THE "JONAH"

Ok. Buckle in.

Deltarune starts with chapter 1, and is stated by Toby Fox to have 7 chapters planned.

The part of Undertale that, inarguably, foreshadows Deltarune most blatantly is Dr. W. D. Gaster's "ENTRY NUMBER SEVENTEEN". Alphys's "ENTRY NUMBER 17", meanwhile, is conspicuously missing from the true lab. This might seem like a random number at first but, but... didn't we just see a 1 and a 7 somewhere else?

What if we took "17" to mean we should be looking at entry number 1-7 (as in, True Lab entries 1 though 7)? This might sound like a long shot, but... well, I actually saw weird correlations between the entries and Deltarune chapters first, and only when I wondered why only the first 7 entries would be relevant did I then connect it back to entry number 17 weirdness.

So, let's analyze True Lab entries 1-7 in the context of Deltarune's narrative. In my opinion, we get some very, very interesting results...

ENTRY NUMBER 1

chapter 1's main antagonist is "the king".

chapter 1 introduces the major running theme of "freedom" present throughout the entirety of deltarune so far (so important it has its own motif!), and replaces the mentions of determination when saving with mentions of "power". i'd argue power is framed as what allows one to be free, at least in chapter 1 (though it can be argued this idea is challenged later on with weird route and sword route... much like how alphys's naively optimistic statement "I will create the power to free us all." also led to a nightmare scenario for her) — at the very first save point, we overwrite kris's save file with ours, taking both their power (represented by the save point) and their freedom (as in, autonomy) away.

at the end of the chapter, the player unleashes the power of their SOUL to seal the dark fountain.

Flowey was explicitly created by Alphys as a "vessel to wield the monster SOULs". His existence in his current state is the result of an experiment he never asked to be part of. He isn't a monster — he's something else, something strange, something no one knows how to deal with; there is a palpable rift between him and his monster parents, a disconnect that cannot be bridged no matter how much both parties try. A large part of what he felt made him himself was stripped from him, and dissociates from his past memories and identity heavily. And again, none of this was what he asked for, or ever thought could even happen — he made one rash decision as a child, which he was fully prepared to die for, but what he actually got was this alienating state of undeath nothing like what he could ever have foreseen.

And then... after having consciously fully given up on life, in a desperate last-ditch cry for control from the determination within him, he was able to forcibly reassert himself back into his world from the space beyond it, his universe's time-space fabric now within his grasp. He was now "in control" (at least, more "in control" than anyone else within his world). The rift between him and everyone else was now so wide he could only think of them as toys for him to play with. And then he used his powers to kill everyone he once loved, over and over and over again.

If you were Kris and learned all of this about your brother's alternate timeline self, how would you even begin to process this information? How would it affect the way you see yourself, someone in a situation not much different than his original predicament, who deeply fears you have it in you to become the exact kind of person he became?

This… isn't what I was hoping to have today. I drew this when I realized there was no way I'd be able to finish my planned anniversary piece in time. It's simple, hastily put together, definitely not my proudest work, but I think I'd much rather post something I'm not completely satisfied with than post nothing at all on such an important day for something so dear to me.

I first played Undertale in early 2016. I was 11, and it was my first Steam game. It was a formative experience for me both as a person and an aspiring storyteller — aspiring game developer as well, after I finished it. Coming across spoilers for Flowey's story was actually what got me interested in playing, and to this day, this little guy still remains near the very top of my favorite fictional character list. There's so much more I could say, but this is getting a bit long for an art post caption — I think the fact that this game and its characters stuck with me throughout all these years says it all.

Happy 10th anniversary, Undertale.

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Transparent Flowey under the cut.

Tenna POV.

Yet darker.

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(version without red highlights under the cut)

So, uh. That one bit of Gerson dialogue. What did he mean by this???

Taken from Hushbugger's Undertale Dialogue Dump page on Github.

There are a few different headcanons/theories about how exactly this piece of lore should be interpreted – and, specifically, what its implications are regarding the children's growth rates in different scenarios. So, let's discuss it.

Personally, I'm REALLY not a big fan of the one that implies a boss monster whose parents die would be stuck as a child forever??? For instance, how would this theory of power transfer work with boss monster families that have 3+ children? Because like. Some couples having at least 3 children would be the only way for the population to to ever grow in size (unless we also headcanon that new boss monsters just spontaneously appear sometimes or something, which has absolutely no basis in canon lore). And by that logic, generations of this happening would eventually yield boss monsters who stop aging stupidly young. Not to mention, what about boss monster kids like Asriel, with no biological siblings? Would them getting both of their parents' SOUL power mean they go through super-puberty that turns them into double-mature adults??? So, yeah, not only would this all have pretty horrific implications regarding boss monster dating, but it'd also just be... really cursed worldbuilding that falls apart when you give it in any amount of serious thought. That's why I think it's a lot more likely that SOUL power transfer is simply that: a transfer of power.

I think Gerson's word choice is key here: "causing the child to grow" – rather than "mature", "age", or " develop" – "as the parents age" – as in, "into old age", becoming physically weaker due to giving up SOUL power.

I believe it's FAR more likely that, if a boss monster was orphaned, their growth would be stunted and their power would never reach its full potential – something more akin to malnutrition, rather than them literally being frozen in time; this would also happen, but to a lesser extent, to a boss monster who has to share their parents' SOUL power with more than one other sibling – and, inversely, a boss monster who's an only child would inherit both of their parents' power, growing far stronger than either of them separately by the time they become an adult.

This would also explain Asgore's absurdly high stats compared to Toriel's – like. ok. he has 8 times her total HP??? If we are to assume Asgore started out with similar stats to Toriel, plugging the numbers into the LV-based HP calculation formula the game uses for Frisk – 3/4 base HP + (1/4 base HP * LV) – gives us this equation: 330 + 110*LV = 3500. Solving for Asgore's hypothetical LV, then, gives us LV of roughly 29. Which might not sound that bad... until you realize the EXP required for getting to LV 19 is more than than all of the EXP it takes to get to LV 18 combined. Even assuming the EXP you get from killing just one human is equivalent to killing every monster in the Underground, while also assuming that the amount of EXP you need to level up no longer increases after you've reached LV 20 for some reason... it still wouldn't be enough to explain Asgore's dummy thicc HP bar after killing only 6 humans, if we are to assume his base HP is at all similar to that of Toriel. (Accounting for the possibility that monster history books lied, or at the very least didn't tell the full truth when stating that "not a single human SOUL was taken" during the war just leaves us with another problem: Toriel's also a veteran, and in fact seems a lot more comfortable with the idea of actively going to war as opposed to Asgore's approach of stalling for as long as possible, so if monsters actually were getting insane amounts of EXP by killing humans during the war, how come her stats are still so low? Killing even just a few humans would beef her up quite a bit; again, it's only once the numbers get higher that you see the sharp increase in EXP required to level up.)

I think Asgore was born into royalty, and Toriel married into it. Again: if a pair of boss monsters had only one child, that child would have the combined power of their 2 parents – now, let's suppose a family decided to do that for many generations.... with each new kid in such a family, the base power of the resulting offspring would grow more and more and more, wouldn't it? Perhaps one such family also has the means and prestige that allows them to easily find suitably strong partners for their kids, further increasing the rate at which the family's power would grow. (Also, the idea of Toriel originally being a commoner is further reinforced by the fact that the surname "Dreemurr" is confirmed to come from Asgore's side and, at least as far as we know, Toriel just... doesn't have her own surname, as she switches to just going by "Toriel" after the two break up. Given that we only have about 3 examples of surnames within the Entirety Of The Underground, it appears that family names just aren't really a thing used within monster society, unless said family is really notable in some way).

deltarune