OUROBOROS

holy fuck,

i cannot stop thinking about that scene. it's been haunting me ever since i saw it. i can't really identify what i think the worst part is. but i have many thoughts so i will dump them here.

first and foremost, i PLAYED the weird route through chapter four. i booted up chapter five assuming i was in for some awesome psychological horror, but...damn you, toby fox, you made me care too much about these characters. i forced kris to get up, feeling uneasy about the total lack of check text, but when susie showed up, i genuinely couldn't do it anymore.

the vibes were so putrid, walking around the empty town. i made kris ride the ferris wheel with her, and when i realized how much she was trying to make kris feel better, i quit the game. fuck this, fuck everything. deleted my weird route save. it's not worth it. i decided to watch a video instead.

im not here to summarize the scene as im sure you already know it if you're reading this, but that part above is just so important to me. watching susie try to have fun with kris, knowing that everything is fucked up behind the scenes, and to some extent she can totally tell something is wrong, and none of the good things from the main route are ever going to happen and it is your fault.

another part that haunts me severely is the fact that kris totally gives up. we watch their will to live die out right there. i think kris more or less knows what's going to happen with noelle as early as the chapter four scene, and for the rest of that day, they have no choice but to act normal. they know you're going to hurt noelle and you're going to use them to do it, but they can do absolutely nothing but pretend to have fun on another adventure.

come chapter five, you have to fight, and i mean FIGHT, to get kris out of bed. it's like trying to get a cat into a bathtub. it was tough looking at them literally clawing at the sheets and refusing to get up off the ground. but once you've done that, they give up. they stop having thoughts about things (or, they've just stopped letting you know what those thoughts are, though the former is creepier). the only semblance of happiness you see from them again is with susie, which hurts so fucking bad, because they KNOW what's going to happen. they probably know this is the last time they'll ever see her, or at least be friends with her.

maybe i'm repeating myself at this point but it just SUCKS watching susie try to have fun, reminiscing about the festival with noelle while everything has a very strange undertone. she knows something is weird but doesn't know what, and that breaks my heart. the Character, man. can you tell she's my favorite......

noelle's monologue on the beach is...incredible. the new rendition of flashback is fucking eerie, the new crazed character sprites are awful to look at, it's all perfectly terrible. ruined my whole week. it hurts even more that we do still find out that noelle is suffering from poor mental health on the main route, but on the weird route this knowledge only serves to explain why we could break her so thoroughly. her life is out of her control and she's dissociating through it. she just wants some control, she wants to do something crazy, she wants to feel strong, and you made her feel strong in the dark world when she literally puts her classmate in a coma, and she wants more even though that's awful to say. the thorn ring, while merely a thorn in the light world, symbolically represents the transition of your control from fantasy to reality. you hear her woes and you sell her that "freedom" she craves, ironically at the cost of her autonomy.

though immediately after watching i thought kris and noelle die in this scene, ive thought about it and discussed it with others and im certain they do not. the scene is absolutely a metaphor for suicide just as much as the chapter four scene is a metaphor for SA, but it's...worse than that. i thought i should mention this because im seeing many people think that these two genuinely die in this scene. but it's worse.

noelle has, effectively, become a second player character. that's probably what the whole red pixel thing was about. the player character does what the player wants. you say proceed and the character proceeds. the character can do whatever you ask. the character WILL do whatever you ask, even if it's impossible. the character can walk through a lake, drowning all the way, and come out the other side, as long as she can hear YOUR voice telling her to keep going. and kris, of course, has no will left to argue.

it's strange in hindsight that i never really saw anyone draw attention to the fact that noelle insists she doesn't know snowgrave. at first i thought she was just pretending she didn't know because she knew it was dangerous, but it's pretty clear now that she had genuinely no idea what that is, but the character does what the player wants. casting a spell she doesn't know is impossible...until YOU ask her to.

im not surprised that the weird route fucks up the entire story structure, though i was expecting something like a premature chapter six ending, not SKIPPING TWO WHOLE CHAPTERS. it's safe to say the prophecy is dead. you literally break the game with these kids; the narrative falls apart.

it's just like the sword route said: she was used up. kris was used up. but i do believe the scene is more impactful if they both survive, even if kris never shows a sign of life again.

god, i have so much trouble accepting that this is a thing that can happen in the official deltarune. chapter two's weird route was high on the psychological horror, it was great, but it was easy to stomach. a sinister twist on the chapter hell yeah right guys? chapter four's scene makes you feel bad, but even so, it's still easier to accept as a part of the game, what with the soul UI fuckery and the quite frankly goofy "ME" dialogue.

but chapter five's scene? this isn't real. there's no way. there's no way this is in deltarune, i just can't believe it.

good job tobore fox. this is a unique horror you've created

seeing a lot of mixed opinions about the chapter which is fine because it does have some big flaws. i think a lot of these issues are caused by miscarried expectations born from the chapter-by-chapter release format. give a fanbase a year to ruminate on the next chapter and they'll design fifty distinct narratives of their own, setting the true chapter up for disappointment because it cannot do everything at once.

but something interesting ive noticed is some true debbie downers acting like the chapter killed their grandma. ive seen people say they've lost all faith in toby fox's writing ability, that they won't be excited for chapter 6 and 7.

like alright. they're entitled to that opinion of course.

it's just funny to hear that. because tobias fox has been often revered as the golden child of indie gaming; he's been blorbofied left and right as if he can do no wrong because he's still the underdog against the big gaming giants. this reasoning is often what excused things like deltarune lacking latam translations even though that's absolutely not outside his capabilities. he's mr undertale and everything he makes is peak.

me: will you call me that name in emails or on my applicant profile