I get why Toby Fox would change the wilting rose animation in Ch4’s weird route due to so many people in the fandom somehow interpreting it as an indicator of a literal sexual assault taking place, when it should be very clear now that it was supposed to represent all the gentle parts of Noelle’s personality disintegrating to leave only the thorns.
At the same time, whether he intentionally wrote it this way or not, I feel like the weird route can be interpreted as a really interesting parallel* for COCSA, especially with the presence of the soul/player as a manipulative third party forcing these two children into a relationship that neither of them really wants which is unfortunately not uncommon with COCSA, and then the line “you can’t even say stop like you used to” in Ch5’s weird route.
*but online spaces in general have so much trouble understanding that a fictional narrative can parallel certain dark topics without literally depicting those topics, and people have also become incredibly averse to the idea of dark topics being portrayed in any capacity in fiction, so I hesitate to even bring up this parallel lest it be misconstrued





















