kiitzuna

[kiitzuna]

there's been a lot of anti kriselle sentiment going around lately (now that The Youtube Let's Players™️ are finishing chapter 3) so i just wanted to remind you - and whoever else needs to hear this - that cringe is dead and darkships/comships are made to be fascinating character studies, not a test of your irl morality

keep being you ❄️♥️

thanks! i think people should be able to explore what they want generally. although i dont really know what comships or darkships are and i think ive only ever seen them be used on tiktok (which i outright refuse to use most of the time) so im unfortunately inclined to believe theyre more made-up terms to put ships into even more weird categories out of some attempt to stay Morally Correct (in a performative way where it doesnt actually mean anything. i put it this way because i kind of got sucked into this ideal when i was like 16 but more in a Problematic Media sense than actual ships) (boring goomy lore no one asked for)

idk if it needs to be said but generally all my pages are pretty Proship DNI, mostly because if i have a say in it, i would rather not interact with people who like pedophilia/incest/etc. sure fiction ISNT reality but it certainly can have an effect on it and act as a reflection of it, at least imo. but like again, im just not interested in interacting with proshippers, im not gonna go around policing ships or something because 1. i dont have that kind of time or energy and 2. it clearly doesnt work (proof: all the people coming at me for drawing the Evil Toxic Kriselle and me only being reaffirmed in my desire to draw it). if i see something i dont like, 99% of the time i just ignore it and/or mald over it in private

said strategy of Ignoring and Moving On when you dont like something is very good and saves a lot of stress. i dont particularly like kralsei all that much, but i dont have a problem with anyone who does like it either, so whenever i see it im just like Neat and i keep scrolling. (i choose to believe that if toby wanted ralsei to be a legitimate stand-in for asriel somehow he would have made it super duper clear by now, and i also choose to believe that most kralsei enjoyers do not think that ralsei and asriel are very similar or meant to directly reflect each other) (i.e. i like to believe most people are normal. i enjoy giving the benefit of the doubt)

that was a massive tangent sorry, but i guess what im getting at is there’s a particular line between exploring a “darker” ship for the sake of analyzing the characters and story and exploring it to achieve self gratification (whether it be sexual or otherwise, but usually sexual). for example, with weird route kriselle, a lot of the appeal of it to me isn’t the romance within the abuse (although its interesting to dissect sometimes) but rather the romance despite the abuse if that makes sense. its the kind of thing only achievable with both parties being victims of the third party’s abuse, rather than just one partner abusing the other. its because kris and noelle are both victims that makes it so interesting, but a lot of people still tend to overlook kris’s victimization. even with their bathroom crashout in ch4, lots of people still view kris as a surface level abuser without taking a moment to really think about how they feel.

i feel like all of this is worth explaining because there are certainly people who “explore” the ship rather distastefully. lately that tends to involve turning the SA undertones into something to be fetishized and trying to make implied abuse/assault into something Sexy or pornographic. i feel like its unfortunately a common thing for artists’ intentions to be overlooked in favor of categorizing all portrayals of a particular idea under the same umbrella. there could be two drawings both depicting a sensitive scene/idea, where one might come from a place of sorrow, understanding, maybe even relating to the events taking place, while the other is clearly voyeuristic in nature and looks like it belongs on r34 instead of tumblr. the line isnt always that clear, and you cant always tell simply by how it’s drawn, sometimes the nature of the piece could be neither of these things or maybe it could somehow be both, who knows. It depends. It really fucking depends i think

ANYWAY im almost done sorry. i just wanted to add on that when we put these characters in Situations, obviously they’re not real and no one’s getting hurt (in theory), but what you choose to draw and create does reflect who you are as a person on some level. there’s pieces of yourself in everything you make, after all. thats a reason i myself feel like i need to be careful about what i make just in general, not because im Secretly Weird but just because i dont WANT to come off as weird by random passersby who wont take a minute to think about my work… which i guess returns to your original point. none of this is directed at you in particular anon, i just wanted to use your ask as an excuse to get some thoughts out, lol

[kiitzuna]

Hey! Just wanted to say hi and catch up a little bit. :)

I wanted to say that I see how far you all have come with the music you've made since we first met, and I'm happy, proud, and honored to see the progress you've made. I hope you realize you all do a lot of good for the world, even if it doesn't seem very visible, and that what you do is very inspirational to a lot of others, myself included. Keep on rocking on and doing your thing, man. <3

thank you :)

it's good to hear from you, been a while

hope you're doing well

-cerise

[kiitzuna]

Oh, thanks, great, I was going to yap about it and then realised it'd be awkward if it wasn't even your music-

So, uh, I have a bunch of your music saved for an offline listening, right. I have this huge playlist because I'm a freak and I'd go insane if there are no bops in my ears. I recently went on a long family trip and while it wasn't bad, the 5 hour long public train ride wrecked me mentally.

I desperately wanted to sleep when I arrived at the hotel, but couldn't, because my temples kept pulsing and there were weird sounds coming from the walls... I figured I'd listen to something on repeat to calm me down, but songs with lyrics hurt my ears, most of other soundtracks I had were either too energetic, or too simple, or made me think too much (utdr ost for example). I was going through lots of them, just lying face down in the pillow and then Dehyalyn came up, and Jesus pinecone Christ, wasn't it a blessing.

Listened to it fooor about half an hour? didn't have time to actually nap, but I think I dozed off for a few minutes and those minutes quite literally saved me from breaking down in front of my family.

Whenever Dehyalyn comes up now it sort of buzzes my head in a neat way, so I kept thinking of writing about it to you.

So thanks for it! And sorry for the rant-

i'm glad you like it!

dehyalyn was written back last year after a very rough period of my life where i was struggling a lot with relationships, so between that and projecting onto my ocs i ended up with that soundscape. very atmospheric, blurry, bittersweet nostalgic vibe

a lot of my music is like trying to capture the noise in my head and arrange it in a way that conveys the proper emotions

all of my music will always be available for free online (sometimes out of my control lol it gets stolen a lot) so future and past releases will always be available for you to enjoy :)

this piece of dehyalyn was in my head while writing it

by grimdecay

thank you again for listening :)

[kiitzuna]

Hi, sorry if it's confusing, but have you ever posted a track called Dehyalyn? I use a free music app instead of Spotify or YouTube and it sometimes messes up with names, so I'm not sure, especially considering I can't find it anywhere else-

yes i have! i'm a musician first and foremost but social media isn't really like. tailored to audio (especially not tumblr) so that's why you may not tend to see that stuff posted from me here.

dehyalyn was the track i wrote for under.net compilation 3 which you can find here:

you can find my tracks on the platform of your choice by searching for kiitzuna :)

thanks for listening

[kiitzuna]

so what'd you do today?

[kiitzuna]

these thorns protect me

[kiitzuna]

tom and jerry ass scene

[kiitzuna]

i recommended rereading my last paragraphs because a lot of people are just glossing over where i say "IF it is to be taken literal" since im talking about those who have been treating the allegory as if it is what happens explicitly

allegory =/= literal

thats what i mean

so..... kriselle. right guys?

⚠ DELTARUNE CHAPTER 3+4 SPOILERS ⚠

tw// csa mention

to preface, this is just my own reading. you are free to interpret the weird route and its contents how you wish. you are not required to take my reading as the end all be all.

horror has always had somewhat of an inherent sexual (and queer) undertone to it but it doesnt mean that you cant write it without it- i love horror that blends real life psychology and human experience with the otherworldly because there is SO MUCH you can do with it and it gets scary because most of the time it feels like something that could actually happen under the right circumstances… although when youre including a supernatural element (such as the player) the circumstances change and you need to recategorize and take more care to understand certain actions while still being conscious so that you are not just writing something torture porn-esque. this is an otherworldly entity (the player) taking the place of the human (kris) and acting within human bounds (kris cannot shapeshift or anything like that, we're limited to what their human body is capable of) to perpetuate the horror.

in context of the couch scene this is the moment that kris can no longer hide the existence of the other entity inside them from noelle. the secret is entirely out in the open and noelle knows that there is something unbelievably wrong with kris. i dont think noelle understands that it's us, the player, doing this to her because she doesn't know its a game but she absolutely knows that whoever it is is not kris. we are forcing noelle to confont that it was all real, it wasn't a dream, and it finally snaps her when we put the thorn (i.e. thornring) back on her finger. we've pushed noelle to her limit, 'used up' all of who noelle originally was and forcibly turned her into another vessel for our actions.

the loss of innocence is a common trope explored in horror, but i personally feel like this is moreso focused on the loss of autonomy than the loss of innocence. ch2 is noelle murdering monsters en masse and probably being berdly's cause of death. that innocence is already gone, but innocence can take on various forms and meanings which can alter the way we perceive certain situations as more one thing than the other. the thorn is representative of our control over noelle, we force kris to pierce it back through her hand during the couch scene which cements our authority over her. i understand why people could interpret the scene as being mainly the loss of innocence, with the rose wilting it could be read like an allegory for deflowering, but i believe that the scene is moreso focused on us removing her limitations. we've overflowed the pot on the stove and now she's stronger than ever. even not on the weird route, noelle exhibits behaviours of wanting to strangle berdly and take control of her life for once, whether joking or not. she was already really fascinated by her own power in ch2, finding out that yes actually she isnt powerless and she can take things for herself, as long as she listens to kris- hence her saying 'Thank you.' towards the end of the route.

what makes weird route kriselle so interesting is that kris doesnt want this. when noelle is close to kris and she begins to trigger the downfall of events, kris is trying to cover her mouth desperately to stop her. kris wants nothing more than to keep noelle from experiencing everything all over again. it's not just kris abusing noelle torture compilation. with not only closet scene where kris is trying to hit us with the hockey stick but also the bathroom scene we see just how fucking ANGRY kris is at us- literally beating the shit out of the soul…. both in a 'why would you ever make me do this?' way but also in a 'you broke her' way.

we've taken these childhood friends with such a strong connection and forced them to rip themselves to shreds. we've broken them to their core. i don't think noelle is capable of saving kris, i don't think she wants to anymore. in the few moments she had left between the start and the end of the couch scene, she's lost that will.

noelle's now broken, she's lost herself because we took her autonomy. just like kris. a cage. a vessel. we've given her the power to take whatever she wants, we've removed her limitations, we've made her stronger.

as long as she listens to us.

------------------------------ start of edit ------------------------------

with that being said, @enuratled made some good points and connections in their reblog of my post and i want to elaborate on/include them in the main post due to wanting to ensure that im not coming off as discrediting or attempting to disprove the loss of innocence reading while explaining more of my position.

"...it's not necessarily that i disagree but I think loss of autonomy is loss of consent, loss of ability to consent and I think that's very much what the rose deflowered imagery is pointing us towards."

the loss of autonomy is the loss of consent which in turn can also mean the loss of innocence. all of these tropes and concepts are intertwined and you can't really fully separate them, although the loss of autonomy/consent/innocence doesn't always indicate a sexual connotation. my reading chooses to focus more on the psychological rather than the sexual, so i guess its just my piece of the puzzle when it comes to dissecting this. there is clearly a reading here that involves a sexual undertone because of the defloration and understandably so- this is something that happens in real life and depending on your background or perceptions may be the first thing your mind jumps to when you see this scene play out.

"it uses the same dialogue, noelle begging herself to move but being unable to, it has the rose being deflowered, it has kris forcing the ring onto her hand, it happens in her fucking bedroom! her most private space! the place where she's supposed to be the safest! she asked them to come in! in this case, the imagery of sexual assault is being used to convey the inability to consent."

a good point on the reading of csa. this makes the reading more prominent and ties it back into autonomy and consent.

"...a lot of good readings of the weird route comes hand in hand with discussions about comphet, and how dangerous it is to force these very gendered roles onto kids (or teens) who explicitly don't conform, or want to conform to these things. snowgrave, as much as it is about autonomy, power and player control, can also be read about gender and sexuality, especially with how it utilises this imagery of marriage."

ive read the hellspawnmotel analysis many times over and its one of my favourites, i think the concept is really solid and you echo the same sentiments with that here. there is clearly a strong theme of identity/gender/sexuality beneath the surface of deltarune and especially with weird route kriselle.

I understand that [c]sa is a very taboo topic, and it's not necessarily in-line with the usual host of 'dark' themes we expect to see in games like this, but that doesn't mean the narrative can't utilise the commentary that comes with it, or the imagery used for it. again, I don't think it has to be read as sexual assault, but I don't think that's an unfair or unearned reading.

i agree, it being taboo doesnt mean that the reading isn't or can't be there. i am not attempting to say 'you cant see it like this!' or 'youre wrong and im right!' because everyone is entitled to their own perceptions of a scene, especially when it is not explicitly stated or shown in the text. personally (just me, you dont need to feel the same), i feel it's just too heavy to be thrust onto us if that is the intended context with no warning. maybe thats the intention, to drop it on us with no warning like it would happen in real life, but i honestly can't see that being how it was originally intended.

i think where this scene creates so much clashing of readings is again that you cannot really separate loss of autonomy from loss of consent and loss of innocence from either. these tropes can be interpreted in different ways- sexually, psychologically, physically, etc. its up to you to decide how you want to read it. the reading of csa has a lot of evidence for it and a strong argument. i dont think its wrong, but im personally not sure that should be our main takeaway.

my main reason for why i emphasize the focus on the loss of autonomy in the way i have is that a lot of people have decided to take the reading of csa as what happens explicitly, treating this scene as if you've genuinely done this to noelle.

if this is to be taken literally like how a good chunk of the fandom is treating it unfortunately, we're the ones who are doing this to noelle and kris. these actions are our own. they're our choices. this isn't kris, its us, the player. i do not want to be responsible for the sa of noelle, i wouldnt want to play a game where im forced to commit csa. it doesn't feel right. i don't think toby would put that into deltarune directly. you can read it as csa being what happens after the screen cuts to black if you want to, but honestly thinking about the implication that i as the player forced kris to rape or deflower noelle makes me want to curl up, puke blood, and die.

i dont think anyone wants to be burdened with that. thank you to @enuratled for allowing me to use parts of their reblog in my edit, and i hope this adds a bit more context to the entire post and where i come from! everyone can read it in their own way, and i do not wish to discredit anyone by suggesting a different reading of the scene. please consider reading their additions to my post in their reblog to see everything they said, as i believe it does hold a lot of merit.

------------------------------ end of edit ------------------------------

UPDATE: rose was patched out. i feel kind of vindicated but my feelings are honestly mixed....... you can still interpret the scene how you want but i think it's pretty clear toby didn't intend for the graphic to be taken that way. sucks we had to lose the rose because of that but it's for the best considering.... theres a lot of ways that the fandom was taking the csa allegory too far and blending it with other ones which snowballed into a whole new thing and i kinda dont want to go through a year of kris misgendering and "toby fox put child rape in his game". (even though he didnt. its an allegory. one that i dont personally wish to focus on but others can at their own will.) which i think is kinda reasonable

[kiitzuna]

no one of consequence

get used to disappointment.

art @goomyloid

[kiitzuna]

Something I noticed when Susie confronts Kris and asks what happened between them and Noelle, when the completely blank dialogue box comes up (which IIRC is a first for both negative routes in UT and DR), the rain stops. And when the player makes their presence known to Noelle, there's wind blowing in the room. I really wish people talked about it more because the implications are so fascinating! It's as if the players desire to make a different ending is outright breaking the game. I really wish this aspect was being talked about more, it's stomach churning in the best way. So ambigous, too. Was Kris silent because of how angry and terrified they were? Or is the implication that the player simply isn't letting them even have dialogue options with their newfound power? God I can't wait for Chapter 5

okay this one really caught my eye because ive thought about this a little before

(i had like. just finished rewatching sao alicization with some of my friends and the concepts that they talk about are kinda eerily similar to some of the things happening in deltarune and just in real life with the use of ai becoming so entrenched in society)

both negative routes in UT and DR comment on a similar thing

how much does it take for you to see a character that isnt real as something or someone with feelings, and how far can you push it until everything starts to fall apart?

the game is hardcoded against NPCs. they don't have freedom, theyre not like kris where they have some semblance of "freedom" through us as the player. everything is fully out of NPCs control because toby has already decided their actions, he's written this story and every thing they say and do is predetermined. where they'll go, how they'll act, etc. with the idea of these characters being individuals, we begin putting humanity into them- or we remove humanity from them by enacting our desires over their own and indulging in inhumane actions with them.

but what happens when the characters turn against us? what happens when they no longer want to follow the path that we've put them on? i feel like a character understanding the actions we are forcing them to take and acting out against us puts them on the same level as us. they have clear desires and wills that go beyond what we are able to impose on them, so do we empathize with them and relinquish some of that control or do we grip on tighter and further the divide?

with the concept of humanity and empathy being such a central part to utdr i think that playing with the concept of where the line of humanity falls is really interesting

at what point do we begin to see something not alive as an equal?

when something that we've deemed to be inhuman challenges us, do they gain 'humanity'?

at what point do the "lives" of the virtual influence the way you see reality?

we're still playing a game we didnt create, so did we ever have control here?

when you have no definitive proof that we are not all leading predetermined lives and something from the virtual world breaks those chains and questions us with the same thing, are they really any different?

idk if this is really that coherent its kinda just a big jumble of hypotheticals and questions but i understand what you mean and god i hope everything gets worse

i hope kriselle kill eachother in the end or kris kills the player or something IDK MAN i just want to see what happens and i think your suggestion is cool

#words lowkey

take this little angel noelle idea i sketched on a post it note at work as a prize

[kiitzuna]

the luckiest Cyan!!

[kiitzuna]

seraphim Noelle concept

[kiitzuna]

Brubuck Beach Shenanigans

[kiitzuna]

hi goomy i made this track just for you inspired by the emotions your art makes me feel... it was hard to make and i spent a lot of time on it so i hope you like it :)

THank you. so much. I have never listened to this track befor e. It is brand new to my ears. Its so wonderful. Who are you

[kiitzuna]

I wish people didn't insist scene where you make Kris force Noelle to equip the ThornRing in the Lightworld can only be SA and nothing else. A flower losing it's petals can have multiple symbolic meanings. The petals being lost could represent Noelle being stripped of everything that made her her, just to become an additional weapon for us to wield like Kris. And these things could even be in tandem with the allegorical SA read! I don't mind if people see it as an allegory, especially if they find it compelling as a survivor themselves. I can certainly understand how you'd come to that conclusion. But I wish people wouldn't insist that that's the only way to read that scene, or that Toby is a coward gutting an allegory that might not have been the intended read at all. Again, it's okay if people see it as a allegory. But I can't help but wonder if this would be this adamant for this to be the only takeaway if we never got the rose animation at all and only got the finger prick on release. And the arguments about 'Well if it wasn't intentional how did nobody catch it'? You have to remember that the people working with Toby have a greater context to the entire story than we do and some of them have for years. If we are to assume that it was unintentional, and it had other symbolism to be gleaned- how do we know the playtesters didn't catch onto what Toby was going for? Plus like. Toby is human, artists make mistakes too y'all. It's not crazy to imagine that since Toby has had Deltarune as a story for so long that he'd focus moreso on what the rose meant to him, someone with full context VS the audience who is dripfed in comparison. I'm not saying Toby could never or would never, or isn't allowed to explore something like SA, but given the fact he modified the visual I genuinely believe that it could mean that he wanted to prevent people from thinking it literally happened if it was an intentional allegory, or that it wasn't the intended read at all, allegory or otherwise. I especially believe that regardless of if it was an intended allegory or not he axed it because too many people were assuming it literally happened. And given how blunt Weird Route is when you make a choice like forcing Noelle to back into the lightning barrier during the mouse puzzles, Snowgrave outright being called a 'Fatal' attack, everything leading up to the re-equippment of the ThornRing that isn't taking one of the final choices to abort the run being things like telling Noelle 'It happened', etc. I genuinely believe if it was anything further than just putting the thorn in Noelle's finger in game it wouldn't just have been 'Equip', you very much have to know what you're choosing in WR. Toby never obfuscates your options in WR. To imply the scene ever goes further than allegorical at the most is just incorrect. If Toby makes you repeatedly goad Noelle into killing the Addison for the FreezeRIng, he would be far more blunt if we were going to go further than just stabbing her finger with a thorn. I guess we'll never know for sure whether the allegory is intentional subtext picking up from the toxic relationship subtext in Chapter 2 or if he was leaning in a different direction as the 'main' takeaway that got overshadowed unless he decides to make a statement though. But I think it's safe to say it was never meant to be taken as outright literal and that the fandom needs to stop spreading that aspect entirely.

yeah that's kinda what my analysis was about idk what i can really say in response sorry 😭

[kiitzuna]

⚠️deltarune ch4 weird route spoilers!!!⚠️

.

🥀

[kiitzuna]

pls tell me this will be a pin dan. pleage please plfeade please take my money

Tomorrow