I figure as long as Toby is putting out another newsletter, I might as well give a more thorough update of my own.
I've done a quick read of the newsletter, and skimmed through the Sans and Papyrus dialogue. Nothing seems all that revealing as far as Variable Angel Theory and its branch theories go, so it shouldn't affect all that much on my end, other than making it clear that I do, in fact, have plenty of time to finish this theory at my own pace.
That pace has recently picked up. I think I'm about 70% done with what I want to include now, though the sections I still have to work on, most especially Spamton and the Spamton Sweepstakes, might be some of my longest. Then again, given how many sections have spawned from my stumbling into random lore bits that recontextualize other parts of the theory, it's possible I'm overestimating my progress and I'll end up with a few entirely new sections of content that are too relevant to skip out on. Much like Deltarune itself, I've no idea what will come up, so I'm not going to promise any sort of release date, not that I imagine there are huge swaths of people waiting with bated breath or anything.
Good news though, the vast majority of VAT part 1 continues to hold up. There are a few bits that make things seem shaky, but there's not a single one that can't be very plausibly explained away by either more thought given to the information we have, or simply missing a piece or two given how small a proportion of the game I'm working with. As far as actual major contradictions go, I've found absolutely none, and I have been looking. I've no intention of presenting a theory I don't believe in, even if part 2 will admittedly involve a fair bit more guesswork and assumptions than part 1 did.
I may push some of the deeper Gaster stuff into its own theory post, if I decide to look into it. So far, I'm much more familiar with the in-game content than anything outside of it. That's why I didn't really reference the newsletters much in the first part of VAT, nor the Spamton Sweepstakes, and, to be totally honest, tracking down all the Gaster stuff that isn't in-game in some capacity sounds like a nightmare, which is a shame because it seems like there's a fair amount of out-of-game Gaster content, maybe even more than in-game.
As such, the Gaster content I'll be including in Part 2 of VAT is almost entirely the stuff that's in Deltarune itself (and in Undertale, of course, to whatever extent I see relevance), plus occasional bits and pieces from elsewhere if I happen to know about them. Don't expect an extremely thorough analysis of everything Gaster-related, that's well out of my purview, at least for now.
To be clear though, the section on Gaster is still fairly long, and there are, of course, bits of his involvement that are very relevant to Variable Angel Theory, like the DT extractor, and I think Gaster may even be at least partially responsible for The Roaring. However, if you're looking for something truly Gaster-centric, VAT2 isn't going to give that to you. The best person for that job that I know of, theorizing closest to my style, is of course Jaru, whenever he finishes putting his Gaster theory together.
VAT1, as I'm sure many people noticed, wasn't particularly focused and streamlined on specifically the bits most relevant to the theory's namesake, i.e. the Angel's identity, abilities, most significant roles, and creation processes. That was intentional. Everything in Deltarune is so interconnected, it'd be hard to isolate everything, and to be honest, I don't want to. Lots of things are useful context for lots of other things. As such, VAT2, while its primary focus will still be on Variable Angel Theory, will include even more branch theories and bonus bits. Directly related or not, the pictures you can paint with enough thousands of words can be a lot more revealing if you expand your canvas.
Here's what's (probably) done so far in broad strokes:
Nearly all of the Gaster stuff
Miscellaneous branch theories and bonus bits
Here's what I have left to finish up:
About half of the Jevil section
One or two Gaster subsections
The Spamton and Spamton Sweepstakes sections
Analysis of "Heaven" and "Hell" (part of which will already be touched on in the Jevil and Spamton sections)
Brief reevaluations of VAT1's main 4 angel candidates with the new info in mind
That's about all I have left, and I think it'll be less work than it sounds. Well, not the Spamton section, there's a good chance that'll take a while, but the other parts I expect to be fairly straightforward. None of these important keywords that I'm giving full analysis to are nearly as strict and precise in their use as "angel", and to a lesser extent, "demon", were.
I've also reposted, and slightly reformatted, VAT1 on our system's AO3, so hopefully that gets more of a discussion going on all this. Once VAT2 is done, it'll go up on AO3 as well as on Tumblr.
