So, I’ve seen some things in the tag, looking around in there as I do. And it’s come to my attention that after Kris throws the soul into a cage - you can move the soul around. You’re still in control of it.
And then - they turn to look at the ‘camera’. At you. The player. Showing awareness of a fourth wall that they’re not supposed to be aware of. And they brandish a knife.
But my theory is they’re not planning on going Genocidal on their own happy ending. Or not yet, at least. Sure, things might be a little different from what happened in Undertale, but they’re happy. Everyone’s happy, and living on the Surface. They went to school like a normal kid. They got in trouble like a normal kid. They ate pie like a normal kid.
And then you, the player, showed up.
And as soon as you did, something as mundane as retrieving chalk from the closet turned into another adventure, another prophecy, another world to be saved. They were dragged out of their normal life and forced to do things they didn’t necessarily want to do. They had to defeat the Spade King. They had to stop the fountain. They had to befriend Suzy. There were even parallels of the characters from Undertale, marching to the same enemies-to-friends drum as the adventure we all know and love.
And even when they got back to what passes for normalcy, you, the player, would not let up. You were out of the Dark World but you wouldn’t let them rest. They were forced into uncharacteristic behaviors. They rebelled where they could - saying “NO NO NO NO” repeatedly when prompted to look at an anime review. Playing the piano in the hospital so badly that the receptionist comments on it. And Noelle points this out too - commenting on ‘your’ strange behavior, how ‘you’re’ not usually so talkative, and wondering why ‘you’ went to visit her father in the hospital when ‘you’ had no reason to.
They weren’t given a choice, because someone else was making all their choices for them - and that someone else was YOU.
It’s only once they finally go to bed that they’re finally free from your control, and they’re so frustrated with the player that they rip the SOUL, the thing that the player controls, out of their own chest, and THROW it into a cage.
And judging from the state of the cage and the stain on the wall, this isn’t the first time this has happened. So they turn to you, and they show you their creepy smile. Their knife. Their glowing red eye. And I re-iterate; they turn to face YOU. They’re threatening YOU. That gesture is something they want YOU to see.
They don’t want you to come back and let the soul out of the cage. They're angry with you. They’re sick of being controlled. And if you won’t leave them alone? If you keep asking for more and more? If you keep forcing them to interact with the world in ways they didn’t ask for, simply to entertain you for a few hours?
They’re going to do to you what you did to them. Remove the illusion of choice, and take the liberty of choosing for you. They’re going to start rebelling more. They’re going to start doing things YOU don’t want them to. They’re going to take the fans’ demands for a sequel and turn it against them - push them far enough, and maybe they’ll even destroy everything, so there’s no reason for you to come back.
It might be that the only way you can ‘win’ is not to play at all. But you’ll play anyway. Because you always want more.
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
gummygunk
origamiaround
kaledo-art
vaporwave
