ao3 archaeology

hello! i've never been part of a community but sometimes i get curious about ppl and their weird quirks and thoughts, so here i am.

hyperfixation status: deltarune (thanks to weird route)

i write some stuff but none of the stories got to a point where i felt like posting them, plus most of my ideas i daydream about for hours and then end up writing nothing cause my brain decided the dopamine was already harvested. damn...

feel free to send me truly any weird thoughts or philosophies that are on your mind. i just hate the idea of thoughts that have nowhere to go :)

oh, also half of my life is fueled by pure horny energy, i don't know why, i was just born this way.

i see some ppl talk as if noelle drowns in the weird route, but i feel like there's a lot of evidence to the contrary that makes it hard for me to believe.

first the reasons as to why one would think noelle drowns in chapter 5 (lmk if im missing smth). 1 because her and kris go underwater for an extended period of time with no apparent resolution, and 2 because in one of the boards in chapter 3 you "discard" the white cloak, which sounds like foreshadowing and would fit her drowning in chapter 5.

but, i feel like the game has since chapter 2 been insisting on the idea that noelle is uniquely strong: the queen captures her and mentions explicitly that she wants noelle because of her strength, meaning something about noelle is already special over any other member in their circle, even kris. in addition, the dark world seems to manifest people's "essence", and for whatever reason noelle has distinctly dangerous ice magic innately.

i think these two facts are clearly relevant, and they lead to the question of what strength means in deltarune. well, based on the themes of the game, i think strength is just a vessel for freedom, i.e. being strong means you can do things others can't, it means you can defy fate, it means you can change... the way noelle speaks in chapter 5 weird route supports this idea. she finds it remarkable that kris changed, and clearly understands that the process of making her strong throughout the entire game might let her change and defy fate too. i think this is the whole basis for why the weird route focuses on noelle. it's cause she has a visceral desire to be free, and is therefore very attracted to the idea of strength. that's why she has dangerous magic, and that's why we can tell her to do awful things in the first place. it'd never work on susie or anyone else because they lack that underlying desire.

going back to chapter 5 weird route... noelle has become stronger, knows it, and wants to exercise that strength due to her desire to be free. with all this in mind, doesn't it seem almost non-sensical narratively if noelle just ends up drowning? we insisted on making her strong, just for her to fail to exercise that strength in the first hurdle and die? i dunno, just feels weird.

it probably sucks the most to be kris, but we don't know what kris did to have the SOUL implanted in them. maybe they made a deal with the "demon" or smth, making them partially culpable.

susie gives me very pure vibes, and this might be her first time trusting anyone with her feelings and love. it'd be so fucking bad if she learned about what kris (the SOUL) has been up to with noelle in the weird route. might just irrecoverably make her completely shut off emotionally.

noelle, depending on to what extent she was manipulated and coerced, encountered an alien intelligence wearing her childhood friend's skin and got enthralled by its values to the point of abandoning her own.

ig it looks like both kris and noelle have at least some questions surrounding them that could heavily influence how bad i feel for them. in that way, susie might really be the number one victim in all of this at least among kris's friends.

the infiidelity vibes i got in the weird and aborted weird routes are crazy. for example the parallel of susie doing "something crazy" by carrying noelle knee-deep into the lake in the normal route and noelle wanting to do "something crazy" with kris by risking drowning just to defy fate in the weird route. makes susie feel completely out of her depth. or even worse that even in the normal route, if something came along that noelle saw as capable of giving her more "freedom" (in the form of strength perhaps?) , she might genuinely jump ship. idk if i'm lost in the sauce with this one tho.

on another note finally grew the balls to play the weird route after chapter 5 released. idk what it says about me but i enjoyed isolating a teenager by making them do something irreversible and creating a singular ally in them. idk if i enjoyed the paranoia from feeling like at any moment the game could judge me for my actions. it might be the first time i've had to take a break cuz of distress despite valuing long immersive sessions highly.

i'll give my life away if that means a digitalized clone of me gets to exist in my stead

i see so much goddamn tribalism everywhere i go, and i feel like it's the source of about half* of all the bs in the world.

can we actually consider how our words and actions relate to our principles? also our beliefs don't need to be tied to our identities. also it's okay to realize we've been doing something that goes against our values and improve from that. no one's perfect.

being wrong about smth important is super uncomfy, but i think it should feel good and liberating, once you get past that friction.

i wish it was ok to ask questions without feeling like some topics had to be worded perfectly to not be received the wrong way. people aren't perfect at communication.

i think about how people separate fiction and real life morally, cuz i never actually felt this separation.

to me, the difference comes from the fact that in fiction the author has absolute control over the world, and therefore things that'd be extremely risky in real life end up being guaranteed positive outcomes.

this is why transgressive stuff can be hot. it's not the thrill, rather it's two people stumbling through a situation, neither with malicious intent, doing something stupid and risky due to circumstance, and then eventually getting to a spot where something genuinely lovely can happen. in reality? the stakes and uncertainty make it a disaster. but if i had authorial divine knowledge that the people involved would eventually sort it out and be happy/fulfilled? i'd wouldn't against that, even in real life.