#deltarune meta

[ferventrapture]

A thing about time loops in media is that they can have no origin point.

They can create themselves. Kris didn't need to know Gerson personally in order to create the Church dark world. They just needed what Susie did when she made hers-- Familiarity with his Duskner. Kris knew the opinion of the Old Man toward the Prophecy, his philosophy and even that he wanted to write a letter to his son and wanted Susie to be the one to rewrite it to give it to him. They knew the Old Man would become fond of Susie the most and the fastest. They knew everything they needed to know for those events to go ahead, because they've been through that loop before. At least under the theory that it IS a loop. A lot of people have that theory but I have seen nobody say like. 'Okay so Kris could've just made this Church Dark world because they've met the Old Man before' and the 'origin' of the Loop could've actually just been Kris looping back to create the Church for themself to experience to begin with, which they could absolutely know already if they've looped multiple times.

[zalmonthe]

hello! i saw your ‘the human is you’ thing on my dash and while i don’t really believe it i really like the theory of it as a whole! but i gotta ask how does the player making the discarded vessel fit into the ‘the human is you’ theory apologies if you already clarified on it.

I talk about it here!

The soul makes its new self (mind and body) in darkness.

It's taken away, as we fade to white, we're told we can't choose.

It's a sunny morning, Kris wakes up - back to their old self and their dull life. Lack of choice is hammered at every step - handholding, terrible partner assigned by Alphys, Susie shuts down our answer and bosses us around.

We reach the closet - we're in the dark again. We get control back, and have a new (blue) self.

It's a dream.

Kris's dream is our game - Deltarune - both dreams and games are dark, that's why it's image_depth. As Kris remakes their old self, we make our new one. Kris returns to reality, we enter it with them.

The dream is nebulously real just like all darkness. Kris heard Gaster speak.

[alicelufenia]

I think a good rebuttal to the "but Gaster tweets" re: Krissociation Meta is that Flowey also Tweeted from the Undertale account when Undertale released

That could be, tho people also claim that Flowey breaks the 4th wall, where I think the important takeaway from his 4th wall leaning comments are his detachment and boredom with the people and places he's seen over and over doing the same things. It's about not seeing people as people anymore, while challenging the player/audience to see them as mattering despite that

Ultimately, I agree with my pro-Gaster mutual that even Gaster probably doesn't "know" he's in a video game. Only that his view of the world has led to treating it as such. Like Seam said, a view of the world that has become "darker, yet darker"

[ferventrapture]

It's funny that nobody believes there will be one ending to Deltarune, despite Toby saying otherwise. Even I don't fully believe there's one ending. Because not only is there like a bunch of endings for Undertale which was based on Deltarune, but also... it would kind of suck. Now, if the game ends the same way no matter what you do, but all the stuff within the game is variable and there's a bunch of different shit to do and different paths to go down, that might work for me. But if it's like it's been so far with only small differences and then you have like, one ending... and every time you play through, you only get those small differences... it'd be hard to sell that as a good and satisfying narrative. But at least the weird route seems different enough. That will probably hold up a lot of things. Like, the weird and aborted weird routes will change enough that it will fuel people's fanwork making for years afterward, even if there IS only one ending. It's just that people see one ending as bad because it's not enough of a 'reward' for playing through. But if you have the reward WHILE you play with fun gameplay, good story and differences depending on choices, then people could be cool with it, I think.

[helioclipse]

(time to not learn my lesson and post a mildly hot take again) not to knock the entire theory or anything, but if deltarune does make trans ralsei canon, there are several ways of going about it that i'd just find uninteresting imo. for example, a straightforward "now i'm finally happy! i like being a girl and this makes me happy! haha! princess of the dark dress go spinny!" scene. it would seem out of lockstep with other parts of his* character for me- up until now, ralsei has been characterised as someone who puts up a front of superficial optimism, placidity and submissiveness, but is in reality very cynical and defeatist. he holds himself to strict rules, and lashes out at flowery in part because of how extremely offended it makes him that flowery (who larps as an OP anime guy) disregards all of that for his own happiness.

as in, you know, ralsei basically seethes at this guy who lives for himself and ignores rules because it makes him happy. the most in-character and interesting thing to do here re: trans ralsei imo, which i worry might not even happen because it's too spicy, would be to take the anger he feels at flowery and draw the parallel between it and the self-hate he might have for wanting to abandon the assigned role of the dark prince (presumably for trans reasons). the fact he feels a sense of superiority for "holding back", the fact he doesn't Want to feel so disconnected from his role, the fact he projects and looks down on people who do abandon their roles (an actual character flaw) while lying to himself he's 100% nice, etc.

if there's any coming out narrative attached to this goat at all it might be less "coming out" and more "being dragged out kicking and screaming" because he clearly has some biases to work through (his self worth problems due to being a darkner are the most obvious example), and would kinda need to before doing anything on that front.

i repeat, this is one of the only ways i can see it being interesting, but giving the fluffy goat character actual textual internalised transphobia might be an insane move for a game like Delta "everyone instinctively knows how to theythem kris already" Rune, so i'm not even 100% confident the evidence for the theory isn't just more "ralsei's dogshit self esteem due to being a darkner" evidence. (not that it's completely DEconfirmed either obviously! i would never give any girlsei enjoyer a hard time! but yknow)

(*i'm he-ing ralsei here not out of spite, but because i have no reason to believe the "they" instances don't have other explanations. the "watering their own thorns" in ralsei's "dark vine" status is probably referring to the vine, asgore calling him "they" is out of unfamiliarity and straight up doesn't carry over to the japanese version (seriously, check for yourself, he calls ralsei 彼/he), and ralsei has both the "lovelyboy" act in the pink fight and "he" pronouns in the flowery fight still (which absolutely happens after the dark vine status). this is just what happens when i try to be as neutral as possible to what's in the game, even if it might change more overtly later, and i'm perfectly open to being proven wrong in the new chapters)

[prism-forgone]

Deltarune is a game that loves you for experiencing it

i have some hope in my heart that, by the end of deltarune, the message is not going to be "you're awful for having wanted to be a part of this, for imposing, when you're a stranger in these characters' lives".

and i don't necessarily voice this because i believe toby fox would pursue such a moral. on the contrary - both undertale and deltarune are really just love letters to games as storytelling devices, ones that can make you feel and experience things very strongly, to the point of feeling real. yes, all you're experiencing is fiction. no, that doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

it's real because it doesn't make sense if it isn't, with how much it makes you react, live through it. if you were supposed to take fakeness out of the story, susie's approach towards the darkners would not be left as intact as it is. convincing ralsei they can decide who they want to be instead of it being decided by someone else despite being a darkner wouldn't have so much narrative weight. noelle discarding her whole world as as good as fake in the weird route and addressing her role as a character wouldn't be in direct opposition to the normal route's exploration of the relationship between fiction and those who receive it as meaningful.

i instead voice this sentiment because i feel like these facts, very clearly present in deltarune's narrative, get lost in-between somewhere. i see more and more people feeling bad for playing this game they're supposed to be playing. because we are not privy to what happened "that day" and are purposefully excluded from things by being locked in cages or told to look elsewhere, it feels like we're being voyeuristic by being part of the story, like there's no place for us in it.

but that's just not true! the angel is as much a part of the prophecy as the cage, the girl and the prince. the door in the middle of the castle in castletown is adorned with a heart and wings. the place is named after your name. you are as much a part of this as everyone you see on screen. it wouldn't work without you. kris needs you to propel the plot forward as much as you need them to experience the world around you. you're supposed to be here, watching as everything unfolds because it's a story. and stories are meant to be told to someone.

what i feel like deltarune is saying instead of an admonishment for submerging yourself in this fictional world is instead, "this is a story. the story is not "real" but all the emotions it causes when you submerge yourself in it are. and the fact that it's not really "real" doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility, as we all do, to be, above all else, kind. nothing else may matter - but this does, if only to you, because you feel how your own actions affect you".

it doesn't matter if there's one ending. it doesn't matter if it feels like kindness doesn't achieve a thing. kindness is rewarded quietly, through absence of pain that would otherwise replace happiness. the ending might not change but it doesn't need to, since, if you let it, the story is going to change you instead, leaving you different from the you that started playing deltarune. you're a part of it and are welcome through the virtue of it being a story you're open towards experiencing. deltarune is real so long as you let it affect you and cause real emotions in you.

this story wants you there like a tree that wants to be heard when it falls in the middle of the forest. it wants you there to see how it develops and it thanks you for watching the dreams of the characters you see in it.

[alicelufenia]

I see comments like "Ralsei is aware of the player," "Carol is aware of the player," and "Flowery is aware of the player" and then I look and the evidence given is "this character knows Kris really well"

Starting to think the reason they seem so "aware of what's going on" is that they in fact, know Kris well enough to have an idea of what they're doing and why, and you as the player feel seen by that, because the only other person you interact with as much is Susie, who doesn't know them as well, and certainly doesn't know their "whole deal" yet

Almost like you're meant to feel a sense of paranoia from being seen by people who understand you, and so distant from someone you desperately want to be closer to, but can't tell her anything because [internal screaming]

[sirius-bizdness]

looking at the HTML source for deltarune.com/7b/, and I noticed that the page's favicon is stored in base-64 in the HTML itself. That seemed like an odd choice given that it seems to be perfectly blank, so I decoded it into an .ico file and tried setting the alpha to opaque.

...huh.

Also I checked, and the other weird route pages seem to have the same base-64 icon...