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💖🐌 venus/becs ☆ she/xe ☆ mid 20's ☆ ain't that just the way 🐌💖

[neekody]

Phantom

[senblades]

Why do you stay?

[mtt-brandanimepowder]

The one screenshot I took in my playthrough

[nimbosaur]

How it feels getting attached to flowery

[raisedbat]

id: photo titled "saw this guy and said ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ugly and then felt so bad i cried and bought him". the photo shows a hand holding a chibi drawing of flowery from deltarune. end id

[krispdreemurr]

btw while im talking abt deltarune visual novel allusions and krusielle and such did anyone else get specific Vibes from the festival and all the having to choose pairs for each activity such that someone is always left out and there's really no way to balance it perfectly. like does anyone else see what i mean. the devil is already here

[krispdreemurr]

[heroscarf]

basically no "theory" or prediction positing that the darkners have to be sealed away or remain objects forever has been able to explain in a satisfying manner why the darkners don't get to exist but the lightners do.

there has always been, in my opinion, a dissonance in this conversation, where players treat kris / susie / noelle / etc as if they are somehow more real when to Me, and everyone else reading this post, they are just as real as ralsei / lancer / tenna / etc because they are all fictional characters coded onto the game Deltarune™ in my nintendo switch. why do WE want to uphold the dichotomy between them so much?

in the context of escapism, it just sort of... feels strange, doesn't it? deltarune doesn't even posit the idea that dark worlds are always good; the main gameplay loop has been entering these fun, fantastical dark worlds in order to close them, which disrupts this idea of the all-consuming fantasy.

more over, ralsei's entire arc has been about accepting personhood!!! ralsei learns to accept all the likes, dislikes, desires, and fears that come with being alive. and stripping that away... would just kind of really suck???? tragic/sad endings are fine and good - i'm not saying things can't ever end sadly - but i simply have never gotten the impression i was playing through a tragedy on deltarune's normal route, even post-chapter four.

hope is so instrumental to this game, so while i'm willing to be surprised, i really can't imagine a satisfying conclusion where the hope is squandered for nothing that doesn't feel like a hypocritical rug-pull.

[heroscarf]

[tags via @deepfrieddeltarunememes]

THE SUSIE THING. OH BOY.

why is the light world what gets to be "real" in a game that is meta!!! the fact deltarune is a game interested in the meta-narrative, by its nature, calls into question why one gets to be any realer than the other when neither of them are, in fact, real. it's a really strange hang-up to have!!! and i would argue deltarune is trying to criticize this, and has been since chapter one.

ralsei telling lancer that darkners derive all joy from serving lightners is supposed to make you go "?????" because the alternative is frankly irresponsible!!! to uncritically establish that there is a class of people (darkners) who love serving others (lightners) is Bad!!!!! it's also not even true, lancer is proof that the reverence darkners have for lightners is a learned trait, not an innate one.

chapter five also introduces a profoundly blurry variable into the mix: the FLOWERS. where do they fit in the dichotomy? (spoiler alert: they DON'T!!!!) flowery is RIGHT that it's unfair for the fun gang to have final say on which fountains get to exist and which don't. why do they - WE! - get to decide who gets to be alive and who doesn't?

ralsei really is the foundation of why i find the idea that darkners WILL be sealed away forever really upsetting. like, yes, i am a ralseihead, but the entire character arc happening there centers around embracing personhood and individuality!

things that happen in the dark worlds matter. susie's character growth, yes, but - hello!!! weird route!!!!!!! and, not even in WR, but chapter 2's fighting route has berdly fry his arm in the battle versus queen, and that carries over into the light world! the church is fucked UP post-titan fight!!!

i, frankly, don't even think deltarune is About escapism. it's just using it as a means of exploring it's actual themes of nostalgia, autonomy, and change - which dehumanizing the darkners goes firmly against in the main story.

[decaysayer]

A reason I've been so excited about Deltarune is the way it has been exploring the things in this post, especially that last "nostalgia, autonomy and change" stuff.

So, so, so, SO MANY things from my childhood in the 90s-00s had endings where the protagonist dutifully had to say goodbye and irreversibly cut off their connection to the world where their fantasy friends were. And (subject to opinion) some of 'em made sense. Some of 'em had nuance and kept in mind their target audience of children, making effort to tell them a story that might help them acclimatise to changes in their own lives.

But so many others felt like a cynical, overplayed "coming of age" parable, where protagonists must always turn their backs on their fantasy worlds (and friends inside) because it is just what's expected of them, and what's expected of us all, to be an adult.

Grow up! Put away all the fantastical and imaginary things that gave you solace and joy, yes all of them! No you can't come back to the dream world on weekends, it never existed, remember? Now you're set free to have sensible dreams only, like winning the girl or getting on the sports team. After all, "Anything is possible if you believe!" But only if you believe in very normal things within the expectations set out for you!

I didn't understand all this as a child, I just felt dread and sadness when another episode of a show ended up with sealing the rift between worlds permanently and being told "It's sad, but it's good. We have to do these things, give up these fun ideas like talking animals. You'll understand when you're older. Look, the protagonist doesn't mind. They're happy now. They'll forget."

What in the fresh f%#& no-autonomy existential horror? (I will never forgive The Queen's Nose for the talking ferret.)

No matter what direction Deltarune goes from now, even if it ends up how those shows ended, it's already healed some of that childhood dismay and dread for me by exploring, as the post previously put it, "nostalgia, autonomy and change" as well as escapism.

[jaronofthebored]

Pink's parallels with Kris and Ralsei have been discussed plenty, but I'd like to raise you the idea of her relationship with Orange paralleling Susie's relationship with Lancer.

An outwardly aggressive lightner suddenly falls into a dark world and ends up finding a small darkner who wants to be tough too but is actually quite meek and cute and they bond very quickly. A tale as old as time.

[krispdreemurr]

the thing about The Krusielle Situation is that as much as there is "blame" to assign it falls squarely on kris' shoulders. susie as much as says outright "i only know how to tell if i have romantic feelings if someone else clearly indicates they have them for me first" in that one floradinn battle (and kris visibly flinches about it). she'd be receptive to signals from kris, but they're just... not giving them, or when they do it's shit like just kind of staring at her that she doesnt know what to deal w. similarly noelle Wants to be close to kris again but when they keep Not Communicating she doesnt know how to start/thinks that maybe only she wants that. so ofc when they can actually talk to and romantically involve themself with each other they do! it isnt on them to read kris' mind!

but ofc the reason kris isnt communicating and is drawing themself back is bc theyre in the Hell Situation and betraying everyone around them and think theyre doomed to die or worse and so on. the way kris shows love is through distancing themself from everyone around them, bc they think they can only hurt people by getting close to them. kris almost certainly started this whole thing planning to never befriend susie and never reconnect with noelle and just cleanly get the plan over with and then die in a ditch and be forgotten forever. the fact they want more than that, now, is Hurting Them Badly.

bc they are a stupid teenager trapped in the torment nexus they are not handling this with open communication and expression of their needs. instead, they keep turning away and hiding and hoping so, so bad that someone catches them. but because susie is a good friend and because susie is scared to demand more than she has been offered, and because noelle is a good friend and because noelle is scared to break something fragile and already half-broken, no one is pushing them the way they want to be pushed. kris is so, so loved, and if they reached out, they would be helped. but they can't reach out, and no one knows to reach for them.

tldr this all fucking Sucks and if youre saying its anyones Fault its, like, gasters, probably,

[susielesbianism]

susie is so absolutely fucking Not Okay.

[susielesbianism]

i already posted about her dialogue in the gerson fight, but for the purposes of this post i'll put it here along with the fountain dialogue.

THIS. this is why she's seemingly reverted back to being sillygoofy. it's a facade. she is shoving her emotions down and trying to be the rock for ralsei and kris to lean on.

she's trying to preserve the good times, should they get ripped away by the final prophecy. to have something good to look back on, in case the worst case scenario comes and she (likely) has to sacrifice herself. which...

... seems all too likely.

she reassures her friends that they will find a way to break the prophecy, and gerson encourages her to as well, but. does she really, truly believe she can?

she boldly and brazenly stated her intention to take noelle with her to the festival in chapter 4, but i believe it was the final prophecy that gave her the motivation to finally, really, pursue her affections for noelle. it could have just been a cute date, a fun teenage memory to look back on...

... but what if her time's running out?

what if she can't stop the final prophecy from happening?

she needs to tell noelle how she feels...

... before it all comes crashing down.

(side note: susie's sprite looking down here strikes at my heart every time.)

[loveletterworm]

i saw someone else make a post about this a couple days ago but the fact that the moment dess became the most likely knight candidate the world became flooded with jokes about how the knight is super incompetent and constantly getting killed or if its not that its insisting random male characters (sometimes literally just made up ones) are the knight instead in varying degrees of earnest. Okay. Not incredibly subtle

[hoodlytheowl]

[c-rowlesdraws]

opens a jar with holes punched in the lid and tips these out

[wha-archive]

Hehe, Brushbug. New episode of the anime tomorrow! Shirahama posted these to her twitter today.

[owwllly]

encouraging the new qifling

[loveuncured]

a new apprentice

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(hit the image limit multiple times, check the notes for the full conversation)

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[lugslogic]