hello! i saw your ‘the human is you’ thing on my dash and while i don’t really believe it i really like the theory of it as a whole! but i gotta ask how does the player making the discarded vessel fit into the ‘the human is you’ theory apologies if you already clarified on it.
I talk about it here!
The soul makes its new self (mind and body) in darkness.
It's taken away, as we fade to white, we're told we can't choose.
It's a sunny morning, Kris wakes up - back to their old self and their dull life. Lack of choice is hammered at every step - handholding, terrible partner assigned by Alphys, Susie shuts down our answer and bosses us around.
We reach the closet - we're in the dark again. We get control back, and have a new (blue) self.
It's a dream.
Kris's dream is our game - Deltarune - both dreams and games are dark, that's why it's image_depth. As Kris remakes their old self, we make our new one. Kris returns to reality, we enter it with them.
The dream is nebulously real just like all darkness. Kris heard Gaster speak.
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so about the newsletter comment of doom regarding chapter 6
specifically the 'one thing will be clarified, whether you're ready or not' comment.
I don't think toby is talking about a theory
I think he's talking about something we haven't heard in a while
the main conceit of deltarune is about player choice, chiefly within the context of determinism inherent to video games. you can choose to do anything in a video game, but there is always one ending that you march down towards to get the credits.
but does that mean our choices don't matter?
maybe yes, maybe no. that's the philosophy toby is engaging through deltarune, much like how undertale's was wrapped inside of flowey's 'it's kill or be killed'.
to put it more succinctly, 'your choices don't matter' is the 'it's kill or be killed' of deltarune
and much like 'it's kill or be killed' in the pacifist route, this philosophy has been challenged the entirety of the game
chapter 2 has possibly the biggest impact of player choice via the weird route, but even the normal route lands the fate of berdly's arm squarely in the player's hands
chapter 3 rhymes with chapter 2 via the sword route, but you are also presented multiple options to clearing the tenna boards
chapter 4 is where the literal philosophy of the game is made diegetic via the unshakable prophecy, but still, you have gerson telling you to forge your own path and there is a burning hope alongside icy despair for our heroes that their choices can change the prophecy, mirroring the desire of the player that our choices do matter. this is also made very clear via the weird route being the point of no return
chapter 5 then presents you two wholly different routes as a result of our choices. in the greatest show of defiance to deltarune's main philosophy, you the player ensure that your choices matter by breaking the game via noelle and kris. and even if you choose not to, you seemingly end up on a 'separate new route'.
meanwhile in the normal route, you are presented with the ultimate choice of choosing to swing vs flowery, but only when kris and us are alone, because our own party members start defying our choices by the time of the final battle.
so, where does chapter 6 fit in?
my belief is that, much like how the final sprint of the neutral route in undertale has flowery repeat his 'it's kill or be killed' mantra, chapter 6 will harshly remind us that 'your choices don't matter'
and what better way to do this than something that will force all of the 'variable' routes into one? each 'route' is a manifestation of our choices, after all.
see my crude graphic below:
this would also explain toby saying that it might be surprising what chapter 6 doesn't address.
now, i am NOT saying toby won't reveal more info about the knight or whoever. he still has a story to tell
what i am saying is that the overall message and the one aspect that toby will drill into us via chapter 6 is that our choices do not matter. this chapter is our darkest hour as the player.
we will be reminded that there is one ending and we will also face the question of 'does that mean our choices don't matter?'
This isn't much of a theory, but I'm bringing it up since I've seen people argue about why Kris is working with someone who wants to end the world.
In Chapter 4, Ralsei has this title:
Dark Hero: Records and faces the fate.
Susie switches her title if you fight Gerson:
Dark Hero: Carries out fate with the blade.
Axe of Justice: Faces fate with the blade.
But moss related stuff aside, Kris keeps a single title:
Dark Hero: Carries out fate with the blade.
Obviously, this is about the Prophecy. Kris is carrying out the Prophecy under orders from the Knight. Therefore, the Knight wants to carry out the Prophecy. The same Prophecy that promises that at the end, the worlds are saved.
Therefore, the Roaring is not the Knight's ultimate goal, but a step in the process. We don't know what, but the Knight wants something else that Kris feels obligated to work towards even if they have mixed feelings about it.
Not sure how I missed this, but "Love finds its way to the girl" having multiple possible meanings is probably because it has to be true for both the regular route and Snowgrave
At some point, even in the normal route where we've done all we can, Kris is going to reveal themselves as an agent of the Voice on the Phone and break with the rest of the Fun Gang, likely tearing out the SOUL for good to finally take back control, believing there's no other way. There is, of course, but first the others will need to get them back, and if we're going to help we'll need a substitute vessel. Thus, "love finds its way to the girl" in the form of Noelle either becoming our controlled character or maybe something involving her being the key to finding our original vessel that the Voice discarded.
But then there's Snowgrave, and it's possible that in that timeline this part of the prophecy has already come true, at least if we didn't try to back out at the lake. In the Side B brach, we kept right on proceeding all the way to the seeming deaths of Kris and Noelle. Love found its way to the girl, and unfortunately that way was forward into the depths.
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I still wanna flip a table every time I think about how Device Theory somehow convinced everyone that there's a "device layer" above the Light World there's zero evidence for in the entirety of the game and outside the game.
Like, yeah, the Device obviously exists. In the depths. It's in the depths.
This post is part analysis and part speculation. I am very confident in this prediction, but it is falsifiable and Toby acts in mysterious ways.
Since I assume that Kris and the player are at least on some level the same person, I will be using human to mean the player, Kris and Frisk's soul, and Kris or Frisk while having the soul.
The Angel
...is not you.
BUT.
People are onto something, when they say it is - bear with me.
Both of you watch from above and determine fate. But if you're a fresh breeze, the angel is a hurricane.
You are not a god - that you have any agency at all, dooms you to a lifetime of struggle against the real god. You, the human, Kris, write between the prophecy's lines, you can't actually go against it. You've barely been here 4 days and command a whole of 3 people, one of whom only listens when she feels like it. Your choices are few and their consequences limited.
The human and the angel are existentially opposed - choice vs absolute determinism. You are so similar to the angel, because you're the only thing that can challenge it.
But there is a truth to it!
The game already told us who the angel is.
Asriel
...was the angel in Undertale! It makes sense to start from here.
Undertale also had a prophecy - the angel will make the underground empty, either by killing or by freeing everyone.
When hearing it the first time it's easy to assume it's us. We, the protagonist, come from above, are powerful and are used to being center of attention. Killing is the bad ending, freeing is the good one,
But Asriel does both of those in quick succession in pacifist route! He kills literally everyone, and then breaks the barrier with his monster and human souls! The angel does not come from but returns from the surface.
His name is both a near homophone of Azrael, the angel of death in Islam, and an anagram of Sariel, the angel of death in Toby's own faith - Touhou. His robed boss monster design resembles Sariel very much, while his "final form" resembles the Delta Rune itself - with a big circle, massive wings and, relevant for later, a very prominent human (right-side up) soul.
Asriel is special on a meta level, because as a monster with human souls, he's an NPC with player-like abilities. He has the power of a human - most of all SAVE - without the free will of a human. A predetermined being with determination.
Can't get much more angel than this.
Spamton
...is responsible for almost half the mentions of heaven and talks of angel too. His shop wallpaper is a childish painting of a sky, which makes a comeback once his strings are almost gone, and he expects to be freed any second:
His one goal in life is to be free and reach heaven, which he plans to do with:
...complete with wings and a heart-shaped object at its center:
Spamton is a mockery of an angel. This is Mettat{r}on's NEO body. If this wasn't obvious enough, the game even gives us little angel-spamtons when using ReviveSong or using the secret cheat-heal by pressing F1:
But once the last string is gone, he falls motionless. He is a puppet - the strings bind him but also animate him, an object given life by the power of narrative.
To truly transcend, he must find a way to make his own fate.
Heart-shaped object.
The SOUL
...is what the angel needs.
Spamton aside, this is what Asriel needed to become the angel in Undertale.
Castle town has a yet unaddressed, conspicous, closed central door decorated with six wings and a massive heart. This could be coincidence.
More importantly, in chapter 4, we see Kris's soul wearing the paper angel - the inanimate object gains life by becoming the soul's body. Many people assume this means the soul plainly is the angel, but that's not the case. The paper angel was quite literally an angel all along.
When the angel falls on us, we become one, a synthesis-being. The angel gains life, we gain angelhood.
It's exactly the same with Kris - when they put the soul in their chest, we become a sum of us both. Kris gains humanity and will, we gain personhood. Soulless Kris is not you, but souled Kris is.
But if the angel is already an angel, and merely needs the soul to realize their power, who could it possibly be?
Escapist to Heaven
The meekest character, utterly confined by being merely herself. She who watches her life as if through glass - glass of the prophecy, or perhaps the computer screen. Who plays video games, and her dad tells her how to play them. Who played the angel for a pageant but kept wearing the wings long after. Who spins romantic visions of growing wings and flying away - leaving like her gone-or-dead sister did, as she prepares to jump out the window or drown in the lake, eager for heaven if anyone was:
Escapist in the purest sense. Just a Noelle. Poor, copiously angel-coded Noelle.
There is no way in hell that the angel is anyone else than Noelle and I am frankly shocked that anyone could come to a different conclusion. She is far beyond a red herring, she is thematically perfect. The game keeps piling angel imagery over her in all the most genuine scenes, craving to become an angel and fly away is the beating heart of her character.
...says an Addison, as they sell you the FreezeRing that only she can equip.
...says Spamton, as he sells us the thorn ring, for the symbolic betrothal of the angel with her human soul that she needs oh so much, sending both on a collision course with a body of water.
Prosthetic Will?
Noelle's greatest power, is that she can be forced to do anything. Her greatest weakness, is that she has to be forced to do anything. Will-less and all-powerful, fate's strongest chesspiece. Chapter 2 focuses entirely on this.
The Cyber City section is mandatory - weird route or normal route. The only way to progress is for Kris to keep pushing Noelle into uncomfortable situations. Gradually erasing her fear of mice so she becomes stronger, her fear literally making her leap over barriers that neither of them can cross on their own.
Queen designates her the instrument to cover the world in darkness, as the prophecy predicts. She uses Noelle to end the world, against her will, yet somehow for her own good, tied to a giant hand in blatant Christ imagery to match the crown ring of thorns. But in the end, Noelle actually approves of this plan! She'd like that! She's all for it when Berdly almost opens a fountain-inside-a-fountain.
Noelle needs a prosthetic will - someone else who will command her to do what she wants to do. This may sound absolutely insane and abusive to some people, but as someone very similar to Noelle, I can assure you there's no greater help than a command to be happy that accepts no argument.
She needs a command to grow her wings, and the soul has plenty to give. Once she has a SOUL - her own will - she can command herself, dictate the fate that confines her. She can also play the real game. Just like Asriel played Undertale. Just like Kris plays Deltarune.
Proceed
Weird route is all about transgression - disobedience. It's spearheaded by the soul, because it's an exercise of will. But weird route is also an exercise of compassion!
Noelle wants to escape, and fittingly her two main wills - Kris and Susie - are both outsiders in town, complementarily devil-coded to match her angelhood.
In the normal route, Susie takes the reins in chapters 4 and 5. Susie's scary and foreign - they're nothing alike, don't understand each other at all, they can barely communicate. This makes sense - the person to push you out of your velvet prison is going to be uncomfortable but exciting.
The weird route has Kris mirror Susie's scenes with Noelle. Kris is familiar and comfortable, the kid from her nostalgia-warped childhood memories. Kris and Noelle are thoroughly alienated in chapter 1, but weird route brings them to a literally telepathic level of connection.
They need to escape. And I mean that in
every
sense
of
this
word.
They're full of grim, self-destructive, suicidal thoughts, long for escape into a sweet past where guilt and worry don't exist. Both of them want to hurt themselves, and now they can connect over it.
For exactly the above reasons, every other part of Kris's being is screaming to stop.
The weird route makes both light world and dark world into play, just a dream, the killing is not for real and neither is the dying. They can be above it all. Together they become strong, distance themselves from the world until they can't be hurt, until nothing else matters.
They achieve LOVE.
Noelle can't follow up on these thoughts - she has no will. But Kris does. So it must be Kris's will - their soul - that makes these thoughts real.
Nothing can stop Noelle from obeying - not even your refusal to give orders. She will make you give orders. You're supposed to say "Proceed". Against the angel and their prophecy, your choice as player may not matter anymore.
In the end, we see a germ of a SOUL grow inside Noelle. Soon, she will only hear her own orders.
Slave to fate that she determines.
Angel.
Or maybe
Whether or not this accounts for the angel in both routes, or only in the weird route, is harder to say. We don't know nearly enough about normal route's future. Many people question if Toby would ever make the normal route's story dependent on weird route, and although I wouldn't discount it, it is a valid concern.
...prosthetic will?
Doesn't this remind you of something? Having to be ordered to do what you want? Isn't this what all will is?
Most people, of course, don't always need a prosthetic will - we have our own. Just like Kris.
The relationship between Kris and Noelle, or Susie and Noelle, is also the same between Kris and Kris. Kris, too, uses their own soul to force themself into action. And oh does it hurt. Just like it hurt Noelle.
Noelle doesn't like being ordered around any more than Kris does, but she, too, needs her own soul. How nice it would be, to have a kinder will than Kris's.
