#deltarune speculation

It led to a lot of people speculating that Kris does need a SOUL to some level. Maybe the SOUL is Kris’ but we’re a foreign entity that has taken it over, or that Kris’ original actual SOUL has been removed and replaced with us. If Kris needed the SOUL to live, that would explain their slow, deliberate movements and also why they keep putting us back inside despite clearly hating being under our control.

So now, with Chapter 4 giving us a much better glimpse of SOUL-less Kris doing stuff… it’s notable that they seem… fully capable of moving ‘normally’. Angrily, but normally.

Even when they do the whole Creepy Zombie Walk thing they are notably faster than they seemed to be in Chapters 1 + 2

They can do things that require fine motor skills, focus and swiftness like playing the piano, handling glasses, and beating the shit out of us with a hockey stick and it's all animated as smoothly as most other Deltarune Animations. Not really implying effort or stiffness the way that original Creepy Zombie Walk animation did.

And while Susie only gets a brief moment to interact with SOUL-less Kris in the Normal Route

Noelle has prolonged interactions with them in the Weird Route (both on-screen in Chapter 4 and off-screen in-between Chapters 2 and 3) and... while she does note that they sounded 'weak and shaky' and obviously their behavior seems weird on account of the whole 'traumatized by the Unkillable Evil Time-Demon only they can see" thing

... There's nothing to really indicate that there's anything outright unnatural or 'zombie-like' about the way Kris moves and interacts with her while SOUL-less. Since this is the Weird Route, Noelle even note this is the most natural and Kris-like they've acted in the last few days.... until we take over again.

And now we know they can go without the SOUL for a fairly prolonged period of time. The Ominous Phone Voice of Probably Carol does tells them they need the SOUL, it seems unclear why.

So… what that means for SOUL-less Kris’ behavior before? It’s possible that even if Kris can operate without a SOUL, it still hurts like hell. So right after tearing out the SOUL they are in Maximum Pain and it's hard to ignore, causing them to move in a struggling and slow manner. But the more they go without it, they kinda get used to it and the pain fades into the background - allowing them to do stuff more-or-less normally.

(Basically Kris has Chronic Pain but the only Painkiller that works for them is Demonic Possession)

…Or, knowing Kris, maybe this… was all an act. They were only behaving like This because they knew we were watching. It is pretty notable that they walk around normally in the Holidays' Kitchen while we're eavesdropping on them and only swap to the Creepy Walk Animation once they notice us....

I find this moment where Rudy interrupts Toriel because it really adds an interesting layer to his relationship with Mayor Holiday, because it kinda communicates to us that Rudy is second-guessing his relationship with her to the point where he's not comfortable having her addressed as his spouse

When he speaks her name, his expression makes it as if he's saying it with a grudging and frustrated tone. And the fact that Rudy sharply interrupts her IMMEDIATELY after Toriel addresses Carol as that, and instead opts to call her by her first name indicates to me that Carol's neglect and toxic parenting are starting to test his patience, especially in the wake of Dess's disappearance.

Remember how when Kris asks them about Carol and Noelle when visiting the hospital in Chapter 1 he said "love her but... she's tough on her"? That could very well be a euphemism for how not-so-good things really are, and that Rudy's trying to quell Kris's worries by pretending that by pretending he loves her more than he actually does.

i was recently raving about the use of horror in deltarune because it is often the subversive space, it's the space where villains and final girls dominate the footprint of the genre, and it's famously historically (very problematically) queer. because it was always telling stories that stood in for cultural anxiety, it depicted characters who were different and it's become an affirmative and often reclaimed and celebrated genre in spite of and because of its history. carol clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws explores the nuanced relationship of horror and gender politics — one of the things i remember is the androgyny of horror in killers and survivors alike;

The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine... (...) Lest we miss the point, it is spelled out in her name: Stevie, Marti, Terry, Laurie, Stretch, Will, Joey, Max. Not only the conception of the hero in Alien and Aliens but also the surname by which she is called, Ripley, owes a clear debt to slasher tradition. (40)

clover was criticizing the genre for this (for valid reasons), but i think it's also this semi-androgynous soup of heroes and villains in horror, plus the fact that villains become the face of the film and girls become the heroes, and the whole thing is always a bit camp and hyperbolic, that they attract the disenfranchised as an audience. for a brief moment, the gaze might be flipped on its head.

a movie like Evil Dead 2 which is the blatant real-world "Blood Crushers 2" (susie hasn't seen the first, and the protagonist's severed hand attacks... Basement), is the reverse case. you have a male protagonist named Ashley (whom clover considers a "Final Boy"). the movie is a cult classic with a comedic edge, and Ash is doing all sorts of looney tunes-esque gags against his own hand. it's not a movie that takes itself and its protagonist as seriously as a western or an average superhero flick. that noelle and susie are attracted to horror instead is reflective of their worldview, where things that are scary or strange might not be.

and, also, i recently watched Aliens so thinking of the blatant xenomorph inspiration with queen's design has been really hitting. like oh... of course. the xenomorph, a species with a queen mother... a character who represents a maternal horror. the queen xenomorph is not really an intentionally malicious force as Aliens presents it, rather, just a mother making the logical conclusion towards protecting and proliferating its species/its offspring, a simple survival calculation. the queen only actively attacks ripley in vengeance. for dess and noelle, who watched horror together, and who both certainly have complicated relationships with their mom, the xenomorph imagery on queen comes through in what it means to have a monster mother. and it comes through in queen's behaviour, as she makes a calculation seemingly to do what's best for the lightners, even if it doesn't hold up under the human morality microscope.

just so much to think about with how horror and movie monsters get employed in deltarune, how they weave themselves into the story. how they stand as the angle through which noelle and susie can put a subversive worldview to words. susie aligns herself with the movie monster only to find out... she is maybe the final girl. i am also led to think about the framing of the girl as a second hero alongside the contradictory prophecy panel "And last, the girl / at last, the girl". I don't think i have a central thesis for this analysis, but it's very fun seeing the bits and pieces of a genre leaking its way into this game's story and having it mean something... quite subtle.

was watching mollystars's most recent deltarune stream and she pointed something out about friend that i havent seen a single other person in the deltarune theory sphere mention yet

i edited down this clip to only include the most important parts, but the full unedited clip can be viewed here (timestamped)

this implication is fucking TERRIFYING. if friend can physically edit the map and mess with meta elements/the device layer itself, then our potential future encounter with them is going to be SCARY AS FUCK. everyone start getting afraid

(btw if you cant see the friend face in the darkness click the readmore for a zoomed in image)

these guys.

are similar to

the rudinns & rangers.

and ive been kinda stumped for a while

but i legit think i figured out what they are.

so let me send you through my thought process...

“hm. rudinn. rudinn ranger. chapter 5 flower enemy.

rudinn. rudinn ranger. chapter 5 flower enemy.

damn it. what connection does this thing have to rudinns? is it because rudinns like money?

why is it shaped like the rudinns? is it because this new enemy is a type of card?

and i mean, chapter 5 is japan and flower themed.

but what would cards have to do with money, flowers, and japan—

*REALIZATION*

YOU.”

The only thing that makes me hesitant about being 100% confident in this deduction is that the colors are wrong, but the colors for darkners have never really 1:1 matched with their irl counterparts anyway… usually. Rudinns are green while irl diamond cards are red.

If these enemies aren’t Hanafuda then i just genuinely have no idea what they’re supposed to be. Their attacks make me think of fireworks, but thats not card related, and they LOOK like they’re origami, but thats not card related either (at least i don’t think it is.)

As a side note I actually just love these fellas look at them

they got flower petals on they head.

Theyre little goobers. theyre little snilers.