Azafrán

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.

sparring buddies

But I think this Chapter has been really bringing to light the biggest limitation of this perceptiveness. And it’s one that has been there since nearly the beginning, but it’s now really brought to the foreground. Susie’s defiant optimism has been generally seen as a powerfully positive force, but it does have its darker side. It can lead to her to amazing acts of bravery and change, but it easily becomes a sort of Willful Ignorance.

It starts from her not noticing the basic concept of Darkners becoming inanimate objects in the Light World, until Ralsei actually explains it to her in no uncertain terms…

Which she herself admit was something she was fully capable of understanding before… she just didn’t want to accept it, because of what it would mean to the wonderful friendships and experiences she has only being able to have in the Dark World. Ever since she started her adventures, Susie has been trying to find the most hopeful lens on everything that happens to her, and the most hopeful and positive way that she could find to interpret the growing evidence that maybe the best things that have happened to her since she moved to Hometown might not be ‘Real’ on some level, is to pretend that it’s not there.

And you can see these same tendencies again and again, when she is confronted with the fact the Old Man is dead in the Light World, she at first convinces herself that resurrecting him must be easy. And when confronted with the fact that it’s not, she snaps at Ralsei at a way she never snapped at them before.

And I think this is especially what’s going on with Susie’s obliviousness of Kris’s shadiness and association with the Knight. She has had plenty of clues to notice something is up with them on that front…

The fact that when Flowery told her about the location of the Code and also said to not tell anyone, she also implicitly understood that Kris is to included in that list, implies she might have some suspicions already.

But actually admitting any of it, even to herself, would be heart-shattering to one of the most important relationships she made in the Light World. So she keeps turning a blind eye to it, and maybe she will continue to do so until the truth will be flopped right in front of her face once again.

This Chapter has been in many ways about both the power and limits of optimism and hope, the Flowers being able to make their dreams come true but being unable to survive for long in the Dark World, Rudy's attempts to downplay his illness backfiring on him, Flowery’s ultimately doomed confidence that he could beat the Knight and the foibles of Susie’s burning shining optimism being brought fully to the surface....

call it a pattern more than a hard rule - but often, whatever's desperate enough to be expressed finds its way into the hands. thought, coalescing into action. affection, pooling into touch. fear, stalling into hesitation.

which may well be why i'm so fascinated by the way ralsei stows hers at the back

kept like that, they're removed from the situation - too far back to reach or interfere, merely ever cinching around what was antecedently given

ralsei is the ultimate embodiment of hands tied. 

the prophecy's "prince" from the dark, meant only to assist and interpret, never to do. then comes chapter 5, and - SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT! -

And to Ralsei’s original naïve ideas of ‘how to be a friend’. Them thinking it’s a simple matter of always ‘being nice’ - paralleling ‘Relationship Mechanics’ in games that are mostly about choosing the friendliest and most placating options, and that's really all you need to 'max out' your relationship with whoever.

Only for them to realize that it’s more complicated than this as they grow closer to Susie, someone who absolutely is not the person who chooses only the ‘nice’ options all the time, and realize that they love her for it. But also at the same time, their sweet and passive demeanor seems to have pretty much failed to endear them to Kris, despite their best efforts.

That relationship only progresses when Ralsei stops trying so hard to be Lovable….

And then also Our Choices Don’t Matter meaning that there’s no Choice a Player can make that can meaningfully change Kris’s most important relationships. These relationships also don’t depend on simply picking ‘positive’ options (because if one likes Kris, that also goes hand-in-hand with liking some amount emotionally detached teasing and pranks). AND the most important moments of relationship development happen of Kris’s own volition, and they will rebel against words that are either too cruel or too sappy to their own taste. Which in previous Chapters was mostly a positive, hopeful thing. No matter our influence, Kris’s friends will always be Kris’s friends first and foremost. We don’t have enough power to ruin their most important relationships or to make their friends love them for something that they’re not.

But in this Chapter, there’s a new melancholy wrinkle added to it. Through the whole Festival Sequence, you’re presented with a bunch of choices that under standard ‘Game Logic’ might be expected to influence the relationships between Kris, Susie and Noelle - but in true Deltarune fashion, regardless of your choices, Susie and Noelle always start their romance at the end of it. But while this could be a heartwarming story about Cute Teenaged Lesbian Love triumphing over a manipulative Amoral Time God… the whole situation also makes it very clear that even if Kris was able to make choices freely, there’s nothing they could choose that would make Susie love them either. No matter how close they and Susie get, she just doesn’t seem to be attracted to them that way.

You can also add to it the way the Flowery Final Boss plays on the ‘Power of Friendship’ bit that’s generally expected at the end of a Pacifist Run…

Where Flowery has his own Recruits that instead seem to team-up with Flowery and against you, regardless of your choices. Because the cute little ACTs you did to Recruit them were nice and all, but were they really enough to make them truly love you more than they already loved Flowery and the other Flowers? More then they loved their Dark World?

And then there’s Flowery’s whole thing. Like in many other aspects of their characters, he and Ralsei are two sides of the same coin. If Pre-Character-Development Ralsei is like someone who tries to please and befriend everyone in an RPG, Flowery is someone trying to powergame his way through a dating sim. His (and the other Flowers) constant showering of Asgore with admiration, gifts and ideal hang-outs/dates that are all just perfect for him are partly just trying to repay Asgore for the kindness he’s given them and making him happy… and also to try and make Asgore choose Flower Kingdom and his Flower Family over Hometown and his Light World Family.

As much as Flowery teases Ralsei over their jealousy of him, his behavior often reveals that he’s jealous of Kris, for being part of that family that has, from his perspective, have given Asgore nothing but grief, and yet he still seems to love more than the Flowers. Kris is a living demonstration of how his gifts and dedication to Asgore is secretly just as ‘useless’ as his fake made-up overpowered stats. Flowery is also well aware that Kris is the one that opened the Fountain in the first place, and that they seem to have some sort of hidden agenda that’s not beneficial to their dad, and Flowery still feels like Asgore will always choose them over him.

And, well, the resolution to the Flower Kingdom arc is a mixture of that (especially considering how much he was motivated into exploring the Dark Worlds out of a belief that it will magically make his family life ‘go back to normal’…. Literally pushing the Flowers away for the sake of that goal...)

But also, it’s kind of a matter that Asgore does absolutely love the Flowers, just not in the way they wanted to. The Flowers wanted Asgore to love being around them so much, he’d choose their fantasy even if it means their deaths, but Asgore loved the Flowers so much that he wanted them to live.

And in way, that’s also kind of a mirror to Kris’ situation with Susie. She definitely loves Kris, they just feel like she’d never love them the way they’d want her to.

And then, the way Pink interacts with the whole Dating Sim Pastiches adds in some wrinkles of important nuance. She’s the one notable occasion (well, outside of the other even bigger exception we’d get to in a moment) where the Gamification of Relationships is actually useful, both for the Player to progress and beat the Fight and for Pink’s Body and Ghost to solve their relationship issues. In a way, it’s kinda like saying “Well, of course, just because you can’t make anyone love you, that doesn’t mean Choices don’t matter at all in relationships, obviously. Making Choices of consideration and healthy communication is important.”

And even then, part of the resolution is Pink’s Ghost accepting her Body’s needs even if it means she won’t necessarily have her all for herself. She there’s still there’s this undercurrent of accepting that you can’t make people love you the way you want them too.

But, of course, the biggest and obvious exception of the concept of ‘You can’t make someone love you’ is, well, the same as what seems to be the biggest exception to the concept of ‘Your choices don’t matter’, and that’s the Weird Route, of course.

The Weird Route is the one exception to the idea that we and our choices can’t have a meaningful affect on Kris’ relationships, and it very intentionally uses a lot of the Tropes and language of, like, going on a Romance Route with a character in a Video Game, complete with a supposed ‘climax’ when said NPC decides to invite you to the big romantic Festival, and it also uses every storytelling tool in its disposal to showcase how it’s utterly creepy and manipulative and wrong.

It’s adding to the point of ‘you can’t make people love you’ with ‘also, even if you can make people love you, you probably fucking shouldn’t”.

But I suppose, in many ways it is still a case of one not being able to control how people love them…

When talking about the meaning of the dress in this instance it's important to recognize that the dress can't be separated from the mannequin, both contextually and literally.

They are a package deal. The dress is permanently attached to the mannequin and must be analyzed with this context in mind. The dress being unobtainable on its own and instead being affixed to the mannequin makes this item inherently different from the dress in Undertale.

In Undertale, the dress is wearable. It's free to be given or taken with nothing to get in the way of that. In Deltarune, the mannequin flips this aspect of freedom on its head. The dress is unable to be taken off the mannequin or given to anyone else. The choice is taken away and the object is rendered useless.

The mannequin represents a lack of choice in the ill-fitting roles imposed upon oneself by others, and I think chapter 5 bolsters this idea even more with Pink's comment about how it "doesn't fit" just like how Spamton won't fit into the mannequin in chapter 2. Conversely, Ralsei likes the dress, but would be unable to wear it because it is instead being forced onto someone who doesn't want it.

I’ve seen a lot of people complain that Pink’s placement as a secret boss in chapter 5 is disconnected or unfitting. but i think she's actually perfect for the last secret boss, especially if secret bosses are meant to symbolize a desire for freedom. Now i will yap about it for several paragraphs

several parallels are built between Spamton and Pink during her fight, which make it clear they’re meant to be compared. their designs both feature pink and gold, they both steal a body that isn’t theirs, they’re both involved with green strings, they both feature Mad Dummy in their boss fight/theme, are both puppets related to cats, and they both have odd connections to the weird route (as evidenced by the translation of Cutie Mew Mew Magic). in almost every other way however, Spamton and Pink are opposites. Spamton’s story is a tragedy; from the start, his rainbow-colored peers don’t accept him as their own and see him as lesser for being different and less capable. he’s a broken and decrepit doll who’s had life screw him over every step of the way, he’s been abandoned by everyone he ever loved and cared about, his body has been marred beyond recognition, he’s treated as a living puppet with no autonomy or freedom, and he doesn’t get to keep his dream body or ‘fuse with his chosen vessel'. Even after being defeated by the fun gang, none of his problems are fixed; he has no choice but to accept his status as a simple puppet. Spamton is Kris’ worst case scenario. they are terrified this is going to be their own future, they’re visibly shaken by Spamton’s fight unlike any other in the entire game.  i think the reason Chapter 2 in particular features a character which symbolizes such a depressing future for Kris is because Chapter 2’s dark fountain is created by the Roaring Knight. a character which Kris is very heavily implied to have some kind of partnership with, one where the Knight holds power and control over Kris (as evidenced by the knighting scene after their fight, and the high probability that the Knight is the person who talks to Kris on the phone and sends them orders). the dynamic Kris has with the Knight can be compared to the relationship Spamton had with his benefactor, where he must follow orders from a mysterious voice on the phone lest he be punished (and punished he was).  by this point in the story, Kris is both being metaphorically puppeted by the Knight, and literally puppeted by the player, leaving them feeling a complete loss of autonomy. this situation is opening way to Kris’ worst future. one where they are abandoned by everyone and thrown aside like an unwanted puppet. like Spamton. in Chapter 5 however, the dark fountain is created by Kris instead. though the creation of the fountain was clearly premeditated (likely to get time for the Knight to kidnap Asgore), i don’t think it’s crazy to say that part of the reason they created it in the moment was to distract Susie from the Rudy situation. to keep Susie happy, because they don’t want her best day ever being ruined by the news. Kris cares about Susie so, so much, and it’s clear she’s a huge part of the reason Kris can now see a future for themself where things aren’t so bad. this hope manifests as Pink.  Pink is present in Kris’ subconscious before Chapter 5 even begins. Kris plays Shop 3 on the piano in Noelle’s house, a song which is later present in the shop owned by Pink. Shop 3 shows a more somber side to Pink’s character, as she simply watches the sunset, captivated by how freeing it feels to be able to do so in her dream body.  Pink herself, of course, is very much a parallel to Kris, being a Darkner and a Lightner both using the same body, who struggle with differing wants and desires and must ultimately learn to cooperate with each other despite that (which may hint towards the idea that Kris' ideal ending would be them and the player learning to understand each other, rather than one or the other being banished for good).

even though Pink isn’t really a flower, when she pretends to be one, HER rainbow-colored peers all see her as one of them and accept her with open arms, uncaring of her strange circumstances. In the end, Pink gets to keep her dream body and watch the sunset with her best friend. All things Spamton desperately wanted and never got to have, and all things Kris hopes to have. Pink is Kris’ best case scenario, their subconscious manifesting a future for them where everything ends up fine, even if just for a little while.

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.

[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!!!

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.)