cromch

Addressing the three-member-battle-system-shaped elephant in the room because chapters 2 and 5 REALLY wanted to rub this rule in our faces, like you can't tell me that I'll look like this:

Trevor Noah interviewing Judith “Badass” Heumann

Judy Heumann believed in the inherent value of each disabled individual and would never back down on what she thought was right. Her friends and fellow activists remember her as a strong leader.

Judy Heumann

December 18, 1947 - March 4, 2023

Hi! Thanks for the ask! This is a fun question, and due to how I tend to be, I ended up trying to search extensively for all of them. Though I might've missed some stuff...

(Also I'm going from the top of my head for the order, so they're not listed by their actual order fully and I didn't put screenshots for all of them TvT)

The difficult part is the fact that you can't entirely rely on every scene to find the usage of a 1st person pronoun due to Japanese as a contextual language, as a result, pronouns can be and are often dropped in conversations.

And notably, as this applies to a lot of the Org members, most of them do change which one they use depending on what type of scenario they're in, whether it's who they're talking to or if they're in a casual or serious scenario. But they all tend to have one they default to.

In general, when being formal/speaking to a higher-up, a lot of them will switch to "watashi" (私) of if they're feeling dramatic, they might use the more archaic "wa/ware" (我) (so I'm leaving those out with a few exceptions since it's more about personal 1st person)

Xemnas is pretty consistent in his personal use of "watashi"

Xigbar/Braig (and all known Luxu variants) tend to use "ore" (俺)

I don't have immediate access to the JP version of the Character Files and/or I might've missed it while skimming, so I can't say 100% sure for Dilan/Xaldin (besides his use of wa/ware in situations that call for it) but based off the fact that Lexaeus/Aeleus uses "ore", I'm assuming he does as well (but who knows, maybe he's a "watashi" or "boku" (僕) user ToT)

Vexen/Even leans towards "watashi"

Ienzo/Zexion personally uses "boku" but he does switch to "watashi" when talking to Ansem the Wise (in 3rd image)

Axel/Lea and Isa/Saix are consistent personal "ore" users

Luxord uses "watashi"

For Marluxia/Lauriam, it's pretty interesting!

As Lauriam, when he's on his own or talking to Strelitzia, he uses "ore" but when talking to other people who aren't Strel, he uses "boku" (ボク) but in katakana instead of kanji. (1st and 2nd image using "ore" vs 3rd and 4th image using "boku")

As Marluxia though, we see him use "watashi"

For Elrena/Larxene, she's pretty consistent with "watashi"

Demyx uses "ore"

Roxas uses "ore" and Xion uses "atashi" (あたし)

and when it released for ios? holy fuck were they DROWNING in money. when they took a weekend to put the game on sale for a dollar, down from five, a couple months after release, they made as much in that one weekend as they did since its release. it was among the top paid apps for weeks.

with critics, peggle was among some of the top downloadable, mobile, and general best games of all time at the time of its release in 2007 and onwards, and it only shot up in popularity as they made it more accessible to more people. and this was in a time before candy crush.

the thing about simple addictive puzzle games is that they make you feel competent, confident, smart, and cool for being good at them. not everybody can learn how to aim in a shooter or the best strategy in an rpg. but anybodys grandmother or baby brother can play a simple puzzle game, and the nature of these games and the way they make you feel only makes you want to play more and more.

however very very fucking few people who play simple puzzle games that you can master on the toilet would be going to E3 in the early 2010s. remember in 2012 when every ~hardcore gamer~ would screech about ‘fake gamers’ who only play candy crush? thats what peggle was. it was THE crack mobile game from the pre-candycrush era.

no one who was excited about peggle was going to E3. the hundreds of thousands of people who played peggle were not the type of people who would consider going to (or even giving a shit about) E3.

but it sold like hot cakes, and candy crush was churning out content like a madman, and EA owned popcap now, so because the game sold amazingly, and because they wanted to keep cashing in on it, and because corporate drones who controlled the scripts didnt comprehend that their consumerbase isnt one homogeneous mass, they decided to announce peggle 2 at E3 2013.

but not just “oh by the way peggle 2”, no. peggle sold like skyrim, it sold like black ops, clearly they should be saving the best for last, they should announce it like it was the craziest most incredible announcement of the night!

thus:

Everyone loves Noelle. She's sugar and spice and everything nice. She's the mayor's daughter,a choir girl, she's a cross country team member, she's a straight A student, she's a not-so-straight girl, she's Berdly's study-buddy and has "snake sundays" with Catti and Jockington.

Everyone loves Noelle.

But no one knows Noelle.

No one, except Kris. Which is probably why she keeps longing for them even after years of being apart, despite her having other friends.

This is why she dreams about the new girl in class no one likes, and imagines that deep down there's more to her if only someone gave her a real chance.

Noelle is surronded by people, people who really care about her, but she still feels alone.

Noelle is a good kid. She's soft and innocent and fragile and she NEEDS to be protected. Everyone thinks so.

The world is dangerous, the dark world is dangerous, how could poor, helpless, innocent Noelle handle it?

And she seemed to have internalized it too. Noelle is a good kid. Noelle is innocent and fragile. Because no one will ever let her be anything else.

The picture of Noelle people have in their minds is so suffocating for her she started to dissassosiate from her own identity.

Everything has to be baby-proofed for Noelle. She shouldn't read out loud in class and she shouldn't be around Susie and she shouldn't know about the dark world because come on, it's Noelle we're talking about! Of course she can't handle herself.

And of course we shouldn't ask her before deciding for her.

But if we do ask her...what does she want?

Noelle doesn't want her world to be baby proofed. She is going out of her way to explore glitches and secrets and the dark corners of her video games. She watches horror movies and misses exploring near the graveyard after dark. She wants the class's bully to push her around.

She wants the catharsis of feeling scared and hurt in a safe enviorment, and get comforted afterwards.

She feels safer with Kris who does things like pretend to rip their heart out, and Susie who treathens to eat peoples' faces than with her mother who made their house into an Impregnable fortress and cancel school when it's raining.

And when you think about it, this sentiment of "protecting Noelle" is a little ridiculous when you realize that this girl has been through more terror and heartbreak than many other people her age.

Yeah she's rich and popular and has her own nice room with a computer and a large flat TV, but her older sister in an event where it's implied to have been traumatic for her and her father is sick. And in her mother's wish to protect her, she made her nice room into a golden cage.

Noelle isn't ignorant to the harshness of life, she knows it intimately, and pretending like she's a sweet innocent angel who'd break under any kind of duress is frankly insulting, and makes her underestimate her own abilities and doubt her own judgment.

Not only that, it's also a part of what leads to her getting actually hurt in the weird route.

The sad part about abuse, is that it always comes from people we're supposed to trust. Noelle wasn't wrong about trusting Kris, Kris would never hurt her. But we would, and right now, we're wearing their face.

Kris had to have known we'd come to possess them, they prepared a cage ahead of time. Carol, Noelle's own mother, certainly acts like someone who's aware of our existance as well. We're crucial to whatever they're planning, odds are that they're the ones who brought us here.

But Noelle doesn't know.

So she's left to wonder why is Kris acting so strange, and she ignores her instincts when they scream at her that she's in danger, and she lets them lead her through the dark because it's KRIS, and... she's just a Noelle. She couldn't handle this strange place herself, she's weak and scared and fragile. It's best if she lets other people take charge.

Then, Susie tells her she's dreaming and Kris backs up the lie, they reassure her and comfort her and do everything to keep her blissfully ignotant of the horrors she's been through and committed,

So when we come back for more, she's taken off guard again.

If Kris or Carol had told her about the soul, or Susie told her about the dark world, or literally anyone else had taught her to trust her own instincts and provided her someone she could talk to once she realized something was wrong with Kris, we couldn't have taken advantage of her.

Before chapter three, the weird route was considered to be just the evil route of deltarune, something we can do as the players of this game if we're determined enough. And since we knew that chapter three likely wouldn't have Noelle in it, the predictions were that we could recreate it with Toriel, use our evil magic powers to get her to kill people.

But it's not that. We as the player of this game have some powers no one else does, but a lot of them were GIVEN to us. We know that Ralsei could have solved every puzzle on his own, but he lets us do them ourselves. Before Susie agreed to it, she wouldn't take our commends in battle, and she still would refuse to do certain things if she doesn't want to.

We can talk because we have Kris to relay our words and we can act because we have them to follow our instructions. To be our vessel. And even they can choose how to interpet our commends and often use loopholes to gain agency.

Even our save files are seem to be ran by Gaster.

Our power over this world isn't natural and it isn't law, it's given to us and we're reminded every single chapter that it can get taken away, too.

And our power over Noelle specifically is a result of her trust in Kris and lack of trust in herself.

namixi