Here's a quick sketch from chapter 4 (or 3.5?) of my fic Of Tooth and Claw. If you're interested in an exploration piece on Susie’s childhood, please consider checking it out!
did you guys know about togore dreemurr? he's toriel's and asgore's 3rd child and tricky tony gets really secrective if you bring him up. also he is ralsei, and the roaring knight, and is a goner
individual drawings below this:
guys this reveal is shocking
this will make you question your theories
OH MY GOD RALSEI IS TOGORE DREEMURR make sure to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell!
also togore knight, not papyrus or dess or carol or rudy or kris or gaster or friend inside me
i was researching some stuff for a post about how Hometown is cut off from the rest of the world. while doing so, i discovered just how weird the cars in Deltarune are.
it's kind of silly to analyse something so specific and small, but remember that Donut Guy becomes a goner, and one car has the Forgotten Man in it.
walking around Hometown, we can find two vehicles; Toriel's van and Asgore's truck.
however, there are also other cars- most of which, inexplicably, phase in and out of existence.
of course, these cars can be between the screen transitions or something when we can't find them. I'm sort of cautious about that explanation though. as we can see from this painting, there just isn't much space.
for most characters, if we can't find them anywhere, we can assume they're inside the apartment buildings or something... but cars have to be parked.
and, of course, the road is blocked off. any car in Hometown is stuck in Hometown.
if we can find the car, the cell's green. if we can't access all of hometown to know, it's blank. if we can access all of hometown and can't find it, it's red.
Toriel's car sees regular usage, and it's either driving us somewhere or parked. Asgore's truck is never used, and Asgore implies that it need to be tidied before it can be. we can presume it's always parked by Flower King.
snailcar is stuck behind Undyne in Chapter 1, and stuck in traffic in Chapter 2's morning. then, they're parked by ICE-E. in Chapter 4's morning, they run over Napstablook, and go missing before it starts to rain. donutcar is mostly the same, but doesn't appear in Chapter 4.
all the other cars only appear during the traffic jam in Chapter 2.
so, there are twelve normal cars that we almost always can't find anywhere, and two additional cars that go missing during Chapter 4.
I'm going to try and explore the significance of cars, and their disappearance. there's enough weirdness going on that a supernatural answer to "where are they?" seems plausible.
the traffic jam
regarding the traffic jam, Undyne says that "all the cars in town got swept up". she doesn't seem to notice anything odd, even though twelve of these cars are identical, and just don't exist anywhere else.
why would people even be driving anywhere? Hometown is cut off right now, it's small enough you can just walk anywhere you want to go.
these cars are like, conspicuously normal. they have the flavor text, "(Looks like a car.)", reminding me of the book of hymns which became a Bibliox in Chapter 3: "It's a book of hymns."... remember that this Bibliox is part of the path to the Forgotten Man.
and then, these cars go missing. they never appear again after this.
this plays outside Noelle's house. it sounds a lot like traffic to me.
the Forgotten Man
so, of course, the non-reality of cars in Hometown is made most significant by the Forgotten Man. if you collect the egg in Chapter 1, there's exclusive dialogue if you interact with a car in Chapter 2:
(Looks like a car.)
(There is even a man inside this one.)
(He waves at you happily.)
notice the similarities to this dialogue, in Chapter 4:
(Looks like the diner is full.)
(... a customer in the back notices you.)
(He holds up a takeout box and taps it, happily.)
the Man is found among people that don't really exist. cars without any characters driving them, a diner filled with undescribed people. he's kind of, imprinted onto anonymous nobodies.
Donut Guy
another connection between the Man and Traffic are donuts. the Forgotten Man sells them, builds his schedule around them. "ON THURSDAY, I GO TO SELL THE DONUTS." - meanwhile, donutcar always talks about donuts, they're Deltarune's version of Donut Guy.
it's like the absurd running gag is like, a pathway for the Forgotten Man to appear out of. the running surrealness in Deltarune isn't just a joke, but a diagetic part of the world.
in Undertale, Donut Guy wasn't like, obsessed with donuts. they didn't actually want any Donuts. it's like their personalities been inverted between games- to be fair, this is true for a lot of characters, but it's still interesting. the fact it's true for a lot of characters is interesting.
in Chapter 1, their personalities the same as in Undertale; scared and otherwise normal.
in Chapter 2, they stop being scared. they're obsessed with donuts, which in Undertale, they didn't like. and they're beginning to show awareness of gameplay mechanics; "special attack". and this recontextualises their previous dialogue: in Chapter 1 they want to run away from Undyne, like you have to in Undertale.
they say they "wanna go home", but it doesn't feel like they really have a home, because we never see their car parked anywhere.
and after this, we haven't seen them again.
i think there's a somewhat strong case here they're becoming a goner. their personality is becoming exaggerated. they disappear and reappear without a trace. they know about gameplay mechanics. we never see their other hand...
snailcar
something weird is happening with snailcar too. they don't, and never really have, acted the same in Deltarune and Undertale.
they're absurdly enthusiastic. they're seemingly oblivious to how they're running someone over, and Napstablook doesn't mention it either.
in Undertale, they're not even a snail. they're a monster who bought a shell from a snail as a house. they do repeat the same motif of "Home is where the car/heart is"... also an allusion to Asgore, who says "Home is where the heart is!" when talking to Toriel in chapter 2.
overall, there's a less evidence that something weird is happening with snailcar, and the evidence we have is pretty circumstantial. but they do feel like a strong example of how Hometown is getting more and more messed up every chapter.
cars in Hometown
Queen tells us lightners constantly search up the traffic- since the internets down right now, this must be before Hometown got closed off from the rest of the world, so it makes some sense, I think..?
we still don't know why Kris slashed Toriel's tires. we can sort of guess it was so the police would be called, and sort of guess that it was part of the conspiracy, but we can't be certain.
Asgore's truck is too littered with stuff to be driven anywhere. Toriel's tires have been slashed. snailcar and donutcar go missing. after Chapter 4, it doesn't feel like there's any way to get driven out of Hometown.
conclusions
are cars phasing in and out of reality, or is it just an oversight? I don't really know. but there is like, important stuff happening around this.
Hometown is cut off from the outside world; one car has the Forgotten Man in it; one driver is a Gaster Follower in Undertale.
