#topaz posts

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DELTARUNE THEORY

We're about to find out what Toby meant by this

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NOTE: I included the SOUL virtues because they kinda relate to the SOUL and I figured people might want them mapped out, as well. They are entirely secondary to Literally Everything Else Here. I initially made this diagram just for myself before deciding to share it and didn't remove them when I did. While I do think "Determination" is likely to be the Red SOUL's virtue, it's not technically confirmed and thus isn't included here.

So, a while ago, I decided to map out the "personal colors" of playable characters in Deltarune for non-theory-related reasons, and I realized that all of them are either primary or secondary colors on the CMYK color wheel. Specifically, I compared the colors used for their battle UI borders, which are all 255 in either one or two out of Red/Green/Blue and 0 in the other(s), putting them at the absolute polar ends of each color. I also included the SOUL, since it's the only thing you actually play as if you wanna get super technical about it and I thought it was significant that it was opposite Kris. It also has a color of #FF0000.

My observations about this:

The primary colors—cyan, magenta, and yellow—go to the three main Lightner characters; Kris, Susie, and Noelle, respectively.

The secondary colors—red, green, and blue—go to the SOUL, Ralsei, and... no one yet, respectively. That right there is part of why I consider this to have elements of a theory rather than just an observation.

As mentioned above, Kris and the SOUL are a complementary/opposite pair, which makes sense given how both intertwined and at odds they are with one another.

The other complete complementary/opposite pair is Susie and Ralsei, which is also sensible seeing as they're obvious narrative foils to each other.

The last hypothetical complementary/opposite pair, the yellow/blue one that would include Noelle, currently has no counterpart for her. She and Susie form a complementary color pair (yellow/purple) on an RBY color wheel, but not the CMYK one here.

They're not denoted here, but I kind of consider the Knight, Titans, Goners, etc. to occupy the center of the wheel, where black, white, and gray tones go.

I suppose the main "theory" aspect of this is that I think it's probable that there will be a sixth player-controllable character or entity associated with the color blue in later chapters, though I'm not totally sure who this will be. The "common thread" between Ralsei (green) and the SOUL (red) is that they're both more closely tied to the game/fiction layer of things than the three Lightners are, so I suspect a hypothetical blue character would be, as well. My best guess at this point, because of both that and parallels between Deltarune and Twin Peaks I've seen discussed that equate his Deltarune incarnation to Twin Peaks' protagonist Dale Cooper, is genuinely Sans, but that is, I really must stress, just a guess.

I kinda doubt it'd be Dess or Asriel, since neither have so far been associated with blue in any meaningful capacity. Dess's only notable color associations, as far as I know, are actually with red (the color of her guitar) and black if you subscribe to the theory that she's the Knight, while I'm pretty sure Asriel has only ever been associated with yellow and green.

Thinking more about the complementary pairs and what, specifically, those duos are used in conjunction with each other to explore or represent, both cases seem to represent a sort of... "freedom vs. the fetters of being a video game character" conflict.

Kris vs. the SOUL is pretty obviously representative of character agency vs. player agency; what Kris wants to do vs. what we want to do through them.

Susie vs. Ralsei form a sort of "free will vs. predestination" kind of contrast, in their specific case with a flavoring of "breaking the rules and writing one's own story" vs. "adhering to the course of a story already written".

In both of these cases, the "RGB" character/entity represents the usual rules of a video game, while the "CMY" character (a Lightner in both cases) represents something like "an actual person put into that position" and, through that, the ways in which the rules represented by their counterpart can be bent, broken, or otherwise subverted.

I bring this up because I think this is also useful context in determining what the nature of Noelle's counterpart might be, if she does indeed end up having one.

With what we currently have as of this writing (Deltarune Chapters 1~4 plus official events up to the Undertale 10th Anniversary stream on the 21st and 22nd of September of 2025), I think what Noelle would represent in this paradigm is the ways in which a player can actually play a game that differ from how it's "intended" to be played (or even set up to handle properly). From this, I'd infer that her blue "counterpart" would likely represent "the intended player experience" to contrast with "playing one's own way and making one's own fun, even if doing so involves things the game software isn't even programmed to properly account for".

That in mind, it's interesting to me to note that the only instances of Noelle's flavor of "freedom" the game thus far allows her to actually participate in are in the Weird Route, which is painted in a decidedly negative light. I don't think that's the full picture, though, since things like the Egg Man aren't portrayed negatively, but it does warrant mentioning.

Actually, as I write this, that does sort of follow the pattern of "introduce the Lightner's flavor of 'freedom' in a negative light before delving into a proper exploration of it and why it's valuable" that Susie and Kris establish, with Susie initially using her freedom to Genocide Lite her way through the early Card Kingdom and Kris doing some ominous and still-morally-unclear things with their own moments of freedom from the player. My extrapolation from this would be that Noelle's "flavor of freedom" will (and I think already is, via the Egg Man) have its positive aspects and applications explored more in the coming chapters, which is something I'm really looking forward to.

Anyways, in light of recent color analyses relating to Gaster making the rounds, I felt I'd throw my own UTDR color analysis into the conversation to see what people make of it.

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Weirdly fascinated by the cactus Darkner in Deltarune Chapter 3 because like… a cactus is not an object. It’s not an ANIMAL but it’s a living being plants IRL DO have some awareness of and ability to react to their surroundings, albeit not in ways generally immediately visible to humans.

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Copied from my comment on Skyehopper's EarthBound video

EarthBound's ties to MOTHER 1/EarthBound Beginnings… This is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about, since I actually ADORE MOTHER 1 and, while I like EarthBound a lot too, find myself frequently a bit annoyed at how many people consider it to outright supplant and replace MOTHER 1 within the series rather than both games being their own separate-but-related works with their own value. Don't pit two successful queens against each other, basically. Anyway. I don't think the fandom perception of EarthBound Beginnings as the Giygas Backstory Game is entirely unfounded with respect to how it relates to EarthBound, since Giegue/Giygas really is the most obvious common thread tying the two games together. Maybe it's just my own interpretation, but I think EarthBound Beginnings kinda reframes, or at least clarifies, Giygas's state in EarthBound as being the end result of a terrible tragedy; you get a much more tangible sense that this is an individual with a history and personality and inner life who has been turned into whatever this is rather than Giygas just being inherently Like That somehow, and, in a sense, Giygas becomes some of the most raw expressions of emotion from Giegue.

My own interpretation of him has always been that he's someone who is fundamentally sensitive and "soft" by nature, who as an infant was given an upbringing that embraced and nurtured and encouraged who he was, until his adoptive mother was abruptly ripped away and he was forced into a cold, "hard" role. I'll admit a lot of this probably slips into the realm of headcanon based on my own interpretations of his nearly entirely implications-based characterization, but I think of Giegue/Giygas as someone who's essentially forced and trapped into the role of "main villain of a video game" whether he likes it or not. Whatever the specifics of his circumstances are, I also think EarthBound Beginnings indicates he stakes a lot of his self-worth on his ability to live up to this role (even if he doesn't see himself as the villain), maybe because the approval to be gained from being good at his job is the closest thing to love available to him, or that he'll let himself pursue, at this point in his life. He hides it behind the veneer of repaying a debt, but I think he offers to spare Ninten because he genuinely wants to have a familial relationship with someone again.

His resentment of humans I think ultimately comes from a place of deep envy, because they have everything he believes he's not allowed to have, that he beats himself up for wanting. I think Giygas is sort of the result of his ultimate effort to sever himself from those desires; literally unpersoning himself in pursuit of becoming the very Abstract Idea of the Type of Person He's "Supposed" to Be, and even then it doesn't fully work, because at heart he ISN'T that person, and even in such a fragmented state he can't force that out of himself. Giygas is CALLED things like the "embodiment of evil", the "Evil Power", etc., but when you finally confront him, he seems more like an embodiment of pain and anguish to me than anything else. During EarthBound's final battle, among other things, Giygas cries out in pain. He calls Ness's name, seems to be pondering the concept of friends. He even seems to be able to feel some remorse and/or fear, pleading for the Chosen Four to "go back" and stating that "it's not right", which Itoi has elaborated on in an interview as being intended to refer to both to Giygas's own actions and to the heroes'. He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to be doing this. He's in terrible pain. He's barely even a person anymore. I'm not even confident he's deliberately attacking the heroes so much as they're just kinda being incidentally buffeted by the chaotic storm of energy that comprises his being. The image of Ness's face on the front of the Devil's Machine, too, may represent a desire for connection, a blunt, cobbled-together expression from Giygas that he and Ness aren't so different… Though that's an interesting thing on its own, really. Another consideration is that the Devil's Machine may be like a mirror that reflects the soul, the true self, of the person looking at it. Ness, in his robot body, is gazing into the Devil's Machine from the camera's perspective, and his face, his TRUE, organic face, is reflected back at him in it. Those are just two interpretations, though, and I think there's definitely also a layer of meaning there along the lines of "the potential to become like Giygas is within all of us, even those deemed purest of heart, like destined heroes; nobody is inherently 'above' such a possibility".

Anyways, circling back around, I think in this reading that Giygas would be representative less of the presence of evil than the absence of love and what that does to people. It's a form of emotional and psychological starvation, suffocation, and, taken to its utmost extreme, is absolutely, cataclysmically ruinous. Love, of one kind or another, is needed to build, to heal, to create. A loveless world can only break down, decay, and eventually become nothing but meaningless static… I think that's the "devastation" in the future Buzz Buzz comes from, and what ultimately became of Giygas when he cut himself off so absolutely from love, too. There is also, I believe, meaning relevant to this in the fact that Giygas's influence is most keenly felt throughout the game in the form of manipulating humans into the most callous, unloving versions of themselves.

And yet, even at the very, very end, when there's almost nothing left of his sense of self, and all of Giegue's mental barriers have gone before the innermost core of his heart, he STILL calls out for love, for connection, before finally being put to rest. The denial of love is still something destructive and unnatural, something that must be manually enforced and that is more fragile than what it aims to suppress and control.

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So this is like… I dunno it's something that feels like kind of a deranged reach to bring up because of how it's just… frankly it's just two things that inspired very specifically Giygas in EarthBound, one incidental line of NPC dialogue in EarthBound, and a recurring symbol in EarthBound Beginnings that has kind of a tenuous connection to the aliens and Giegue but he's like, in third place after George and then Maria in a distant first for who it's associated with, but I kinda feel like there's this, like… half-meta sort of feminine aspect to Giegue that's, like, alluded to in a couple of places?

The part of it everyone knows about is the NPC in Threed who muses that "Giygas might be a female", which is actually more overtly a humorous line in the original Japanese text in which the guy is basically just musing if Giygas built up such a massive following by being a sexy lady who was able to seduce them into obedience.

The symbol from EarthBound Beginnings was the XX symbol, which is all over the place in association with Magicant (the pink shells, the tops of numerous structures in Magicant itself, the inscriptions on the Flying Men's tombstones in the English version), as well as slightly associated with George due to the XX being on his tombstone as well… and then it also shows up on R7038XX for some reason. Only tenuously associated with Giegue in any official capacity, but it's like… in his proximity? I guess?

The last thing that really stuck in my mind is how Shigesato Itoi describes the part to Giegue that's "like a living being that deserves love"; how he compares that aspect to the woman in the scene he walked in on in The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty, which is… not a family-friendly film from what I gather, so just, like, be aware of that if you're unfamiliar and want to look into it more, but another thing that, unlike the film, actually was a direct inspiration for a particular one of Giygas's lines, was when Itoi passed by a car accident where one of the victims was a woman simply crying out "it hurts!" rather than calling for help or anything, which he found distinctly upsetting and thought would evoke a strong, conflicted reaction to incorporate as dialogue for the final boss of EarthBound.

That last one's also kinda tenuous, since the fact that the person who was injured was a woman isn't really, like… relevant… necessarily… But it does stick out to me that, as far as I'm aware, the only two… "characters" isn't the right blanket term… "Individuals, real or fictional"? Who were specifically mentioned as having inspired aspects of Giygas? were women, which obviously might not actually mean anything vis a vis Itoi's intentions for the final character, it's just an observation that feels Potentially Significant in my brain that I felt like sharing along with a couple other Potentially Related observations.

This is 100% one of those things where I have no idea whether I'm onto something or if it's just the nefarious pareidolia at it again, and my thought isn’t really “Giegue is female”, at least not in a traditional binary human sort of sense; more so that there’s sort of vaguely-implied feminine aspect to him.

I don’t really think of Giegue as fitting neatly into a human conception of gender. I think he uses he/him in English because that’s what Maria used for him and it’s comfy and familiar, but I don’t think he’s really male or female in any sense that a human would conceive of those concepts.

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My feelings on Giegue's existence from, like... a Doylist / exegetic perspective are kinda complicated, honestly. I don't at all think that he's badly written or poorly-utilized, but I still can't help but feel that he and the aliens in general are underutilized.

Giegue has exactly two canon scenes of screentime in the official series, both of which are among its most striking and memorable moments. Neither of these scenes are poorly-written; far from it. They're both very well-written and compelling, with Beginnings' establishing his character and underlying inner conflict very well and EarthBound's achieving what it set out to do in terms of representing certain emotions Itoi experienced as a child while tracking in a downright heartbreaking way with what happens in EarthBound Beginnings despite EarthBound having almost nothing in the way of overt continuity with it. Hell, in Japan, EarthBound Beginnings literally built its tagline around that final boss fight! Giegue is definitely a very effective character as he is...

...but, I still feel very strongly that he had so much more to offer, story-wise, than what was actually put into the games. Itoi's masterful use of narrative "negative space" is a defining characteristic of the MOTHER trilogy's writing to me, so it's not like I think his entire life should have been exhaustively hashed out or anything, but I would really have liked to see and learn more of him, his people, and the other aliens working with them. The fact that someone (hi @otherhand42) literally made a whole fangame about exactly that (and it's certainly not the only fan creation interested in exploring Giegue more as a character!) is, I think, proof that there's a ton of un(officially)tapped potential there!

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freaking obsessed with them. by the way.