thorns' side blog :D

it feels to me like she has this kind of mania i can’t explain, except in a vague “i get it” way.

both literally and metaphorically, i think she does want to see the other side of the lake. it represents everything she previously thought was impossible.

maybe it will cost her her life! “she was used up.” but i don’t think it will be on purpose. if she dies, i think it will be more in a spamton “i was desperate to attain freedom from my role, but i learned the hard way i can’t escape, because i’m just a video game character”-way.

i think she really does think she can break the rules now. it may be dangerous, and the results may not be pretty - but i don’t think she would go out of her way to seek “the entity that breaks the rules of the world” if all she wanted was death. she doesn’t need kris for that.

it also rubs me the wrong way, because it feels like people have this genocide route trauma where they think everything in the weird route exists only to punish the player for being a meanie. like we need a second game to do that? like we can’t explore how “bad” routes can also give other characters a sense of agency? everything just has to be about the player’s guilt, always?

idk man, i just think it’s cool that the weird route here feels more complex. yes, it’s the forbidden path. yes, things are not exactly sunshine and rainbows. but similar to all the other “hidden” stuff in this game, there’s a throughline of exploring whether it’s possible for people to escape their predestined roles. it’s existential and meta as hell. how becoming self-aware of your “role” in this “game” is a soul-crushing yet thrilling thing. it causes people to act in desperate ways to escape it. fly or fall.

if noelle can be described as suicidal because she wants to escape her role, so can everyone else in the story. everyone are constantly trying to outrun their “destiny.” which is true in all routes btw, not just the weird route. either you embrace the existential horror of the meta, or you don’t. yes, noelle is doing it in a more Creepy!! Dangerous!!! Scary!!!! 😱 way than most. she killed people, and is at minimum willing to risk her life to escape.

but the game also challenges you in the aborted weird route to be like - is this better? is it actually?

noelle sure doesn’t seem to think so. she skips over the happy cutscene with susie like she’s bored of it. “nothing changed.” which, to me, reads like being awakened to your role is kind of a one-way trip. regular life doesn’t feel the same anymore, when you know the “script.” when you feel you have no choice. or as queen put it, noelle awakened “too much.”

this is me basically saying the true suicidal noelle is the aborted weird route one. because the weird route has its own twisted sense of hope. she still thinks she can escape. aborted route is her realizing she can’t.

to me, this is noelle in the “true” weird route -

and this is noelle in the aborted weird route -

ARTSTYLE CHANGE!!!