Metaposts that will [HYPERLINK] your [BLOCKED] clean off

i do think it's interesting, all that said, that flowery also kind of models himself after rudy. it seems like rudy is one of the few people that asgore still pays attention to; asgore clearly has romantic feelings for rudy, but moreover, rudy supports his schemes while toriel does not, rudy was asgore's friend from long ago, and i don't doubt that rudy may have taken precedence over asgore's light-world children in occasion if his neglectful behavior is anything to go off of. flowery seems to have learned a lot of his misogynistic perspective on asgore and toriel's situation from asgore, as well (recall that flowery is, while a living thing, not alive the way a lightner is, and would be just as unaware of the specifics of things as queen and tenna; this isn't to make excuses for him, but rather to inform the situation at large;) i can easily see why he would form a more favorable opinion of rudy, and why he would see acting like the rudy of asgore's stories as the best way to get asgore's attention in spite of the fact that he primarily sees asgore as something like to a father figure. the rudyisms are largely a façade, gestures and words mimicked hollowly in a bid to gain approval from asgore, and they're a lot more downplayed when he's not around, acting more like kris' popular, snarky, pompous older brother instead.

for example: the reason the knight in deltarune seems to be such a lover of the cutscene-no-jutsu is diegetic - this means it exists in the world, not just for our convenience.

the reason for this is that dark worlds are allegorical for the process of "play" (stuff to look up: Huizinga, Salen, Zimmerman, "The Magic Circle", "Homo Ludens") - a playground world where everyone agrees with the same rules.

sidebar: "play" if children play "knights," then a cardboard tube is a sword because everyone agrees it is. if children play tag, then touching someone suddenly has magical significance because everyone agrees to it. the "magic circle" is the name these scholars give to that invisible boundary around a game. once you're inside it, everyone accepts the game's rules. this is what "play" means in an academic context.

in this allegory, the knight is an outsider who does not care about the rules - call it a schoolyard bully if you want - and for whom the play doesn't matter if they refuse the frame entirely. cutscenes are not bound by the "play". participating in the battles means participating in the "play" (there's many reasons why the action button is literally 'act', this is one of them).

your cardboard armor doesn't mean anything against a baseball bat if the person with the bat doesn't agree that it's secretly steel. being in deltarune's rpg battles means that you are being pulled into the "play", which is why in chapter 3 kris needs to basically fudge it to get the fight back into cutscene mode since they are in cahoots.

all the other secret bosses, by elaboration, do believe in and participate in (to some extent) the "playground".

It's also commonly speculated that the yellow soul was the last one before you.

Think about that. After all he's done, Asgore is trying desperately to remind himself why he's doing this, to hold himself together; and the thing that finally breaks his conviction is when one of the children, tears in his eyes, agrees with him. The child agrees completely that humanity's past actions are their own fault. Because hearing that, you can't help but understand how horrible all this is.

Because Deltarune establishes her as brushing off pain easily as part of the game - if you attack her she gains mercy just like any ACT - so even if she kept losing to monsters she'd just want to come back and play again.

But it's also established in Aqua's team battle with Seth that, quite specifically, she CANNOT handle doing the same attack over and over.

She never even made it to Asgore's second turn, did she?

King - relegated to the supply closet after a lightner accidentally tore him. Has grown to resent lightners as a result of the Card Kingdom denizens being abandoned.

Queen - believes she is helping lightners by distracting them from their pain. Feels threatened when the internet shuts off. Acts with what she thinks are good intentions but is ultimately misinformed.

Tenna - fearing for his life the entirety of chapter three. Doesn't understand why the people around him keep disappearing and is desperately trying to bring back the past. Stuck in a negative environment with a poor mental state and acts accordingly.

Flowery - cared for by Asgore diligently despite both Asgore's shop and life crumbling around him. Feels protective of the man who has kept him and his family alive all these years.

A short lesson in deductive reasoning, using a Deltarune puzzle.

The answer is "the lake." Everyone knows that - the game told us. What fewer people have done is prove it from the structure of the wrong answers, and the proof is more interesting than the solution, because the apparatus accidentally teaches a complete course in formal deduction. Every rejected answer is a true statement about the world, written in the negative. Read correctly, the 1,229 wrong answers draw you a map.

Three principles before we start, because they're the actual lesson:

Define your universe of discourse before you eliminate. You cannot cross answers off a list until you know what set you're choosing from. Most reasoning fails here.

A partition must be exhaustive. If your categories don't tile the whole space, an answer can hide in the gap.

Sort your evidence by what it constrains. Not every "no" narrows the location. Some narrow the referent, some the type, some the intent, some reveal only the speaker. Treating every rejection as equivalent is the most common error in informal reasoning.

Full post under the Read More.

catty and bratty, two characters that in deltarune hate each-other because of how similar to each-other they are. each calling the other a copy of themselves.

I noticed in the room in chapter 4 with the wafers surrounding the philosopher.

ALSO has some interesting things going on.

(its that damn ‘green character and a character associated with pink being pissed off at each-other despite being similar’ motif again)

When only the wafer or the organikk are unpetrified, this room is fine. They’re pretty similar, both respecting the statues of their ancestors.

But when they’re both unfrozen they both just HATE each-other. with the green wafers specifically having more vitriol towards the organikk, just like how between catty and bratty, bratty seems to be the one that dislikes the other more.

The green wafers are pissed off at pink philosopher organikk, thinking they’re an idiot that did something to their ancestor (not realizing that the idiot IS their ancestor) and wanting them to leave IMMEDIATELY, while the philosopher is somewhat annoyed that the wafers aren’t statues anymore because they were easier to worship when they were frozen. (the Organikk does note that they’re fine with being beaten up, though.)

Interesting case how in this scenario they both believe that they came AFTER the other person, because the first sanctuary darkners worshipped the philosophers as their ancestors, and the second sanctuary darkners worshipped the wafers as their ancestors.

I also find the paradoxical nature of the oganikks to be interesting. they simultaneously came before and after the wafers (hence the wafers referring to them as ancestors despite them only coming to life ‘after’ the first fountain closed) and their native dark world is one that’s a ‘copy’ of the one that came before, yet also having always been there/being predestined to exist in the future (because they were there in the 1st sanctuary). It both reminds me of undertale’s nature as a game that only exists because of a prior unfinished game (deltarune) that was eventually brought back and created as a sequel/parallel story to undertale. It also reminds me of the dancestors and the idea of the scratch from homestuck.

I really badly want to say that the forgotten man being associated with jumbling up words and the order of events in chapters 3 & 4 is associated with deltarune being a ‘remix’ of undertale narratively and an anagram of undertale titularly, but i dont have any proof for that.

A specific line of dialogue has me interested, though. the philosopher organikk, after talking about how they liked the wafers better when they were frozen, says: “They said they know what an acorn is. That’s no good. If you know, it means you cant ask what it is!”

which calls back to a line another organikk said in the second sanctuary: “I heard theres something inside the acorn. But i don’t know where to find an acorn. Or even what one is in the first place. We must find a way. We must find a way to use alchemy to make this acorn.”

obviously this also ties into the whole idea of “roots” as well.

I genuinely wonder if this sums up specifically WHY the forgotten man and gaster seemingly do not gel well.

The organikk wants to use alchemy (science) to pursue the answer of whats inside the acorn, but DOES NOT want to be told the answer by someone that already knows the answer. In a sort of ‘The journey is more important than the destination’ sort of way.

It reminds me of the abc_123_a audio from undertale:

“Hello, have some respect and dont spoil the game. Its impossible to have mysteries nowadays because of nosy people like you. Please keep all of this between us. If you post it online i wont make any more secrets. It will be your fault.”

Maybe the idea is that one of them is more interested in the inquisitive nature of the experiment, rather than the results. hm.

I stg all of this means something.

Hell, this might even be part of the reason why Catty and Bratty have dialogue sprites in Deltarune.

I consider both the face sprites and Catty being given a confirmed last name and a mandatory encounter in chapter 4 to be indicative of at the very least Catty becoming relevant to the story soon, so maybe these parallels will continue idk.

like he doesnt go to mike. he doesnt talk to the weather. hes not out in the town, he's not meeting with his neighbors. he cant go to ramb bc we dont know where the fuck he even went. he just got put back together from literally having his arms cut clean off and being described as Barely Alive and his very last interaction with pretty much anybody from tv world was everybody leaving him. he's so desperate for some level of acceptance that he doesn't think hes going to Get from his tv world denizens that he's willing to be abused by spade king in order to get it.

i was recently raving about the use of horror in deltarune because it is often the subversive space, it's the space where villains and final girls dominate the footprint of the genre, and it's famously historically (very problematically) queer. because it was always telling stories that stood in for cultural anxiety, it depicted characters who were different and it's become an affirmative and often reclaimed and celebrated genre in spite of and because of its history. carol clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws explores the nuanced relationship of horror and gender politics — one of the things i remember is the androgyny of horror in killers and survivors alike;

The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine... (...) Lest we miss the point, it is spelled out in her name: Stevie, Marti, Terry, Laurie, Stretch, Will, Joey, Max. Not only the conception of the hero in Alien and Aliens but also the surname by which she is called, Ripley, owes a clear debt to slasher tradition. (40)

clover was criticizing the genre for this (for valid reasons), but i think it's also this semi-androgynous soup of heroes and villains in horror, plus the fact that villains become the face of the film and girls become the heroes, and the whole thing is always a bit camp and hyperbolic, that they attract the disenfranchised as an audience. for a brief moment, the gaze might be flipped on its head.

a movie like Evil Dead 2 which is the blatant real-world "Blood Crushers 2" (susie hasn't seen the first, and the protagonist's severed hand attacks... Basement), is the reverse case. you have a male protagonist named Ashley (whom clover considers a "Final Boy"). the movie is a cult classic with a comedic edge, and Ash is doing all sorts of looney tunes-esque gags against his own hand. it's not a movie that takes itself and its protagonist as seriously as a western or an average superhero flick. that noelle and susie are attracted to horror instead is reflective of their worldview, where things that are scary or strange might not be.

and, also, i recently watched Aliens so thinking of the blatant xenomorph inspiration with queen's design has been really hitting. like oh... of course. the xenomorph, a species with a queen mother... a character who represents a maternal horror. the queen xenomorph is not really an intentionally malicious force as Aliens presents it, rather, just a mother making the logical conclusion towards protecting and proliferating its species/its offspring, a simple survival calculation. the queen only actively attacks ripley in vengeance. for dess and noelle, who watched horror together, and who both certainly have complicated relationships with their mom, the xenomorph imagery on queen comes through in what it means to have a monster mother. and it comes through in queen's behaviour, as she makes a calculation seemingly to do what's best for the lightners, even if it doesn't hold up under the human morality microscope.

just so much to think about with how horror and movie monsters get employed in deltarune, how they weave themselves into the story. how they stand as the angle through which noelle and susie can put a subversive worldview to words. susie aligns herself with the movie monster only to find out... she is maybe the final girl. i am also led to think about the framing of the girl as a second hero alongside the contradictory prophecy panel "And last, the girl / at last, the girl". I don't think i have a central thesis for this analysis, but it's very fun seeing the bits and pieces of a genre leaking its way into this game's story and having it mean something... quite subtle.

Like, people can keep an object for different reasons, is important or useful, or it has sentimental value. But for the same reason they can throw it away, because it's unimportant, not useful anymore, or it holds a bad memory for the owner.

(THIS POST IS TOO LONG *tiny pumpkin starts dancing while carrying a page cut*)

I had a sudden realisation when Susie talks about her experience with piano. This scene is an obvious nod to Susie's experience with learning healing, but... I think there's another, far deeper meaning to this scene.

What Susie experienced with the piano... is actually EXACTLY what happens in that earlier Piano scene when you attempt to solve the puzzle yourself.

If you were to ever to do ANY attempt on the song to unlock the door... Kris makes sure to mess up your notes before you even have a chance to finish. They forbid you from playing. The same exact way Susie was forbidden to play.

And so they had someone else play. Someone better. Kris.

Susie describes her past experience with piano as an attempt to further connect with Kris. But ironically, Kris was the one who was better. The one who basically took over the inexperienced one after they were told they weren't allowed to play.

Kris never let's us get near the piano, and makes sure to always fumble up the notes, "A Concert For You."

Susie's experience isn't a parallel to Kris at all. It's a parallel to the Player.

And we further connect this to the Healing arc with Ralsei. Where Ralsei teaches Susie to heal, but never actually let's her do healing when it's actually needed.

In Ch 4, Kris allows us to play piano, but further prevents us from trying when it's truly needed or when it's something complex.

But this also shows us that not all things are so simple. Kris is someone that truly loves piano, so it makes sense that they don't want someone else in their body to command them to play, for Kris, playing piano is their freedom, and its not something that they want someone else to take.

...Yet at the same time, there's nothing wrong with you wanting to play, even if it sucks. Because maybe, just maybe, it might become someone else's freedom too.

Neither are in the wrong in this matter. Between Susie and the better piano player that took her place, and between the Player and Kris... no one is necessarily wrong here. Things here are a lot more complicated than that.

This isn't the first time where Susie's character is aligning closer to the Player than Kris and Ralsei, with her becoming the one to speak for us for certain things when we're unable to, such as her vocalising the frustration of having people keep secrets not long after Ralsei and Kris kept hiding secrets from the Player.

Also the fact that the Ch 4 extended scene where you struggle against Kris in Dess' closet has Susie accept BOTH Kris and the Player equally rather than preferring one side over the other. She just doesn't realise it's two seperate ppl at once.

Not to mention how the Player and Susie are actively synergizing with each other in the best way possible.

Susie is the only one whose abilities you can directly enhance midbattle. Rude Buster's dmg gets raised by z spam (ch 1 + 2) or z timing (ch 3 + 4). And her healing gets enhanced the more you allow her to heal.

And it just so happens that Gerson' fight is also essentially TRAINING THE PLAYER to use these mechanics. It teaches you the z mechanic to parry. It forces you to let Susie heal to enhance it. It wasn't just training for Susie. It was also training for YOU to learn how to work with Susie as a duo.

Its really funny cause Susie's heal isn't a "Prayer" like other healing spells. And yet, Susie's heal requires a higher being's interference to raise its effectiveness.

If you think abt it, both the Player and Susie are similar in the sense that we're both outsiders to the grand scheme of the narrative, and are both trying to figure out what the heck is even going on in this town. You fought Kris in Ch 4 to help Susie while Kris is working with the Knight.

Even though everything abt Susie should make her clash with us (her ability to override choices, ignore our commands), she's the one who is the most aligned to us in terms of how we feel and experience the events of the story, and she is the one whose dynamic with the Player, has been nothing but purely beneficial to each other.