woah! an accident victim on the information highway!

a) young children tend to do a lot of copying the behaviors around them, and

b) most of the people hanging around them are taking care of kids (them)

a lot of little kids REALLY want to take care of slightly littler kids. Today a toddler barely over a year old kissed a baby a couple months younger than him, tried to wipe his nose, and tried to feed him a toy apple. A couple kids older than Him then started trying to put him in a toy shopping cart to take him shopping. There's a 3yo who always tries to steal the babies' milk bottles to feed them. A 4yo tried to give a baby his own bottle once. A toddler too young to know any words yet will shush me if any of the little babies are laying down to sleep.

Someone told him that magical girls were gangster, so we got the Magical Oni in another world.

(Deltarune Chapter 5 Spoilers) The whole chapter has a lot of really memorable moments but I feel like the opening of both routes does NOT get the love it deserves because both are super unsettling. Bonus normal route doodles I did at 1 am afterwards

sleepover!

examples:

this post will have been in the drafts for a while before i post it. it's a post detailing all of the times i could find in my most recent playthrough when ralsei gave off serious transfem energy.

bare in mind that this is only all of the transfem ralsei moments that i could find! if you know something i missed, feel free to add it!

even with that in mind, this is still a pretty long one, so get ready for a ride.

Chapter 1

fun fact! when i first played, i actually gave her the white ribbon because she had lower max HP than "me" (Kris), and was rewarded with this dialogue, where she asks if we think it makes her pretty.

yes. i think you're pretty. i also love you so much i might explode, but we'll worry about that later.

i feel like the use of the word pretty instead of cute is important.

i'm counting this. like, you can't just call a local "boy" an egg multiple times and not expect me to count it.

IT'S IN QUOTES

this was in response to us drawing a schematic for a sexy machine, but... come on.

i've been pranking kris and their allies by showing the wrong equipment to them to get all the dialogue. this was susie's reaction to the Dainty Scarf. my reaction to that, was, of course, "what's a doily?"

So i looked up "doilies" and

ah! i have seen these before, but i did not know their name. it may seem a little silly to count the material a scarf is made of as evidence of transfemininity, but i always considered these things feminine.

and then, there's this...

possibly THE most important scene in chapter 1

i feel it worth pointing out that it was susie who convinced her to take off her hat.

she's so pretty...

but more importantly, this is her first step out of the closet. finally brave enough to show us what she really looks like. with susie's help.

and so many of us, cruelly, told her to put the hat back on. that she looked better when she was hiding her true face.

and i am so... so sorry.

there's more to ralsei taking off her hat. ever since she made this first step, she has, (assumedly) inadvertently entered an unending war against the very game itself.

Chapter 2's fireworks...

the Battle UI...

and the legend of tenna...

continue to depict Ralsei with her hat on, despite the change, and progress, she's made. But when we're actually looking at her, we can only see her real face.

i will get back to ralsei's hat when it becomes relevant again in chapter 4. for now, we'll briefly step into...

Chapter 2

chapter 2 doesn't have as much as chapter 1, but what it does have is pretty big.

The Mannequin:

(oh, the stammer. somebody free her...)

now, i can potentially see the argument that simply thinking that the dress the mannequin wears is cute doesn't mean anything, but even if you do think that; the dress itself is important, and [this] post goes into detail why. reading that post is now homework, you have to read it before you can continue reading this one.

now that you're back we can continue. next is, (and everyone reading this knew this one was coming) during the acid tunnel of love, when prompted to say that it's nice that ralsei is ralsei...

this is how she responds.

regardless of context, this is bursting with transfem energy.

also there's this

...pipis.

not sure if that counts for anything, but i figured i might as well.

they're even called eggs.

Chapter 3

this is her choice of action when introducing herself to the audience. a very specific bow; a curtsy. a very interesting choice!

which could mean nothing. anyway, look at this new armor i got!

there are 3 different colors of ribbons in the game (so far). the white and pink ribbons can be combined at the smithy to make the twin ribbon.

the last one is the blue ribbon.

thanks to the twin ribbon, all of the colors of the trans flag can be worn at once!

her reaction shortly after learning that susie switched controllers.

(i also tried with all my might to get her to wear the 2nd bow on this board. but no matter how hard i tried, i could not throw her onto it...)

Chapter 4

let's take another brief asside to talk about ralsei's hat.

ralsei's hat was taken away by the wind, lost to the sky, we will never see it again.

she will never be able to hide her real face again.

she will not ever be able to step back into the closet. there is no turning back. we can only move forward now.

this is who she is now. she's accepted it, so have the lightners, and all of the people of castle town. if there's someone who can't accept that, then i don't think i trust them.

EGG MENTIONED

---

okay! so, posts have an image cap of 30, and i'm getting close to that, so i have to wrap this up.

we HAVE to talk about ralsei's room.

there's something about the way this is worded... this weird "purpose" talk. it calls fourth certain feelings, brings to mind certain images. this desire to be useful to others for nothing in return seems all too common in transfems. including myself.

in this same conversation, she asks kris if having feelings is selfish. okay, that's not the exact wording

she says it like this, and the way she interrupts herself, it feels like she's "correcting" herself by striping herself of individuality. making herself smaller.

she is so trapped inside herself, and her roll as the "prince" that anything she does that deviates from that roll is percieved as "unnatural"; a problem that needs to be hidden and locked away.

i feel it's important to mention that it is once again primarilly susie who helps ralsei take these steps.

she was the one who told ralsei to drop that mysterious cloak.

she was the one who told ralsei to drop her diguise.

she was the one who told ralsei to eat the cake.

she was the one who told ralsei to get nice things for herself.

and she's gonna be the one who tells ralsei that she doesn't have to be a prince.

that room has one more, decisive, piece of evidence.

it's not an action taken, or words said. it's the song that plays.

Lost Girl

i... cannot stress the sudden rush of emotions when i heard this playing there. it stopped just being a headcanon to me at that moment.

the naysayers can't exactly keep saying "he's just a gnc guy" after that and expect me to take them seriously.

and with it, i have 2 more pieces that i feel are significant

first is the really obvious thing: ralsei can equip the princess ribbon.

i feel like the gloves not fitting is significant as well somehow...

let's look at ribbons right quick. i personally think that susie's reaction to ribbons is just as, if not more important than ralsei's when it comes to discussing the use of ribbons as evidence of transfemininity.

see, susie doesn't dislike ribons because of any sort of association with femininity. never once does she mention that they are "too girly for her" or any such variant of "totally harshing her butch vibe"

she does not show a dislike of ribons because they are cute or feminine, but instead because she perceives them as childish:

meanwhile, ralsei clearly does enjoy them as things that are Cute and/or Pretty as seen in the above princess ribbon pic, and this pic (which i'm putting here again so you don't have to scroll back up)

ralsei chooses to wear ribbons because they look cute, and pretty, and all those other words. ralsei really likes being cute.

weirdly enough, when it comes to the princess ribbon, susie feels the need to come up with a proper excuse as to why she won't wear them, claiming that the gloves don't fit. but, as shown in the princess ribbon screenshot, ralsei wears the ribbon despite this fact, and even proclaims it cute. i'm not sure if this paragraph adds anything to the theory itself, but i found it a very interesting point regardless.

---

in the previous part, i detailed the significance of ralsei removing her hat, and the war she inadverdently stepped into against the game's very UI by doing so.

where the UI and other elements constantly depict ralsei with her hat on, the prophecy glass seems to take this war a step further...

...by constantly depicting her in her Organization XIII cloak, thus, in effect, or at least symbolically, pushing her even further back into the closet.

ralsei is completely faceless while in that cloak. the more distinct she becomes, the more she steps out of the closet and the more she becomes herself, the further she steps outside of the path the prophecy has paved for "him"

I

YOU

🌸Chapter 5🌸

so it is now time to point out all of the Transfem Ralsei Moments that i noticed during our expedition to the Field Of Pink And Gold

once more, keep in mind that these are only the things that i noticed. there might be some that i missed (especially because at the time of writing i have only played through the chapter once)

before the chapter even begins, we have a short conversation between the heroes and queen.

ralsei specifically saying this grabbed my attention. of course, there's arguments of adoption, etc, but it's specifically ralsei saying this that makes it noteworthy to me. coupled with, of course, queen demanding just after that ralsei "Prove It"

Prove you can be a mother. on the court. right now!

next, after the festival is done, we finally make our way to the chapter proper. and when we meet up with ralsei, her introduction is rather... unique. (yes i am still going to be using feminine pronouns for ralsei through this)

having been forcibly stuffed inside a closet (wardrobe, whatever).

this Small Room That Holds Clothes happens in this case to be holding hats. but not just any kind of hat.

hats identical to the one ralsei had worn to hide her face when we first met her in chapter 1. and which she very adamantly did not want to wear:

unfortunately, ralsei's refusal to be put back into the closet wear a hat is itself refused, by the defacto villain of the chapter, and inevitible newest addition to my blocked tags list.

this guy's such a cad.

the grass, trees, and even the hat call back to chapter 1. upon opening a nearby treasure box, ralsei remembers the squad's first day of adventures...

and, of course, upon equipping the ribbon, ralsei asks if she still looks cute. - unfortunately, the word "pretty" is not used this time around, which i only note as "unfortunate", because i sited the use of "Pretty" Instead of "Cute" as potentially important.

she still has the hat on during this time. and it's so sad, and honestly kind of hurts, to see her ask these things again while being forcibly pushed back into that appearance.

i was worried that ralsei might wind up stuck in that hat the entire chapter, or worse, to the point that when we encountered a sheary trimming a shub in the shape of Hatted Ralsei, we told her it looked bad, as some kind of hope that it would help to remove the hat for reals.

but even though the party agreed that the new shrub looked way better, the sheary proceeded to decapitate the poor thing, which feels... ominous.

we don't know what happens when we pick the other option. - i also forgot to check back in this room later, something i'll be sure to rectify.

luckily for all of us, ralsei would once again be allowed to show her face, for when we aquire the Roc's Feather, her hat once more whisked away

by The Winds Of Freedom!

next; act 2. returning to the dark world, we perform a somewhat familiar prison break, whereupon heading east, we find that ralsei has once more been transformed into a butler. this time around, her reaction is... less than ecstatic. she throws the - traditionally male - outfit, and the roll along with it, into the water, citing her enjoyment of butler-ness as being:

"rather context based" - now, i'm not sure if this specifically means anything because, to be fair, flowery is Super Obnoxious. but, you know, just in case.

the castle features 2 paths that can be tackled in any order. my siblings and i headed West first. now, for a bit of an anecdote: this chapter is home to the second egg my siblings and i were able to find on our own (the first being in chapter 2), which is always a good feeling. i bring this up, because while on the west side of the castle, the Key Items tab is replaced with an Evidence tab, which contains the evidence used during the trial, and includes previously obtained key items, including the egg, which when examined during the trial, says:

"it's evidence. You'll know what it was evidence for when it happens." which is a line so loaded i seriously don't think i need to explain any further.

which seems to cover just about everything on the west side, now we should head- WHOOPS!

my notes got scattered by the wind! and in my rush to pick them up, i seem to have accidentally put them in the wrong order, so now we're heading up and north before we head east for No Reason!

Northward, Upward, and around, all the way to the secret boss fight. Mad Mew Mew makes a return, though in this universe, she's named Pink!

this is a character who we know, with 100% certainty, without any shadow of a doubt, is a trans woman! and after clearing the duel against her, the scene where she explains to use her woes is given the backing track of - what else - Lost Girl:

i don't wanna see any more comments or posts about how "lost girl is just a melancholy song it doesn't mean anything" when it SO does.

another thing that stood out to me; ralsei tries to hide her face - specifically her face - from asgore.

first hiding in the hedges to avoid being seen (left screenshot), then later going as far as to don the hat again to boymode obscure her face around him (right screenshot). Ralsei takes the hat off again at the dark fountain, where it's hard to see, during which asgore draws comparisons to Kris' new friend and Asriel noting that the longer one looks at ralsei, the less she seems like a monster at all.

this is not the first time someone made a comparison from ralsei to asriel, only for the comparison to be dismissed. but i can't help but also notice the lack of gendered language.

---

oh! late-breaking; as i was typing this, my older sibling found footage of something we missed in our playthrough, if you perform well enough at the maiden climb, a certain maiden awaits you at the top!

i never was any good at platforming...

transfem ralsei truthers are eating so good this chapter, that this addition was basically a recap of the whole thing.

but i did skip something earlier, of course.

how about we close our eyes a moment, and think about ralsei.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

despite every shitty thing he did, despite shoving ralsei into a closet, being the one to put ralsei back in that stupid hat! despite EVERYTHING, it's flowery who comes to ralsei's side to offer these drink vouchers, and specifically offers to ralse, a voucher that is Blue And Pink

and then - AND THEN - he calls! Ralsei!! Princess!!!

i screamed. again! Like. what else is there to say? where do i go from here?

hearing Lost Girl in ralsei's room was enough for me to upgrade this in my mind from a Headcanon to a Theory, but this?? THIS??? the word "Theory" is absolutely underselling it. this can't be anything else but clear, and deliberate foreshadowing! i am 100% sure that this is going to be real.

tags via @princessralsei

you are absolutely correct! here is the whole thing:

"That's not like you" is a line that i feel carries a Lot of weight here, especially given how the rest of the conversation goes. Ralsei is acting "out of character" - but more importantly, acting independently.

Ralsei: "You are NOT a human! You're just... pretending to be something you're not!" Flowery: "Oh? Ralsei, wanna tell them what's wrong with that?"

this, of course, implies that Flowery knows or perceives that Ralsei is "pretending to be something they're not" - a hero, a devout follower of the prophecy, a prince... cisgender.

whatever flowery is specifically getting at, it is clear that ralsei is Not Being Themself.

look at how upset ralsei becomes here, particularly when discussing purpose, and its inescapably.

ralsei, in turn, sees her purpose as equally inescapable. "doing what we have to do"

we Have to stop the darkness, we Have to be the heroes. she "Has" to be The Prince.

i Know that this specific phrasing is important, but the words to describe why or how are escaping me.

this scene is a rolercoaster of emotions for the players and characters alike, but especially for ralsei. "what DO you want"

ralsei is bound by the prophecy, by the rules, by the roll of prince.

we can only hope that in the future, ralsei can escape these Rules as well, and can achieve what she wants.