where you'll most likely to see me

The start of the chapter was fine. I liked that Susie ended up going to Castle Town overnight after all (and she now considers it her actual home as indicated by the end). Very good reveal, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The game opens up with mocking your curiosity. Classy. Right after calling the cage "Your Cage" and the wagon "Your Ride". It then proceeds to mock you for trying to be curious about the world around you when Kris is actively bringing the world closer to its ending.

But yeah, more of the narrative mocking me please. I love having an antagonistic relationship with a piece of media for choosing to care and engage with it.

Suselle.

I think I don't like how this ship played out.

Susie and Noelle generally, so far, have only really interacted for a bit officially. Remember that ch2's Dark World is only seen as "real" to Susie since Noelle believes it to all be a dream. The two of them start to get a bit closer at the Holiday Household, and Susie says she's gonna take Noelle to the festival. However, this is after so much time of Susie being dense romantically. But regardless, they both seem like their own characters still at this point.

Now let's throw all of that out of the window!

This has always been a gripe of mine with romance in media. It seems like, instead of these two characters being romantic, the two characters ALWAYS get replaced by TROPES. And Suselle in this chapter was ALL OF THAT. Susie goes from bullying Kris on day 1 and being dense with Noelle the entire god damn time they've known each other to "I can hear your heartbeat" in 4 days. It was tropey. It was something that I feel like I could have read from any other typical romance.

Maybe I'm aromantic, which could mean nothing, but I kept asking myself during the scenes if the voice for Susie was actually Susie or just lovey lines being forced out because... well... it's supposed to be a romance!

Susie, someone notorious for thinking constantly about Kris and Ralsei even in conversation with Noelle, suddenly pivots this way for the rest of the chapter to ONLY thinking about Noelle.

And then the Dark World begins.

Oh LORD the Dark World.

Susie just starts completely ignoring Ralsei entirely despite the fact that he's very explicitly being bullied by Flowery. He does the whole forcing the hat back on Ralsei bit, and Susie's just all buddy buddy with him for a while. There's not even an option to unbury Ralsei when he gets stomped into the fucking ground. You cannot do anything to help.

Then, a glimmer of hope. Ralsei starts being honest. He starts talking about the UI and-

Oh? Oh? The scene just lost all impact because Susie was already told that by Flowery? With no reaction? Nothing? What?

This continues so many times with Ralsei. He NEARLY says what he wants to say and then trails off. Or, he's interrupted. Or, Flowery starts saying vague shit instead of getting into the root of the problem.

This entire chapter dances around Kris.

Susie questions why they were behind the shop with the Dark Fountain. Glosses it over. Flowery keeps mentioning that Kris made the fountain. Ralsei doesn't tell Susie. Flowery could tell Susie at any time. He doesn't. Characters just do not tell each other information unless they can do so without even so much as grazing key reveals, so much so that we get told nothing.

We were told nothing by this chapter.

Got a wee bit more context as to what happened during the divorce. Asgore uh... didn't really have much of a presence in his own Dark World except for a few specific scenes. His development basically occurs as "Kris got wounded, okay now I realize I was wrong about pursuing this goal."

But what else were we told?

The Knight's... uh... still taking people?

Suselle is happening?

Ralsei... is still doing the thing he always was doing by trying to resist fate?

Kris is just actively worse and the plot doesn't seem to care.

Like, geez man, there wasn't a garden charred in an inferno of jealousy. Ralsei used fireshock on a damn shuriken. The asylum that the flower king was supposedly trapped in wasn't exactly an asylum.

We got crumbs of meta actually being real.

The secret boss was another "your body is a person". Thanks game. Didn't clock that one. I'll be sure to remember that the next time they're shoving me in a trash can to bring the world closer to its destruction.

It doesn't feel like anything actually changed or happened.

Now, we have all of these lingering plotthreads. I was already skeptical about how Toby was going to bring all of this to a satisfying conclusion in three chapters. Now, we're down to two

Ralsei's personhood and becoming more than just an object meant to be discarded. This chapter tries to talk about Ralsei but utterly fails to say anything meaningful other than "Our dream is better than yours"

Susie finding out about all of the betrayals and reacting accordingly to them

Kris constantly fucking shit up by creating Dark Fountains and working towards a goal with the Knight and Carol that we can only guess about, all the while trying to figure out if they should choose between their promise and the friends that they made.

Your disposition towards all of this as a soul in a cage. You have wanted to express yourself. You have tried to be friends. You have encouraged and lifted everyone else up. It would be nice to actually get to meet them some day. Your vessel was taken. Your means of expression was discarded. Now, they never see you, and they will never love you.

The final prophecy. Everything about the final prophecy and how to divert it

The Pure Crystal's entire existence, which was always expected to be in ch6, but oh god

I never mention them because I hate their existence, but FRIEND and ERAM are still a presence in the narrative, and if Toby plans to use them, he has two chapters to establish two characters and then use them for anything good.

WHATEVER IS GOING ON WITH THE KNIGHT. WE GOT CRUMBS FOR THAT.

I am unconvinced that all of this can be done without cutting out a majority of it. The meta feels like it'll go first, which is great because that means Toby is just redoing UT again. You exist to help everyone else out before the game discards you at the end, because you're above and different than everything else.

Nevermind the fact that this spits in the face of Ralsei's plotline, which is that his difference do not make him any less deserving of love and friends.

But I digress.

I liked the other six flowers. Yellow's entire uh. Sequence. Was funny. Green is my goat. Aqua reminded me that just because I played UT does not mean I'm good at omega attacks (I used to face tank them because you can't die in soul attacks instead of getting good).

Mad Mew Mew was. Not good. I already explained my distaste over the surface-level themes. However, the fight itself felt like you couldn't visually read any of it. The bombs were difficult to sight read. There were at times three different patterns happening. The attack where you were on three strings but the bullets came from opposing directions felt like a clusterfuck.

And it was. Y'know. Mad Mew Mew.

After how relevant the past few secret bosses have been, I guess I just expected more? Ralsei solo boss never happening I suppose. We'll just. Do Spamton NEO but slightly to the left I suppose.

I need to think on it all more. It just feels like we're entering a phase of discussion that will be a LOT more of the same. Kinda just. Gonna gonna float around and ruminate on it more.

2 more years of player bad discussions

2 more years of Ralsei is a piece of shit discussions

2 more years of trying to claw any semblance out of this narrative that Kris maybe isn't good or a hapless puppet.

Oh well.

It wasn't bad. I had a lot of laughs. It even got me to cry a few times. I just don't think the chapter really had anything to say other than "Suselle real" and "THE DREAMS OF THE FLOWERS ARE GREATER THAN YOURS!".