she dark on my bramble till i Anglerfish Screech

The Outer Wilds aka one of the most incredible games I ever played and the one I can say absolutely nothing about

rocky: rocky has seen this on earth portable thinking machine. grace very brave. grace has name, question?

grace, not entirely paying attention: yeah man its grace you know that

grace: it is, but everyone calls me grace anyway so it's fine

rocky: grace is sure, question? grace could pick any name

grace: hmmm... worth a thought, i guess. got any ideas?

rocky: rocky 2

grace: aw :) wait whos first?

A lot of people have been speculating about the meaning of ‘Side B’ here, especially pointing out that usually having a ‘Side A’ and a ‘Side B’ implies that you need both sides to get the full experience/the whole story. And that makes me think about a Chapter 2-Era theory-slash-speculation I had, that the way the Weird Route will end up circling back to the ideas of ‘your choices don’t matter’ and ‘there is only one ending’ is that the consequences of the Weird Route will end up affecting all Players eventually.

That with the Game’s already introducing the concept of Alternative Timelines, with the whole of Deltarune itself being an AU of Undertale and the existence of Multiple SAVE Files….

And also an extension of something Undertale’s Murder Route touched on briefly but didn’t quite have the time to fully explore, is that unlike the in-universe characters who can only see what happens when they make the Bad Choices by actually getting their hands dirty and doing it… the actual Players can just watch and read the Playthroughs of others while still being ‘clean’ as far as the game is concerned… But that still makes them ‘morally culpable’ in some way…

That eventually… something or someone of the Weird Route will end up being able to hop between/affect other Timelines, including the Normal Route’s Timeline. Your Choices Don’t Matter because even if you chose to not do the Weird Route, as long as someone somewhere in this Fandom/Multiverse did choose to go down this path, every Player is going to suffer the Consequences from that.

So… Yeah, now I’m thinking about this old theory again, about the possibility that Weird Route Noelle and Kris have made their way out of Hometown and…. got somewhere they can now be central antagonists in ‘Side A’ of Chapter 7, with ‘Side B’ being their POV of the situation (or maybe they’ll be something more like a Shadow Crystal Style Secret Boss? Weird Route Noelle’s whole vibe this Chapter was very Shadow Crystal Boss)…

I am expecting some sort of clarification/basic exposition on just ‘Side A’ of what the hell is going on, of course, for Players less involved with the Fandom and what other fans are doing, and for anyone playing this blind in one sitting once the whole game is completed, some basic explanation on ‘Side A’ that alternative universes exist and that this is a Noelle from some other timeline where something went horribly wrong. But the full story will require one to also play ‘Side B’…. Or at least watch someone else do it.

But of course, just because you might end up suffering the Consequences of the Weird Route even if you haven’t played it yourself, does it mean your decision to play or not play through the Weird Route was meaningless? Or is it still an Important Distinction to your personal narrative whatever you’re an innocent bystander caught up in someone else’s mess or if you’re very much lying in the bed you’ve made yourself? Does it matter if you’ve somewhat ‘enabled’ others to play the Weird Route even if you haven’t literally played it yourself?

oh how the tables

I spent almost an entire work shift drawing this tooth-rotting fluff