 2 (the best chapter imo) but that hasn't been expanded on since. Every Susie/Noelle scene after Chapter 2 is roughly the same scene. Noelle gushes about Susie and looks up to her; Susie is bashful and not used to the positive attention. Again, there is *something* there - Noelle likes the 'idea' of Susie and her 'scariness'. Would she be disappointed if Susie wasn't 'scary' anymore There's more potential for conflict because in the past, Noelle saw Susie bullying her friend Kris and did nothing about it. She even wishes that Susie would bully her. But these shades of grey and threads of conflict are not expanded on. These flaws are forgotten by the larger narrative. There isn't much to say about Susie because her dynamic with Noelle is pretty new. Susie's relationship with Noelle doesn't really bring out any interesting sides to her.

To put it bluntly, I find the Susie/Noelle scenes quite boring and repetitive. It weakens both characters and I have no reason to stay invested. Some people describe Noelle/Susie's scene to be 'highschool romance/YA romance', and I'm inclined to agree. If Noelle/Susie's romance being shallow *is* the point, my original argument still stands.

Toby struggles to write healthy romances with 'happy' endings. The solution is to bring someone on the team who is experienced and adept at writing romance.

Feel free to share your opinions in the comments! Please be respectful.

Thank you for reading. 😇😈

[umyumsan]

something i never considered until now is the fact that despite the prophecy being so ancient that it's largely been "lost to time" and a whole religion has formed around it, and despite lord of the hammer having been exisiting for quite some time.... the nature of it being tied to the current dark worlds we see means that after existing for so long, it's being fulfilled at a very rapid pace and also it has like... a lot of influence on how dark worlds function and look

like the dark worlds and the darkners within are partially shaped by the person who opened the fountain and the environment that the fountain is in. but ALSO the prophecy. like lancer looks the way he does because the prophecy has a specific image of him, not only because that's what the spade card looks like in the dark.

and also like. consider "the queen's chariot cannot be stopped". it's an image of a car. i would not assume there were cars in existence when the prophecy was first written??

anyways so like if the prophecy has existed for all these years, there always was going to be a pointyheaded kid and a chariot and a lord of screens and a flower man trapped in asylum but it hadn't happened until literally this week. so it's like the prophecy didn't just fortell a grand adventure and the worlds in peril, it fortold the events of this specific week. there is a religion and a series of famous novels about this week. that's so wild.

[seriffromhl]

Why is kris so... dare i say... knowledgeable of undertale...

Why do they put importance on shyren or armored undyne or trident wielding asgore in the sword route.

Why are the ribbicks froggits, why is there the undertale fleeing on the froggit to unlock the egg

Why do the human flowers correlate to the soul meanings. Does kris know about the soul colors? Why? Does anyone else know, I dont believe so, susie certainly didnt bring importance to the color here, surely if she though the color had meaning she'd mention it, and if she didnt, she'd also mention it.

And dont forget THIS FUCKING THING

Thats just undertale

What is the deal with kris

Why did they have a save

Why do they have knowledge of the snowgrave route before it happens.

Why do they know about undertale concepts.

[magi-official]

Okay, wait, prophecys broken, prophecy is certainly already broken. By chcapter 5, we can no longer trust the prophecy, because it has been broken.

This is already a common theory in the weird route. While we do not have explicite evidence chapter 6 is in the prophecy, there is almost no reality where clipping out of bounds by exploiting a glitch in the souls function was not intended as part of the in world plan.

But even in the normal route, i dont think the prophecy happened.

Gerson deacribes a inferno of jelously charring a field of pink and gold. While there was certainly fields, pink, gold and jelousy. There was not an inferno. Ralsei used his fire magic once, defensively.

The prophecy glass in the church describes “flower man trapped in asylum” however i dont think he was ever trapped.

We can argue that asgore was metaphorically trapped, perhaps trapped in his own notions, but the prophecy so far hasn’t been metaphorical in that way. Queens car is described as a chariot, but other than archaic phraising,

“THE QUEEN'S CHARIOT

CANNOT BE STOPPED.”

Is a very literal description of events that did happen.

So, if the prophecy is literally describing things, in archaic ways, we could still argue about trapped, but i don’t think we could argue that he was trapped in asylum.

The dark world was a reminder of his failures, despite how hard flowery tried, it certainly wasn’t a shelter from the outside world, and it wasn’t a mental institution.

The prophecy doesn’t say “THE FLOWER MAN, TRAPPED IN OBSESSION” or “THE FLOWER MAN, EVER SEARCHING”

It says “THE FLOWER MAN, TRAPPED IN ASYLUM” when he wasn’t trapped, and it wasn’t asylum

So unless that line in the prophecy, the one that portrays asgore with flowers, is actually referring to some other asylum, in some other time, I think it just didn’t happen.

Now, does susie know what the word asylum means? I genuinely dont know, nor do i know if she read the word in the first place. HOWEVER, if susie is to point this out to us, in chapter six, I think this could spur the party to action, knowing that theres some chip in the prophecy’s armor.

Hell, it maybe was broken in chapter 4, after susie used her own hands to shatter it.