it's weird that so few people seem to know that mormons largely run the troubled teen industry. ppl will imply that I'm religiously intolerant when I badmouth mormonism and it's like well. they child trafficked me. so. lol
it's why Utah has the worst youth rights laws in the country; bc the troubled child industry lobby fights all legislation designed to give kids more rights. it's a state-supported industry of child abuse run by the Mormon church 🤷
another thing about ch5 weird route that drives me crazyyyyyy is how Noelle, through the entirety of the game, was the only one who noticed that something was turbo wrong with Kris, that they weren't just acting a bit unusual, she even says "it's like they're an entirely different person" at some point, but in the end she projects her own desire to break free on Kris and thinks that them changing is a good thing, that this is how they obtain freedom and control over their life. when in reality this is the exact opposite of their situation 'cause like 80% of the time we're controlling them and OOOOOOOUCH
Carol the moment she can't use her ultra smart super computer spirit to cheat:
It was interesting to try and come up with how Carol could parallel Pegasus bc his thing is seeing other's minds. I really wanted to pair her up with Queen (queencarol ftw) but with how I've set up Darkner lore, I had to tweak the cheating strat to smth that fits Queen more. It's not a one-to-one but whateverrrr
(Next)
#Bonus: I lost motivation to finish this particular comic but here's the lore on how they met:
I really, really love Susie and Noelle's scenes during the Holiday Manor segments of chapter 4. Not just in a yuri sense, but specifically because there's this little meta game being done with Susie, Dess, and her memory + how it's preserved and like... the Idea Of Undertale in our perception as an audience.
Deltarune is "A game you can play after you complete Undertale", right? Toby calls it that himself. It is steeped in the expectations we have from that game. Its characters. Its plot points. Its motifs. The impact it had on us as a story, both from the audience's perspective AND from the creator's. Back when chapter 1 first came out, Toby talked about his anxieties regarding this new project, and being unable to "make us feel what we felt with Undertale".
Watsonianly, in Deltarune's story, there is this insanely intricate web of small town drama and trauma and history between Hometown's residents.
...and in barges Susie.
Susie who is the new girl. Susie who doesn't know anyone. Susie who has no respect or attachment to the "mythology" of Hometown, both in a religious sense and in the sense of the history of the people who live there.
Susie who, in the manor, says she "never played the original dragon blazers". Only Dragon Blazers 2.
To me she feels like a sort of implicit allegory for the new Deltarune fan? The one with ZERO attachment to Undertale. Because they never played it or because they played it afterwards. The one experiencing THIS story for its OWN sake.
She's unshackled by the core theme of nostalgia that binds every other character, because the objects that inspire it in Kris or Noelle or Hometown as a whole, they mean nothing to her. They hold no sacredness, no significance. So she tramples over them. A sort of desecration through cluelessness.
Which is EXACTLY what she does with Dess' memory! With her room, kept perfectly still and unchanged in the years since she disappeared, her guitar shoved in the closet to gather dust.
These are objects that MEAN something, that hold an incredible significance, to Noelle and to Carol and what and who they lost. They're something that (presumably) Carol preserved in an obsessive need to hold onto everything left of her daughter.
And it stagnates. It's frozen. It's no less dead, just because it is preserved.
...and it's precisely by desecrating that reverence that Susie is able to breathe new life into it. To create new connections with Noelle. To quite literally Make Art.
Waltzing into Dess' time-frozen room, not giving a fuck, plopping down against her bed waiting for us to make noise. You can see Noelle warn her to leave the room untouched, but she follows her shortly after. The ice melts.
Later, grabbing the guitar. playing it (badly!) but playing it for the first time in actual years. Making Noelle laugh. Reminding her of her sister.
It... kinda reminds me of the reverence we as an audience have for Undertale as the original source material.
Think about it. Didn't Toby have to calm everyone down when he released chapter 1 and reassure us that playing Deltarune would leave the ending we got for undertale untouched? Because people would be preventing themselves from interfacing and experiencing and CONNECTING with a new story, with a new piece of art, out of fear of it affecting... the one they'd already experienced. the one in the past, the one they'd already finished and closed and left to sit untouched on their desktops ever since.
This aspect of Susie is the thematic beating heart of chapter 4. It's the potential, the fire Gerson sees burning in her eyes.
And it ties back to Susie's own trauma and abuse and her being forcefully cast as the villain. Someone bad, broken, not good enough. Someone who should keep her nose out of things outside of her range.
Her confrontation with Carol when she snatches the guitar from her hands... sure she might not know the history/the context/the """sacred texts""", and that CAN isolate her and negatively affect her ability to navigate the social situations in Hometown (and allegorically her artistic output. she can't play the guitar, the piano, or write all that well), but she HAS value. Her perspective has value just by virtue of being new, original, revolutionary, her own, something SHE and only she can bring to the table. And those can improve through practice, dedication, and support. Ralsei himself, while well intentioned, makes the same mistake by shutting her healing skills down.
Total knowledge and reverence for Dess' memory and the past has frozen the Holiday family (and Hometown as a whole) in the past. It's locked them in stasis. they know how things were. they know how things "should be". they cannot deviate. every week they worship a prophecy that dictates their past, present and future.
"Only then will the worlds will be SAVED". But should that really be the goal...? When you save a game, you preserve the things you've already done in it. The only thing you can do is overwrite it or start again. It's an inherently cryogenic process.
...In the game MOTHER 3, The Dragon is a mythological creature slumbering under the crust of the earth, kept in its sleep through 7 magic needles. The needles can only be removed by someone who knows the move PK Love, when its power is needed. Once the last needle is removed, the Dragon will follow the heart of this person, good or bad, by bringing on the apocalypse and destroying the world.
person who is trapped inside an allistic body here. i really like having no pressure on top of me and not being particularly interested in any one specific thing
Over 90% of parents of visibly intersex children opt for cosmetic surgery on their infants.
The ones that don't experience medical violence then, likely experience it as a teenager.
I didn't.
I am very rare in that I did not experience medical violence.
Why? Because I learned what intersexuality was as a young age, and I actively fought against what doctors wanted to do to me. All the way down to legal research on what medical care minors can be forced into. I remember walking into that doctor's appointment with the state law written down that proved that if I did not consent they could not do surgery.
That is why intersex activism is important. It saved me and it will save more.