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but now...

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I don’t think we’re an uncomplicatedly good force in Deltarune’s universe, or here to help in an un-fraught way. I also don’t think we’re an unconscionable invader who seized Kris’s life by force without recourse.

After all, Kris has taken steps to obscure themself from our perspective. The objects that go into making a Dark World reveal the character of those they interact with; Kris cleared out their room prior to canon and so Ralsei’s ideal room for them is mostly half-baked guesses and imitations of Asriel, with a few personal touches like the moss and manual trash can. No scary pranks; no occultism. They’ve got a cage for us, too, and Ch. 2 closes with a premeditated plan for another Dark World — yet they never tell anyone we’re here!

At the risk of wild, unfounded speculation — I think the Dark Worlds are a kind of bait. Someone (sometimes Kris) opens them; lured by the prospect of adventure and valuable moral lessons, we venture in and close them. Notably, we appear to absorb or enter each Fountain to seal it, and the party levels after each one. If you’re like me, Kris’s deliberately-obscured nature and motives are a prime motivator here, too, and they certainly do their best to drip-feed that out. And, well, they do put us back after extracting us.

What if we’re being baited around to conduct some kind of ritual, or bring the Roaring? Needing something that can seal the Fountains would be a perfectly good reason to summon and bind a demon, after all.

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My precious memories

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smells like rotten tea... as sad as it is that we can't use it past ch2, it makes sense that with potential new party members and the gang's feelings on one another developing and changing, keeping the teas through the whole game might be a lot to juggle. but whatever the case may be – au revoir, character-flavored tea!

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Stepping on your shadow.

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evangelion piano scene

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In:re: the "wife" role: Ralsei also serves as a kind of head of household in absentia. He maintains "My Castle Town" – i.e., our Castle Town; it's even named after us – cleans our rooms and corrals recruited Darkners (whose roles are something between unruly children and manorial waitstaff), asserting authority over them by dint of his relationship with Kris/the Player.

Others have noted that Ralsei's a little disdainful of Darkners – that he insists on himself as a lonely, friendless prince despite his apparent preexisting familiarity with Lancer; that he doesn't seem interested in making friends with the multiplicity of Darkners who move into Castle Town and instead sets himself over them. I'd argue this is part of it: he's ours, married into power.

love your blog and your art!! and realised ive been following you for almost ten years so thank you for the quality posts

have you got any thoughts on ralsei and noelle in terms of both of them taking on “the girl” role in the game? or i guess rather ralsei trying to be the girl in his own meta and sorta weird way. i know youve drawn them together a couple times but would love to hear any analysis if you have thoughts (if youve already posted about this and i missed it my bad! feel free to ignore)

well damn that's flattering. wish I had some kind of membership program so I could give you a little gift, haha

anyway. this is something I've touched on before but only really spelled out once so you're good. I think there's several factors at play with ralsei's metatextual femininity: his status as the party squishy mage/healer, his status as kris's (and by extension, the player's) love interest, his obsession with roles and subservience, and the fact that ralsei is probably meant to be as appealing to the player as possible. none of those things are INHERENTLY feminine of course, but they are in the context of a story with an audience. we don't know for sure yet how ralsei feels about all that, but I'd wager he either thinks he wants it or thinks it has to be his purpose and he wants to do a good job at it. ralsei is like..... the wife. he's the perfect wife. and he's really good at it! the audience LOVES ralsei! whenever my art gets reposted on reddit, there are way more romantically charged or even sexually explicit comments about ralsei than any other character. when I posted my "choose your bride" illustration, most of the people commenting said they would choose ralsei over noelle, with some even saying that it's because noelle "already belongs to susie".

and that leads into his parallels with noelle. like ralsei, noelle is a fragile magic user, is generally more shy and demure (though both of them can break out of that easily), is shown as pining for the object of her affections, and she's slotted into the role of "the love interest" for susie (or for kris/the player, but I'm gonna focus on normal route here). the ferris wheel scene also directly parallels the acid tunnel of love- both forcing the two "couples" to be alone together in a deliberately romantic setting with nothing to do but talk. I've already talked plenty about noelle's roles as the girl, the bride, the damsel, etc. so I won't get into it again, but I think the connections made between kralsei and suselle are worth keeping an eye on. there's nothing to indicate that susie and noelle's budding romance is anything but sweet and genuine, but at the same time you have to wonder what it means that the game is pushing them together in a way so similar to kris and ralsei.

to reference classic jrpg dragon quest v: hand of the heavenly bride, nera comes out of nowhere and was tailor-made to be a wife, while bianca is a childhood friend you have an actual prior connection with. but it doesn't really matter who you choose to marry. in the end they both get kidnapped and sidelined as soon as they're done having your babies.

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susy

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you will NEVER be them

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Ah! Ralsei is the sweet, sickly, implied-dead sister of Miki’s dreams; Flowey is Kozue.

On 'saving' Asriel

I think the thing that gets me the most about the 'ralsei and/or deltarune is a creation that comes from our (as players) desires to save asriel, based on what little we really know of him' theory is like... If we did true pacifist, we already saved Asriel.

Let's talk about the epilogue.

No matter how Asriel spun it at the end of true pacifist, turning back into a flower didn't magically take away everything he learned and felt. He tells us not to reset again and to let frisk live their life, he says he can't go through all of that again.

And last year, Toby gave us the alarm clock app dialogue, where it was confirmed that Flowey also got to go to the surface. Look at his cute lil bow! He likes it.

I recommend taking a look through all of his dialogue here, it really shines a light on what he's like on the surface in a way that I think proves something - even if he lost feelings when he originally became a flower, this Flowey? He cares. He doesn't wanna show it, of course. He has a reputation to uphold in this timeline.

But he daydreams about the shiny new bike he wishes he could have for Christmas. He sees his mother passed out in the garage, tuckered out after partying and gets her back home and tucked in, and leaves her a glass of water as overfilled as he and chara always used to do it as kids. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if that bow he's wearing is from papyrus.

Yeah, Flowey doesn't wanna show he cares and hides it behind acting edgy and mean spirited in an almost tsundere fashion, but... Realistically, would a 'saved' Asriel be much different? I think people forget sometimes that Asriel was an asshole for most of his fight - he didn't just magically regain the ability to love and become the Sweet Golden Child we see him as. He wanted to keep killing us, to keep resetting and continuing the 'game'.

What really gave him pause was being reminded of his past, of growing up with chara and the love and kindness of his family. And, after telling himself he didn't feel anything for so long, and that he just wanted chara back because they could 'understand' him like this... Of course it was enough to break the dam. He was overwhelmed - he's not felt like this in so long, and it's so, so much. His capability to love didn't magically return as soon as he became a goat, so I don't think it'd have to immediately fade just bc he became a flower again, either. It's never outright stated as fact that you can't love without a soul, it's just his assumption.

But no matter what - this is a part of him. He's reset countless times, done everything he could think of, became desensitised to anything people would do or say or feel... He's seen it hundreds of times before, and it lost its charm. Flowey was always Asriel, and when he first woke as a flower he was still this scared, crybaby child who wanted his parents.

So let's say we 'saved' him in the undertale universe and he miraculously became a goat again... Then what? You think the twisted sense of humour he's developed over time is vanishing because he's a goat again? That he's gonna instantly unlearn acting like he doesn't care, or easily getting fed up with people are talking? Nah, not when he see settles, and can just be himself. Flowey is Asriel.

Think of the amalgamates. They were all people who fell down, and became victims of a life saving experiment that went horribly, horribly wrong and put them through something truly horrible for who-knows-how-long. But at the end of true pacifist? We welcomed them anyway, and they were accepted by their families even with how much they'd changed. They died and yet they got a second chance with their loved ones. We considered that enough.

Flowey is no different. Asriel died and became an amalgamate (albeit in a different way), but he got his second chance with his family. Sure, he doesn't have arms or legs now and he can't ride that bike, but he's still himself. He's still the kid who overfilled that glass because he was copying his sibling and he's still that little boy who loves his mother very much.

We already saved Asriel, and in a post epilogue world, he's going forth without the threat of resets and time loops, only one life left to enjoy and make the most out of, dialogue and friendships and people being fresh and new and one time only. He's fed up of our influence and wants undertale's world to be left in peace, player-free. He can work through it in his own way, and he will still be who he is, who he's grown up to be.

But bringing this back to deltarune, to the idea of us trying to 'save' him even now, by wanting more... Whatever we'd get back wouldn't be him, not really. We rejected that in persuit of an idealised version of him who never existed. Anything we get back wouldn't truly be the same character we spent so much time with in undertale.

That in itself feels like a tragedy.

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Any analysis of Deltarune's themes of escapism would be well-served to recognize that the Dark Worlds aren't just fun romps. They're parables of morality and personal growth, loaded with messaging that the kids can take back to their everyday lives. King is an object lesson about taking out your bitterness and loneliness on others. Queen is a perfect practice run for standing up to a controlling mother, and her mansion is full of puzzles to teach Berdly that being smart isn't everything. All salient lessons!

And every Dark World ends in a private "the magic goes away" sequence where the world must be destroyed to return to reality. CH1 mimes Undertale's victory-lap, goodbye-to-the-Underground sequence to set the emotional stakes: the portal fantasy is ending. All these places will disappear. You're leaving Narnia forever. Et cetera. These worlds may have escapist utility – cf. "isn't this world just... better?" – but they're not pure, disconnected fantasies, and treating them as that risks missing significant thematic elements of Deltarune.

The Dark Worlds don't have any morals for Kris – I suspect – because Kris has deliberately obscured the nature of their issues from our eyes. The secret bosses gesture at what we imagine they might need – The air crackles with freedom – but Jevil and Spamton's stories have no definitive answers and, critically, end in tragedy. If you had to pinpoint a moral in them, it would be... what? "Don't reach for more than you're afforded"? "Reality is for other people to define"?

"The desire to be free will destroy you. Instead, you should become a prop – a tool, a shield – for someone else's story"?

...because that's what Kris is right now, aren't they? A prop in the story we're writing for Susie and Noelle and Berdly and all the other kids with brighter futures. A prop in our story, if we try to fix their life – forced by * Our descent into their body to become a better person. Collateral damage in our inspirational moral lesson. Hell, they're even a classic "bad influence" character, despite Susie's clear typecasting in that part – Kris is the one who opens a Fountain, after we're all clearly informed of the consequences of indulging in escapism via Dark Worlds. Kris is dragging Susie down.

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krisellentines day

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evangelion piano scene

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there was nothing but garbage noise…

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I found cool brush!!!