it's raining after all

ralsei is my most favouritest character in deltarune ever since i played it back in 2018 and at first i liked him because he was the softest boy caretaker i could ever imagine so he tucked me to bed at night and whispered me lullabyes (headmate reading intentional and also relevant to my opinion piece of him)

i know the most prevalent talk about him is a very popular transfem headcanon but i dont think hes transfem actually. i think hes trans in a genderqueer kinda way but i dont think he will be a canonical binary trans girl (or really lean too much into the fem category) (yes the system bias is very much prevalent here hence i called it an opinion piece not an analysis) the reason i kind of take issue with people headcanoning him as transfem specifically and not any other trans identity is that like. okay he likes to wear skirts and likes to cook and does all these traditionally fem things and i think the obsession with him being specifically a girl is partly due to these things and idk gender role things anyways now we got gender out of the way i want to say the actual thing i think

i think deltarune is very much a dissociation type game where a lot of the game focuses on dissociation, the way the flavour text talks when you look at yourself in the mirror always has a not recognising your own reflection type answer, ive always read the dark world as manifesting due to daydreaming and people who spend a lot of time in the darkworld being the type of person to just be maladaptive daydreaming a lot

ralsei despite supposedly being a concept/figment of your imagination/whatever he was gonna say in chapter 3 also has dissociation themes tied into him as well where i think that he has the flavour of dissociation that just views yourself as less of a person? depersonalisation something something idk a lot of my opinion on him is mostly projection thats why he thinks he doesnt deserve anything good in life just cuz hes a darkner. ik theres some debate of whether he even is a darkner or not but it doesnt reallt matter here what matters is that he explicitly thinks of himself as a darkner. and up until now most darkners are conciousnesses manifested from objects, and one reductive way of thinking of them is "objects with conciousness". ralsei also explicityl says that he believes that darkners exist to serve lightners and hence shouldnt be worried about or given the thought of mind. he indirectly viwws himself as a tool to be used by lightners which skews his entire perception of his role as a friend to kris and susie and ik hes learning to be more of a person nowadays but like

this ties into why hes so jealous of flowery since flowery serves as the leader to all the flowers and he serves asgore but he gets to be his own person beyond all that. ralsei basically denied his own personhood for a long time and he was also alone until kris and susie came along to be friends with him so his entire being is centred around the prophecy and doing things for a good ending maybe changing the ending of the prophecy which probably involves sacrificing themselves it's crazy isnt it

ralsei is also the same type of person whose inferiority complex/self-hatred bleeds into prejudice against people like him so seeing flowery exist without "playing his role" unsettles ralsei to the point of being the literal #1 hater of flowery for the entire damn chapter, and after that little talk with him kinda just warmed him up to the guy (despite him still having a very homoerotic tension type rivalry with flowery) up until flowery just. dying. and idk if i ship it idk if i should. like. like i could. but im also worried about it like is it okay to ship them. idk the ending is so good i keep thinking about ralsei witnessing flowery up until his last (?) moments please flowery dont die asgore needs yoy sob sob sob.

there is also something very funny about someone with an anagram of asriel having incredibly strong beef against someone whos 1 letter away from the character who asriel turned into after death. ik that means something but i might need 6-7 business days to figure it out. also asriel on flowery's deathbed? flowey emerging from the dust on asriel's deathbed? yea funny

anyways i think of ralseis room scene a lot actually i blame the meme thats like "contrary to you lightners i dont need much in my room to be happy" and susie is like "you could use a bed tho" and ralsei was like "i dont deserve a bed" thats funny. yeah thats the entire sequence byt i just think how incredibly sad it is for ralsei to go home to that every day, he doesnt find happiness in doing things for himself because he thinks that he doesnt deserve it, even if he knows that kris and susie will feel sad knowing this is how ralsei lives he still does it anyway, he inadvertetntly hurts his friends because he was trying not to hurt them and thats beautiful actually and i love how susie has grown from being mean to being kind-mean in the sense that she grabs ralsei and is like HOW COULD YOU BE MEAN TO YOURSELF I LOVE YOU YOURE AN AMAZING FRIEND NOW TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF DUMBASS!!!!

"but she should know better" and shes proved time and time again that she doesnt. she can't handle conflicts maturely and she can't write a cohesive plot. okay so lower your standards and dont watch the shows if you hate it that much?? but nobody mentions how theres literally another guy in the writing team of helluva (brandon rogers, and the most hated episode Unhappy Campers was written by adam neylan. a man.) so why the heck is it when people hate on helluva/hazbin, they put the blame SQUARELY on vivziepop. it's so freaking weird.

also i saw a video essay where the thumbnail called helluva "professional fanfiction". as a writer. d. do you know how ridiculous that sentence sounds. fanfiction isn't and shouldn't be an insult it just means stories written by fans about things. this means that you can't really "professional" a "fanfiction"... of your own original work... i know the connotation is that the show is unprofessional and messy but it's a fucking indie project of course you don't have a board of writers looking and reviewing the script all the time.

hey remember that one time vivziepop was accused of being transphobic over blatantly fake screenshots of "vivziepop" (someone who even hid their profile so only their name could be displayed) saying transphobic things

i also saw a post on youtube asking if scott cawthon or vivziepop designed better characters and the comments were filled with people glazing scott cawthon. SCOTT CAWTHON? THE FNAF GAME DESIGNER? THE ONE WHERE MOST ANIMATRONICS LOOK PRETTY MUCH IDENTICAL TO EACH OTHER? the comment section also said that vivziepop's characters have the same silhouette while scott cawthon's characters have distinct silhouettes, HOW? EVERY ANIMATRONIC IN FNAF 1 HAS THE SAME BODY TYPE??

im not saying that scott cawthon sucks at designing but the clear bias in that poll? forum? is so enraging to me because if people hate vivziepop as a person which is why their vision is clouded scott cawthon literally?? donates to homophobic organisations?? like are we just casually forgetting that happened or are we just lying to ourselves now.

i think cawthon's designs are great and they serve the purpose of what they're supposed to be: they're animatronics (hence it's logical to have the same body type since production would be easier) and they're meant to scare you (they look creepy). i can't speak for anything beyond sister location since i stopped following fnaf beyond that.

but you cannot criticise vivziepop's designs without understanding the purpose of them looking like that. i think the characters are really complex but they look really good, they're pretty cohesive in a theme (people would call this "looking the same" but i digress) and most importantly, the silhouettes are DISTINCT. if you black out most characters in any series to just the silhouettes you would know it's them. i'm not talking about the body types because HELL, FNAF HAS THE SAME BODY TYPES IN EACH GAME, YOU CANNOT TELL ME OTHERWISE. AND SO DO MOST OTHER CARTOONS take gravity falls for example, adventure time, their body types are the SAME WHO CARES IF THEY ARE AT LEAST THEIR SILHOUETTES ARE RECOGNISABLE

actually tangent i think we should take away the words "character design" and "silhouette" away from the general audience until they learn what they're actually for. silhouettes are yes for design but they're also meant to be for POSING the character in a distinct way. hazbin and helluva does that quite well. you are not meant to LAYER THEM on one another and tell who's who. because what the heck does that even achieve. you can have an unclear round silhouette for a sad/shy character and that conveys their body language adequately. silhouettes are not a hard and strict rule for every artist to follow. why are we shitting on vivziepop specifically just because her artstyle is somewhat unique. why.

one charitable reason i see is that her designs are unsuitable for animation and yes i agree with them. animation characters are kept simple in design for that specific reason, but its rarely ever pointed out over the "silhouette" issue.

im not gonna throw a pity party or anything but i lost a lot of money recently my family CANNOT know about this. so im opening commissions. price will be paid by donation with a minimum of 5 US dollars for each piece no matter the quality.

sample art

additional portfolio here

he talks very formally and properly even if nobody else is doing so in the project

he refuses to call grace "ryland" even if grace gave him explicit permission, because he was just raised like that

he literally infodumps about his sex life to grace while not realising thats not the best topic to just say casually

most scientists are passionate about their craft so him being super into science isnt really a huge deal, but im putting it here anyway for fun