#weirdnerdmedia

To begin with more of an outline-ish perspective on this, tadc and harry potter were both series that were massively popular and almost inescapable in their heyday. While tadc's reign was much more short lived compared to the almost 25-year continuation of the hp franchise and fandom. Both were made by fairly new, inexperienced authors who had little industry training and were writing almost all alone. They both gave the creators almost immediate success, and were viewed very positively in the public eye. And to be fair? This was completely justified. To both tadc's and hp's audience, it was a new, fun adventure with a plot that invested you and characters you could love and get attached to. As someone who read/watched the first installment of both, I completely get why a child or a teen would like either of these.

However, as the years went on, we saw a lot more problems with these writers that led to their reputation being tarnished. J.K Rowling was openly transmisogynistic, funding hate programs against trans women in the UK. Gooseworx was racist, and a person who is FAR too friendly with conservatives and bad people. Not to mention that they both are racist, goose more online and Rowling more in her books. And after these problems arose, tadc and hp started to be seen in a more critical eye. Not just from a bigotry standpoint, but a writing one.

Harry potter and pomni were the main characters of the series and provided a viewer introduction to the world around them. They both gave us a look into a new world and their reactions told us how we were supposed to feel about that world. Harry was enveloped in wonder and excitement at the wizarding world. He was dragged out of a boring, mundane reality and bought into a new, quite literally magical one. It's how many kids felt reading the books at the time, and the escapism aspect is part of what made hp so popular. Pomni's nervous and confused reaction, combined with her fear and willingness to escape, is functionally an opposite of Harry's happiness. of course, the circus is wacky and zany and goofy, but it is a lot more malicious and lacks the freedom of hp. And after this point, after the first few parts, we expect Harry and Pomni to be fleshed out as characters.

Except they're not.

They function as "y/n" characters who live out the fantasy of interacting with the world and its characters. Pomni embodies the mentality of the fandom at the time of the show. She seems to be the only one to befriend Jax, a bully character who is closed off to everyone and is friendly-only to her. Quite literally the thing much of tadc's audience wants to do. And Pomni's "personality" is almost a fantasy in itself. She's "crazy" in the gun episode, everyone in the circus is nice to her and wants to be her friend, characters the fandom doesn't care about aren't interacted with as much, she's "mature" and a "voice of reason" when needed, and has very little actual flaws with her character.

Sound familiar?

Harry is incredibly close, except he was made for a different type of person than pomni. He's essentially what every millennial kid wanted to be. He's a chosen one who survived a magic attack from one of the most powerful wizards in the world, when he was a baby. It gave him a cool scar that everyone recognizes him by, and it stings in a cool way. Everyone wants to be his friend. He gets a special spot on the school sports team, and gryffindor NEVER loses a game. He's involved in almost every happening at school and stops it by some magic he musters with his friends.

But both characters flounder in the fact they have zero personality, and make the whole series seem bland.

December has always been this kind of mysterious character to me. The way she's talked about (both in-game and irl) seem to be very positive, with very little question as to if she was more than just an older sister. And tbh I feel like this wouldn't align with toby's writing. We continually see several characters in undertale be functionally and sometimes entirely different from how others describe them. Dess is usually portrayed without this nuance and it kind of feels underwhelming. ofc there are going to be amazing interpretations of Dess and the like, but it feels like she's not being used to her full potential. This could just be me, but just having a nice, kind, fully good person go missing and turn into a horrible creature that we need to save, especially when that character is a woman, is just... overdone. Imo it would be more narratively satisfying if Dess was a flawed, lonely, and emotional teenage girl who made some bad decisions. So few people can imagine a spunky, unruly, and unique kid to just... disappear. And don't even get me started on how Carol and Dess's decisions make for her disappearance and eventual change into something else could make for a much better plot point than just. Carol was evil and mean and then decembwuh disappeared :( :( :( :( :( . I moreover feel that if the story of deltarune is about escapism, family, and freedom rather than a story about a innocent girl going missing to a scary monster than it will be one million times better than it's premise.