#meta shenanigans

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Just loving the HL2VRAI meta/theory that "Alex" is Like That because, with the game having been modified and "evolved" such that every single character Alyx Vance interacts with has been replaced with an RTVS-original character, and they even changed the one they need to rescue from Nova Prospekt to Doctor Coomer, what's even left of the story for "the Half-Life 2 NPC named Alyx Vance"? Her story is completely gone, she's a symbol without a referent, etc etc.

[shallowseeker]

The landscape is really beautiful these days. I mean, you run across such amazing Jack meta on the regular now!

[triflesandparsnips]

I'm still working on the OFMD meta bingo generator, but gosh I do love when it wakes up and auto-generates violence for me:

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Cosmic Horror game which mostly has a low-poly retro style with low-res textures and simple effects, except that the eldritch monstrosities are in this incongruous HD graphical style with modern techniques and effects and things, in order to emphasize that they're not of this world/from a "higher" reality or whatever.

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

what if we have it all Deltawrong

Ralsei: Why don't we close our eyes ... and think about Susie?

Kris: why

Ralsei: Just watch!

(They watch Susie silently for several minutes)

Kris, nodding as Susie comes over to rejoin them: ok i get it now

Ralsei: So that's why, okay, Kris?

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Ralsei, in King's dungeon: Why don't we close our eyes and think about Susie?

Kris: Ugh, fine ...

Kris:

Kris: (... huh. Why am I not getting a narration for that?)

Ralsei: Okay, Kris, the soul isn't listening to us anymore!

Kris: Wh--

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Toby Fox's third game, you look into a mirror and the flavor text goes "Check it out, it's you! Oh, and you, of course." Protag pulls out the soul in order to pose together. They're so desperate to make the soul(/player) think they're cool, and not a complete walking disaster like basically every other UTDR protagonist

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

I feel like if you wanted to adapt Deltarune into like a comic or a novel or whatever, you'd need to do something very different with the Soul, because the game is riffing on "you, the player, control a character", and that's just not a thing in non-interactive mediums. That sequence in Chapter 4 would be particularly troublesome ...

Like. "Kris rips their soul out"/"Kris is possessed by an Entity" is surprising on its own, but if you really want to preserve the original twist, you need to go for something centered on "who the protagonist is" which is specific to that medium and is so fundamental as to be invisible, just like "player controls character" is in a video game.

The first idea that I'm halfway satisfied with is a first-person narration/internal monologue, carefully phrased so that "I" seems to refer to Kris, right up until Chapter 1's ending turns that on its head. But that might not work as well in a show or whatever where "narration" isn't standard.