this relentless future finally looks brighter and brighter.

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.

KRIS : )

BONUS + alternate version below