The funniest thing about my snowgrave edition kriselle playlist is that, after updating it for chapter 5's release, the latter part of it literally looks like this:
(spoiler warning for chapter 5's weird route)
"You'll never guess what happens to them by the end of this route" ahh playlist
While I've seen people compare Gaster to the Nowhere King from centaurworld before for obvious reasons, I've yet to see anyone point out the similarities between the Nowhere King and Dess or even Noelle at this point, especially after the ending of chapter 5's weird route. And it's such an obvious connection to make too, as both of them are also literally deer.
I genuinely believe at this point that whatever Kris, Susie and Noelle have going on is meant to be Toby's commentary on heteronormativity as well as monogamy-normativity (ig there's not really a word for that....though there probably should be) and how they limit society's view of romance and love in general.
The festival in particular felt to me like a way to really drive this point home with the king and queen voting stuff. Because it really feels like this 3 way dynamic between them would've had a way better chance at thriving if the world they live in wasn't explicitly designed for couples between a man and a woman. And it feels pretty intentional that hometown is as non-inclusive as it is.
I mean the game already has a ton of explicitly gay characters and couples and it's not like the concept of polyamory hasn't been acknowledged in the game either, so it's not unreasonable for me to think that Toby's doing all this deliberately. Because Krusielle really does feel like a love triangle that could be resolved with polyamory and that none of them realize it yet because they don't live in a world where that's the norm.
All of them clearly have some feelings for each other (complicated as some of them might be), but all of them are also deeply afraid of the possibility of the other two being closer to each other than they themselves are to either of them that their jealousy is ironically the thing that drives them further away from the other two and it's a big driving force for them. The "inferno of jealousy" could very well apply to all three of them given the circumstances.
I have yet to see anyone pointing out how fitting Noelle and Kris drowning in the lake in the weird route is thematically, considering the symbolism of ice and water in this game.
While ice symbolizes preservation and stagnation, water instead represents fluidity and change, so Noelle dragging Kirs into the lake in order to break themselves free from the bounds of their world and rebel against their predetermined fate is brilliant.
Noelle has been defined by her family's ice related theme her entire life, but now that she's regaining control of her narrative (or that she at least thinks she is), she managed to melt away the ice that was keeping her chained by realizing and embracing the fluidity of her choices and the amount of agency she actually has in her life.
Ngl, even though at first I thought that this chapter didn't have enough lore and was too much gameplay and silly fun, the more I think about the reveals and confirmations we got, the more I feel like I was wrong about this opinion, because this chapter was actually kind of insane. So I compiled a long list of all the insane lore and character info we got in this chapter because someone has to (though I will probably miss some things).
(Obviously spoilers for chapter 5 ahead):
In this chapter we literally got:
• Dessriel confirmed canon
• Explanation about what the shadow crystals are
• Undertale Sans being from Deltarune confirmation, along with the reveal that the drawing he had in Undertale was Susie's
• Krusielle all have feelings for each other (though very complicated ones for the most part) confirmed
• Rudy probably dying
• Woody theory technically true
• Friend interaction where they directly do damage to the fun gang (even though Friend ended up being less relevant than we thought they'd be in this chapter)
• We now know how flowers, which are soulless living organisms, manifest in the dark world
• Ralsei being heavily implied to be trans
• Onionsan's implied death
• Craziest weird route yet, with an even crazier ending
• Undeniable confirmation that Kris can't live without the soul (though I'd argue we already knew that, but I guess that one is for the former deniers of that fact)
• Reveal that doing the weird route results in chapter 6 being skipped entirely and that there's a "side B" of chapter 7, whatever that means (secret second ending perhaps?)
• Some very interesting scene and dialogue changes in the aborted weird route and the implication that this is going to be yet another separate route of its own (kinda like the neutral route of undertale perhaps)
• Jevil references all around, despite him not being directly acknowledged
• More Gaster references (though atp that one is less unexpected)
• So. Much. Freedom leitmotif. Everywhere. (What does this mean?)
• We supposedly got the last egg from the man (which I feel has to mean something)
• The reveal that the Knight (or A Knight, since atp I don't even know if there's only one) opened fountains even long ago, something Ralsei wasn't aware of
• Asgore's plan being stopping the Knight for something that happened in the past that ruined his life (the implication being that the Knight already existed and was opening fountains when Dess disappeared, or at least that Asgore thinks they did)
• Mew Mew being a secret boss and paralleling Kris (also I'm pretty sure she's implied to be the mysterious shop keeper as well)
• Just generally many undertale connections, way more than usual at least (and it doesn't even seem to be as a joke or as a fun reference anymore....)
• Shelter code being the date of Undertale's launch but with a different year (which people speculate is 1997 due to Spamton mentioning it before)
• The devastating reveal that Susie sleeps in castletown and probably lives there entirely
The funniest thing about my snowgrave edition kriselle playlist is that, after updating it for chapter 5's release, the latter part of it literally looks like this:
(spoiler warning for chapter 5's weird route)
"You'll never guess what happens to them by the end of this route" ahh playlist
What if the theory that Ralsei is Kris' horned headband is true and the reason Ralsei is probably trans is because he represents a part of Kris (like an idealized version of them or something)? What if his arc of coming to terms with his gender identity (and identity in general) is paralleling the one Kris had to go through and is still probably going through?
If I had a nickel for every time there was a character in this chapter who was associated with the color yellow and who tried to commit suicide during this chapter I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice
Say what you want about tadc, but I think the revelation of Jax being trans paved the way for Ralsei from deltarune to potentially go through a similar arc without nearly as many people in the fandom calling the theory of him being trans delusional. I truly believe Jax served as a stepping stone for audiences to become more open to the idea of characters being canonically revealed or heavily implied to be trans later in a story.
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
jbbartram-illu
dededos