Willow

“Mew Mew/Mettaton isn’t NECESSARILY trans it’s up to interpretation”

So here is the unofficial lyric video of Pink’s theme:

We must ask the question…. What is she saving the day from?

That’s easy.

Us.

Specifically, on an aborted weird route from chapter five, literally everything except the very end of the weird route happened. Noelle is broken. She is destroyed still. Chapter six is going to still be weird.

But I think this is the real twisted route. Pink gave us the final shadow crystal on this route, which we couldn’t get on the weird route. With this, we will be able to make the twisted sword.

“It would be fine if I just cross hell.”

Hell’s roar bubbles from the depths, which is abundantly clear now to be the Lake. Now forgive me for not understanding all the nuances of Japanese and please correct me if I’m wrong, but I really read this as “it will be fine even though I crossed hell.” When I think about all of this….

Here’s my insane theory. The cat who purifies the crystal? Not Seam. Seam is going to give us something completely different. Pink is coming back to Castle Town, this was confirmed. When she does, she’s giving us that pure crystal and it’s getting turned into the twisted sword, with which Kris and Noelle will be given the tools to pick up their lives and take back their agency.

The curse across the world is this strange thing that stops people from having any control over their lives and forces everything back to normal even when something INSANELY FUCKED UP LITERALLY JUST HAPPENED. Like they just almost died and were only saved by barely understood skeleton bread magic. Something is up.

Everything just keeps going back to normal, right??? There is something messed up going on. Something in the world, whether it’s the angel’s hand forcing the prophecy or Gaster mandating his vision, something is stopping things from going off track and Pink is a beacon of defiance. Pink is the only Shadow Crystal Boss who comes out of her fight completely in a better place than where she started and still just as conscious and aware and there’s not a single hint of tragedy to her.

Chapter five is a chapter demonstrating Gerson’s ideology that a story is poisoned by irony and doubt. The Knight is the idea of how the story should be, it tries to accomplish the prophecy, it kills people like Tenna and Jackenstein who have “stupid” humor and are written in ways that could be seen as childish. But they’re so earnest and so strongly written with so much conviction in their goofiness and not a single hint of irony. There is complete certainty. Overwhelming love. And so we can save them. And I believe we will save Flowery as well.

Pink is the secret boss extension of this. Secret bosses are supposed to be insane and tragic and extraordinarily powerful and otherworldly. But here comes this trans girl who doesn’t even have a talk sound, who is unabashedly the same person she was in Undertale, who is a fully living, fully alright Lightner and actually the first Lightner other than Kris and Susie to be invited to Hometown! She is hopeful, she is happy ultimately, she is able to accept herself, she is loving, she is ridiculous and over the top and funny and melancholy and wonderfully every single thing. She is most comparable to Spamton, in that both are extremely outwardly goofy characters, but where Spamton is a tragic character who is almost entirely evil, Pink is a happy one (or two) who is essentially entirely good. She is everything Deltarune needed and she is saving the day. Why couldn’t the Knight get to her?

She has absolutely no idea how the story is supposed to go. There isn’t any room for poison in her mind. She is entirely herself. It all works because there is absolutely zero irony, just pure, passionate love, from the character, from the writing, from the art, from the music, it is pure love.

This is why chapter five is my favorite chapter and might always be.

…. I guess the issue is that this makes the Aborted Weird Route super different without Pink. But man I just love her so much and I read into these lyrics too much. My analysis still holds up my theory is just shit! I am definitely going to make a million more posts about Pink by the way she is one of my favorite characters of all time.

Also I think we’re all doing this already but I feel like it goes like this:

Pink is the name of the System collectively

Maddy is the name of the Ghost

Mew Mew is the name of the Body

I can’t stop thinking about Pink. As a trans lesbian, she is one of the most authentic explorations of freedom and confinement with gender expression. A powerful character made out of the lost dream of attaining a body you can be happy with. So beautiful. The shop screen is so melancholy and beautiful and how understated she is, without even having any talk sound, is so fascinating.

I was PRETTY sure that Pink was Mad Mew Mew and the Secret Boss after seeing the shop but I was holding out hope for Friend. What I got was better.

Is Toby Fox trans???? How does this dog know so much about being trans and gay?????

Even the first moment of the fight where Mew Mew uses the tea thinking it’ll be pink and then it’s purple. How many t girls out there ordered something at 3 am that said it was fuchsia and then it arrives and you get the package without your parents knowing and that shit is straight up purple. Just me? I dunno. I just find that occasional cluelessness and failing to perform how you’d like to is a part of early transition and it’s so nice to see that from the beginning. Plus the opening line talks about a bathroom break, which like obviously.

“How long have you been my big sis” too like it’s such a small thing but it’s so personal for me. You have to love yourself AND your body is the ultimate conclusion.

The gameplay is so fun and unexpected. Yellow Soul added a big shot and made it sideways. Green soul added diagonal and shells. Purple soul added tracks going side to side, 3D circle going inwards, heart collection, and dating???

The music is wonderful and I don’t think I need to tell you why Miku makes it more trans.

The presentation is unbelievable and so highly produced and thoroughly implemented, much like the entirety of this amazing chapter. The art is so good and I can’t even believe it, as a long time Mad Mew Mew fan from when I played Undertale on Switch for two hundred hours.

This was a Ralsei fight, it is in reality about Ralsei, which could lend some credence to my Ralsei being a diegetic player interfacing with the device theory, but the main evidence for that is debunked because everybody can see the menu. The interesting thing is that this boss is very much about being trans but also about controlling a body that disagrees with you, so it parallels Kris in some ways but…… Kris and the player have a much more contentious relationship. I’m not sure how to reconcile this connection because Kris is just so spiteful and evil and mean to the soul, whereas Mew Mew loves Maddy and Maddy loves Mew Mew. Different players treat Kris differently, it’s hard to identify exactly what the heck is being said here. Kris surely felt weird about saying the things in the last date.

Y’all I had twenty hours on this game. I got it in late 2019 because I was twelve and obsessed with Undertale (and to a lesser extent Deltarune, how the tables have turned) and knew Cave Story was a huge inspiration.

I loved the music, the world, and the characters, as well as really enjoying the systems and gameplay, though at the time not appreciating the design for what it was. The final boss rush was too hard for me, so I did a whole other playthrough as well as getting my friend to briefly play co-op with me, and getting my brother to do the same.

In 2024, I randomly decided to sit down and beat the game. It was a sombre but ultimately happy ending. I walked away satisfied.

About a week ago, I was thinking about how fun Cave Story was and I’m currently in the midst of the worst moment of my intense Deltarune Special Interest. I figured I may as well go back to an old game I really enjoyed, it has been sitting barely justifying its $30 price tag on my Switch for two years.

… yall I have 50 hours on the game now it’s not even funny. Were you going to TELL me there was a true ending that is actually happy and gives you one of the best levels in gaming history and explored the mechanics to their absolute limit and invented precision platforming and has some insane gunslinging Uncharted type gameplay and then one of the best final bosses I’ve ever seen???? Were you going to TELL me there’s six challenge stages that are all also really fun and add massive replayability? What about the hard mode that is actually one of the craziest challenges I’ve ever seen in any game???? And Curly Story is a thing and there’s holiday events and there’s cheat codes and there’s more secrets I somehow managed to not get in two full true ending playthroughs and there’s a remake apparently and it’s just all so overwhelming….

And Brentalfloss my favorite guy for Luigi Mansion 3 rap song and DK Rap where Diddy Kong got the allegations did a BANGER lyrical cover where his vocals are insane????

Guys you don’t understand my life has been changed.