precociously demented

Before anyone says anything, yes, this title is meant seriously, but no, this is not a post that is going to claim any part of Noelle's personality is somehow "problematic" or that she's a "bad character." If you're expecting hate for her, look elsewhere; this is a post that's been a long time coming about why I want to love Noelle when, despite her personality and relationships being solid to excellent, I think the narrative as it stands cannot do her justice. For this analysis, I want to analyze how the story balances three major aspects of her: her personality and relationships; her character arc; and her role in Deltarune's narrative. These parts of her are all what make her an incredibly appealing and popular character; she's cute, a bit pathetic, a gifted kid, strong, but put on a pedestal in such a way she buys into the idea that she has little inherent worth beyond that. Her arc, from what I can see of it, is concerned with her reconnecting with her strength and self-worth enough to pierce the veil that's been put around her. Let's talk about that veil.

Noelle Is To Be Protected

This is a recurring throughline of literally every interpersonal dynamic with her, and in almost all of those cases she is also painted as The Damsel. Berdly literally calls her his "damsel in distress" and acts the way he does in Chapter 2 out of a misguided sense of "saving her" and "repaying her for her affections towards him" (nice interpersonal skills there, buddy); Queen regularly plays with her status as the damsel to both make the heroes play along and, oddly, set up things for Noelle (the only possible reason she'd have to sic the Werewires on her in her room is to make Susie feel like her savior); Susie buys into the narrative Queen sets up and plays the savior's part in the story, though she lets up a bit on that at the end of Chapter 2. Kris doesn't seem to view Noelle as a damsel, given their history of messing with her and spooking her, but they are still very interested in protecting her, an act which both Rudy and Carol are promoting, albeit in completely opposite ways. Dess is painted from old stories as Noelle's original protector, whacking Kris with assorted objects until she feels they've been sufficiently punished for making Noelle cry. Everyone in Noelle's life saw her as someone to be protected from the world, someone to be preserved just as she is... and even now, after the events of Chapter 2, things haven't really changed. Rudy and Carol act the same way. Susie and Berdly both keep talking about protecting her from things, though Susie's concern is played straight while Berdly's is comedically ridiculous. In a normal route, Kris is pretty hands-off with her, but in a Weird Route, they're more devoted to protecting her than ever. No idea why the hell Catti's so particularly severe about protecting her from Susie, but that is present and very strongly felt. Noelle has gotten stronger in one way or another, but she is still The One To Be Protected.

2. The Disappearance of Dess

This is a situation we don't know a lot about, but what we do know is that the adults of the Holiday and Dreemurr families and Kris all seem "in" on what's happened, though they all likely have very different degrees of knowledge about it. Toriel seems distant from it to the point of coming off as purposefully ignorant; Asgore is obsessed with the truth; Carol is determined that Dess is missing but not dead; Rudy is trying to move on. Kris appears to feel some guilt about what happened, or something that's given Carol leverage over them in their dynamic. We don't know what Asriel knows about any of this. But Noelle? Noelle seems entirely unaware of what happened. Kris is just inexplicably distant. Toriel is just a friendly fellow choir member. Asgore is just her family's housekeeper. Rudy is just her warm, supportive father who seems terminally ill, the most stable figure in her life who's slipping through her fingers. Carol is her overly controlling and downright oppressive mother who seemingly never interacts with her own daughter at all save to tell her not to do something or cancel school because Noelle would have to walk in the rain. Everyone around Noelle knows a lot and won't share it with her for any of several reasons, but a very significant barrier of knowledge has formed around her. 3. Getting Stronger The idea of Noelle's weakness plays further into this disconnect between her and the world around her. The people around her tell her or have told her that she's weak, that she has the most value as a golden child, that she needs to be protected from other people or environments because she's just not strong. This is textbook learned helplessness, because she is not inherently weak, not even close. She's smart; perceptive; capable of asserting herself; puts the entire hero party to shame in terms of single capabilities in battle except for physical damage. What matters is that, at the start of things, she believed she wasn't strong, and her environment both bought into and reinforced that same narrative in a vicious cycle. Chapter 2's entire arc is how one might break that cycle. In the Normal Route, Noelle reconnects with Kris over braving some of her fears and weathering their pranks, which to me read as bizarre tests of strength given by a Kris that has bought into the narrative of protecting Noelle while simultaneously believing she is strong, and eventually manages to hold a normal conversation with her crush, stands up to Queen, and saves the day, her power revealed to her by those around her. In the Weird Route, we exploit Noelle's desire for strength against her, weaponizing her insecurities and putting into effect what the game hints as things Kris is afraid that they might do, though they'd never do those things because they're so unconscionable, and she saves the day because we exploited her into using her power in terrible ways that just happened to pay off against Spamton. Noelle has become stronger, but the world isn't there yet. This is just the first step of her journey.

So what does this all mean? Essentially, it is that Noelle has demonstrated an arc about surpassing her learned helplessness, which tends towards the idea that she will inevitably break the veil surrounding her and the truth. The truth that she isn't weak, the truth that she doesn't need protection constantly, and the truth of what really happened when she was little, the last of which promises so many answers to so much of what has been set up in this game's narrative. There's just one small problem to all of this: she is now too important. If Noelle fully develops, the major mysteries are solved. All the entangling alliances and different degrees of knowledge of those on the board turn from WW1 cosplay into a neat layout for us to understand. Kris, Susie, and Ralsei will all have to adapt quickly to the fallout in order to bring the story to its completion. Noelle is our narrative key, and her development is the process of undoing the lock. However, this lock cannot be opened too soon, or else so much of the story will become horribly rushed. We'd jump to resolutions for our main cast too quickly. The mystery would deflate and fall apart, leaving a basic trek to the end. This means that there are essentially two answers to this pacing issue: either a) we give Noelle a lot of filler time to flesh out her dynamics without giving them any weight, which is a horrible idea for a character so important, or b) limit her screentime in such a way that she can't intervene with the story. Toby clearly chose the latter, and I don't blame him for doing it. I'd much rather have a character make a lot of impact with little screentime and have it be effective than drag it out for no reason and dilute the effects of what is to come. But it's a catch-22, and it has repercussions. Noelle is thus incredibly, incredibly important to Deltarune's story... but only while she's around. Chapter 2's Dark World. The Holiday house. Nearly every moment she spends on screen is about her and her relationships. She holds the key, and thus will one day use it... but if she isn't around, she can't open the lock, can she? So Noelle barely gets mentioned at all outside of her onscreen appearances, being mostly there for a stray dialogue choice and a one-liner from Susie. She simply isn't around, and that starts to have what I find to be drastic effects on the things about her I should love. Her dynamic with Susie is one the game very clearly wants us to be invested in, and it promises a lot; it gives her a clear motivation, it demonstrates her narrative arc in effect, because it's always Susie's perceptions of her that her growth changes, and it's designed to be enjoyable. High school romances are very popular, and their dynamic certainly has good bones. But when we look at it in effect, they share a whopping two scenes together before Noelle's arc in Chapter 2 is done. They're pretty good scenes! I see why a lot, lot of people love their dynamic. It seems like this is the first step to a much greater journey involving their dynamic... except it isn't, because Noelle can't be around too much, so now Susie and her will interact once in the hospital and not so much as a mention will go from Susie in Noelle's way until Noelle is back on screen, and the game is cramming material in. I think this is why Kris and Noelle get shipped together so, so often, because so much of Noelle's roots and the "tests of strength" are done by Kris, so to establish that, she has to talk about Kris. A lot. We know she really wants to reconnect with them, and we're now in her house getting so much info about their history and watching it inform her dynamic with Susie, then now Carol's here, the sequence is done, and Noelle will be mentioned twice in passing for the rest of the chapter, which otherwise acts as though she doesn't exist.

I have a confession to make: I think Kris might be the best-written character in Deltarune. I know the award goes to Susie in the eyes of most, and it's no secret why; she has a great personality with excellent dynamics, a great arc, and is commonly thought of as the game's most core source of pathos. But I believe Kris is just as much a source of pathos, if not more powerfully so, because of the use of several rather quite common writing tricks surrounding their character in terms of both the narrative and the moment-to-moment existence within the game's world that Susie, nor anyone else, could achieve, which the game leverages in quite interesting ways. Narration voice and choice of perspective are incredibly foundational parts of writing, and yet strangely I find the story's use of these parts woefully underdiscussed in terms of Kris's writing despite how masterfully Toby uses them. Let's talk about it, but first, a couple preliminaries. 1. Chapter 1's Ending

I firmly believe this moment to be one of the most widely misunderstood moments in the game. Kris stuffing the human soul we control (which I will be shorthanding to "us" unless further specified) and brandishing a knife at us is read as a twist: We thought Kris was little more than our avatar to control, but no! Kris is a human person with their own life with which we are interfering! If the player is observant, they will have seen this coming; the intro narration was interrupted to tell us we "cannot choose who we are in this world," and Kris is consistently referred to with they/them pronouns, something which a reader might originally pass off as something done to make it easier for an audience to project themselves onto the character whom we control, but is in reality a marker of their queer identity that further adds to their own uniqueness as a character. None of this is anything new, but I think the idea that Kris being their own person necessitates an "us versus them" narrative is inherently flawed. Kris here is establishing to us that we are not them, and brandishes a knife to cement that fact, but Kris is not the arbiter of truth, and stopping short at accepting their view of the Player-Kris dynamic misses what I believe to be a fundamental piece of their character: Though we are separate beings, we may be united in common cause.

2. Cages and Cooperation

I want to challenge another phenomenon I see frequently underinvestigated or outright ignored, that being the following question: What is "The Cage" the Prophecy speaks of in Chapter 4?

I have seen generally two broad camps on this matter. Kris is always taken in as part of the First Hero, "The Cage, with Human Soul and Parts," but in different ways depending on what is thought of us. Some folks take Kris to be The Cage, and that we are the Cage's captive. Kris can, at times, remove us from their body to assert their own agency. Sometimes in this umbrella people theorize us to be The Angel as mentioned in other parts of the Prophecy and Ralsei's Legend, which is a massive can of worms I will keep to the side. Others take us to be The Cage, for we make innumerably many decisions on what they must do, whether in dialogue or moment-to-moment actions, within which they have some liberty to act. I contend that the "Kris-as-Cage" and "Us-as-Cage" interpretations are simultaneously true and false; the First Hero, the Cage, is both Kris and ourselves. We restrict their actions in so many ways and make them think on their feet to express themself, but they retain authority over us many times and can choose to completely remove us from their body in the Light World with far less restriction than we once thought. Sometimes, our influence puts them under our control, but other times the opposite happens. The Cage is The Cage because both of us cage each other; the First Hero is a single entity comprised of two distinct parts. From here on, if I wish to refer to ourselves and Kris as a singular narrative entity, I will say "The Cage."

With those ideas established, let's take a look at these writing tricks Toby uses to make Kris into an effective PoV character.

Narration and Dialogue

Kris's personality and thoughts often mixes with the game's narration. What proof do I have of this? Look no further than some of the basic interactions you can get in their house when comparing Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 1, the narration of various things is simple, almost frustratingly so. "Your bed." "Clothes drawer." "It's stained." "It's a red wagon with a rusty birdcage in it." These are matter-of-fact and simple; the value statements that come with a person's view of the world around them are conspicuously absent from many things, and much of Chapter 1's narration carries on in a similar style. Characters often remark that Kris seems generally uninterested or detached; most notably Lancer during the party naming session, but in general we don't see a lot of emotion from the narration. It is similar to how they conduct themselves during the Dark World; they are typically content to follow Ralsei's lead at all times, lagging behind the group and acting in ways that belie their little investment in the story so far, but this is a transitive state of mind. If one pays attention, there are hints about their feelings here and there, most often in the little movements they do exercise without our command: backing away from Susie in the hall; backing away from the closet Dark World; and, at the end of the chapter, rushing to block a volley of King's bullets from hitting Susie.

Now, let's look at Chapter 2. What happens if we, say, investigate the sink from Chapter 1, which once gave us very matter-of-fact dialogue? "It is not yet time to wash your hands." Where once there was simple description there now exists opinion, a drive towards some unknown end we do not witness until the chapter's very final moments. The narration takes on more purpose, and more of Kris's character as they become invested in the world; the interaction with Berdly's hideous, hilarious statue gives you narration text that is remarkably vivid and curious, which Noelle questions further and further until she tries to feign agreement, at which point the narration states the statue "seems to suck bad" and Noelle playfully yells at Kris for tricking her into saying it looks good. Kris's personhood trickles into the narration, and it's the same for dialogue choices. Look back at some Chapter 1 dialogue choices and you'll start to see more investment; you can be offered blase choices of "Neat paper, crumpled paper, LANCER paper" at times, but others you can get offered the prompt to hug Ralsei during the tutorial, or do things that make him confused, or mess with the group when Lancer offers everyone some mildly suspicious treestump salsa.

What's happening here is deceptively simple: though we cannot see Kris emote 99% of the time, the narration and dialogue choices seem to reflect their own thoughts and feelings (intrusive ones or ones they hate themselves for having, as is commonly speculated for why Snowgrave can be initiated), and as such we get surprisingly good looks into who they are. Because the world is thus presented to us in such a way, we too come to see things in similar lights, synthesizing our view of the world with Kris.

2. Limited Perspective

Somehow, I see this talked about even less, when I think it's even more interesting because it performs a similar synthesis with regard to character dynamics. Let's take a look at the Fun Gang as a trio: after initially being fearful of Susie in Chapter 1, by the end, Kris has changed their mind about her, and sticks to her side like glue whenever possible. But during the course of the game thus far, Susie and Ralsei have grown close, too. They spend a huge chunk of Chapter 2 together without us seeing it, and by the time they meet up with Kris again, they've changed. Kris is still close with Susie, quite close, but both we and Kris aren't privy to how things happened. If you do the Shadow Crystal quest in Chapter 2, we get another moment of us and Kris being busy doing something while their friends bond without them, and if you follow the same quest in Chapter 3, you get one of the most poignant moments: Kris behind the counter in the dark room, watching their friends play games together without them while they follow where the Sword Route leads them. Make no mistake, we are kinda exacerbating this distance between them and their friends, but we're trapped in their shoes, too, and they could push against us more if they weren't a bit curious. What we see in this moment is quiet isolation, the sense that Kris has this insurmountable bridge between themself and the others that they want to cross. If we as the audience are invested, we want the same; our desires and Kris's have coincided, and when they feel pain and isolation, we feel it too.

I think this is so important and impressive because it helps to garner our sympathy towards them the more we learn about the particulars of why they feel isolated versus the way in which we feel isolated. We're isolated because those other characters are at a distance from us; we're missing interesting and fun character interactions, but we're limited in our ability to express ourselves, and we want more from this story we're enjoying. Kris on the other hand has been in somewhat self-imposed isolation for a while, and now that they're finally opening themself up to new connections, the distance they feel because we're inhibiting them, and the fact that their backroom dealings with Carol and the Knight are putting them at inherent odds with these same people with whom they desperately wish to grow close. Because we share their pain, we're more likely to sympathize with their struggle, and root for them more at the end of Chapter 4 when they make the decision to hug Ralsei while he breaks down or seem tempted to abandon the mission and stay by Susie's side, forfeiting their previous alliances for the sake of closeness with someone about whom they truly care and do not wish to lose. This also extends somewhat to Noelle; Kris's history with Noelle is extremely complicated, to put it simply, and we are privy to so little of it. However, through Kris, we understand their desire to protect her, be her friend, and sometimes leave her in the dark very well. Our reasons why are different, perhaps so much so that we'll be willing to throw away our unity to assert too much control over her and Kris in the Weird Route, but the ways in which the game communicates Kris's feelings to us lets us slip into their shoes and want to know more without necessarily overriding their personhood.

3. We Did (Not) Ask For This

One more major point to go: our sympathy with Kris and cultivation of mutual pathos comes with the relationship between what we want by taking part in this story, and what that action has sacrificed. As far as we can tell, Kris intentionally took us into their body, the opening narration somehow halted by an in-world force of which they took advantage to advance their own plans. But in return, they found their control greatly diminished, and oftentimes this can cause pains on their end about how much they can communicate themself to the people they care about. Meanwhile, upon entering into the game, we are asked to accept everything that will happen to us, and must agree to press on. It's creepy, but the game offers us a vessel for us to completely control, which we take as a promise of power which the story promptly rips away from us. We wanted full power and were denied. Kris wanted to be able to complete their mission, but was unready for what it meant and threatened us to try to assert themself per that scene at the end of Chapter 1. Neither we or Kris are the victims of this situation; we were both damaged, and though our struggles with each other might come off as an inherently big conflict, it's more like an unavoidable disagreement. We are not fighting them unless we choose to fight them, and they will not fight us unless they choose to. Because we are together, though their motivations and actions are often heavily divorced from us, we sympathize and are able to view the world of Deltarune through their eyes with a shocking degree of accuracy.

Hello again!

I’ve been meaning to round out the more central character-focused Deltarune essays for a little while, but honestly, Susie was paradoxically the hardest to write about. Perhaps because, at least compared to Kris and Ralsei, she’s simpler, and compared to Noelle, I don’t think she suffers from being in a narrative catch-22 that I can discuss at length. However, she certainly does suffer from similar issues to the other three when it comes to fandom perception, and in a very different way. Kris suffered from us vs. them mentalities and the inability to recognize them as a POV character; Ralsei suffered from a lack of analysis into the veracity of his statements and what he’s been hiding; Noelle suffered from a frankly shocking amount of babying by fans and/or replacement theories that disregard those around her; but Susie suffers from a little thing called mythologization. Broadly speaking, Susie is by far Deltarune’s closest equivalent to a standard protagonist. Kris and us are sometimes on completely opposite teams, and Ralsei is mired in mystery, misinformation, and misdirection, but Susie? Susie’s MO is to walk into a situation with Occam’s Razor in hand with the will to use it as much as she wants. If she can make her way through something, she’ll do it as simply as possible, and Deltarune fans clearly favor this. Many players will even claim her as the game’s best-written character, or describe her as “the true protagonist” of the story. Simplicity, in the mind of the fandom, appears to be a good thing.

However, the concept of a character doing something simply is far divorced from narrative simplicity, and Susie happens to be a character that is really, really good at playing into narratives that convenience her simplistic approach, whether or not that’s straightforward or even morally good. One might be tricked into thinking Susie is breaking things down and being the most explicitly non-conformist by her appearances and speeches, but at times, she can attempt to conform just as much as Kris or Ralsei, perhaps even more so. And what constitutes action can depend heavily on frames of reference. Let’s talk about it.

I think that’s why I didn’t really like the First Witches coming to Crk because yeah all of them are flawed but they genuinely love and want best for the cookies which is completely fine since Witches Castle follows a different canon after all but I am sorry how can you even try to portray the witches as ‘good’ in Crk when you consider the circumstances that led your main plot line to kick off-

Development Sisters : ‘Hey Dark Enchantress guess what not all of your gods are bad.. infact the good ones turn into cookies!! Lily you just got unlucky and practically died because of the specific bad ones !! So that means the anger and betrayal you felt at the banquet wasn’t really that important you know”

you're totally right, and this is just one of the many reasons i didn't want witches castle to be canon to crk. from the get-go it doesn't work in crk because it makes the entire main plot with white lily/dark enchantress pretty much meaningless, and surprise, it never gets addressed before she dies because it's obviously just a half-assed inclusion to entice crk players to play crwc. but yea they'll seemingly address it AFTER she dies and clarify shit that was never even a point of contention in-universe to begin with Because they NEVER FUCKING MENTION THE WITCHES BEING DIVIDED INTO TWO GENERATIONS IN THE GAME. THIS IS SHIT THE IP MANAGER TOLD US IN A LIVESTREAM. how are you so fucking bad at writing you can't even so much as hint to literally any of this being the case IN THE ACTUAL GAME. how much do you wanna bet the future episode where they showed art of the first witches isn't even going to talk about this either, and it's just gonna be some shadow milk spiel about how the witches abandoned him and how he hates them and shit.

The currency has collapsed, and the entire commercial exchange is on the verge of collapse. The paper value of every $100 is only $60, and the purchasing power of every $60 does not exceed $10. Simply put, $60 is not enough to buy one kilogram of sugar or one kilogram of flour! This means that work is worthless and money has no meaning. If you need $100 a day to secure a single meal of lentil falafel, fava beans, and a cup of tea... everyone is hungry. Those with good morals, principles, and values ​​are the most miserable and hungry. We are going through the most difficult times. We are only talking about one thing, so what about the cost of medicine, treatment, transportation, and many other things? Some people think this is exaggerated, but unfortunately, this is the reality. In order for us to survive and be patient, even if only for a short period, we are in dire need of your help and donations. With your donation, I may be able to provide a meal or medicine.

all shades of pink