sausage-rolll

[sausage-rolll]

Don't Forget, Kris.

I know a lot of people interpret this final line as a sinister message from the phone person (probably Carol) for Kris to remember their place. To not forget that they promised to do something and that they must fulfill that promise… but what if that’s not quite right? What if it’s actually a far more somber message? A far more literal one?

Don’t forget Kris, you promised.

Please don’t forget Kris

You promised not to forget.

What if it's Carol urging Kris not to forget something or someone?

Mass forgettings is a pretty big running theme in both undertale, and presumably also deltarune if the titular song is anything to go off of.

Most obvious is undertale’s reset system, where both Flowey and Frisk possessed the ability to reverse time, leaving nothing but phantom memories in the people around them. But it’s not perfect. They’re not complete wipes unless you do a “true reset” and without that, remnants of what came before still linger in people's minds. Sans is the most obvious example, but it actually happens with almost all of the main characters. If you reload or reset throughout the game many characters will offhandedly mention a sense of deja vu or a feeling of familiarity with Frisk. Those events still happened, they just can’t remember.

Another obvious example of forgetting is Gaster, who fell into his creation and was shredded like confetti across time and space, erasing himself from everyone's memories. Though, an important note is that he still existed in that timeline. He wasn’t completely erased from existence, his past still remained, the things he designed and built still stand tall… but nobody can remember him, or at least very few people can.

People close to him perhaps. Maybe people who promised themselves that they wouldn’t forget?

Deltarune also has this theme, but it's far more subtle. With a lot of the conflict involving Darkners revolving around people forgetting about them.

King is bitter and hateful to have been forgotten and abandoned.

Queen is anxious, but primarily worrying about what lightners would do without her if she became obsolete because of the internet crash.

Tenna is terrified of becoming obsolete and being forgotten, patiently gathering dust unplugged on the TV stand as years pass by.

Ralsei also struggles with this a lot, but in a much more self loathing sense. Urging Kris and Susie to forget about him and the other darkners and leave if it's what they'd want.

Chapter 4 doesn't really have a main darkner antagonist, but if you really wanna stretch it we could site Gerson's forgetfulness, though I read that as more of an act than anything.

-

Ok, so big whoop, undertale and deltarune have a theme of forgetting and what it means to be forgotten. But what does that have to do with Kris?

Why would Kris magically have the ability to remember things that others presumably can’t? What does this have to do with Carol? Did another Gaster situation happen? Or was it something else.

Something like.

A reset?

A reset from the one who has the ability to save and load?

Or more likely, a reset from someone who will have the ability.

A bit like what Asriel threatens to do in his undertale fight. Once he regains the power to reset, to send it all back to zero. To start from the beginning.

What if in the end of deltarune, when all hope is lost and the roaring shatters reality, when the sky turns black and the air stale with dread, a power bellows up from deep within Kris.

Just for a brief moment, Kris is able to turn back the clock and reset everything back to zero. Back to before the story began. From sheer force of will and refusal to die they're able to not quite subvert fate, but at least buy them an extra few days to figure out how to.

Maybe this time they could change fate.

Maybe if they just tried something different. 

As long as they remembered.

As long as they didn’t forget.

[sausage-rolll]

I remember back in the wait for chapter 3 my running theory on what object Ralsei was was Kris’ old headband that they wore as a child. His horns being pink felt like a pretty strong connection, with it being a close color to red, and I also thought that Ralsei resembling a young goat monster implied that he was Kris’ ideal self. Who they wished they were when they were younger. A goat monster much like the rest of their family, who fit in with the rest of town.

But… ever since chapter 3. I feel there is a much, much stronger candidate for Kris’ headband.

I think it's ERAM.

The door to ERAM, literally a red headband with horns

They seem to have a deep understanding of who Kris is and what they're like. Talking down to them as if they know them on a personal level.

They even share a similar personality to Kris. Being somewhat mischievous and revelling in scaring others. Much like how Kris used to play pranks and frighten Noelle for fun.

And despite being openly antagonistic and cruel... they still give us the shadow mantle. They still help Kris of their own free will. And they think their game is something Kris enjoyed, and maybe they did?

ERAM might still hold a fondness for Kris even after being lost and forgotten, it's just that they don't know how to express that fondness.

[sausage-rolll]

Jevil - nothing matters so lets just do whatever we want, it’s the only way to be truly free.

Spamton - nothing matters so lets make it matter. If we lack true freedom then lets force our way to it.

ERAM - nothing matters but it’s deeply entertaining watching you grasp for your freedom, so I don’t mind.

Gerson -  I do not believe nothing matters. Even if the end is inevitable you still have the freedom to do what’s right.

[sausage-rolll]

My favourite deltarune theory combination has gotta be "Human Dess" and "The prophecy repeats itself" Because it has the possibility for some insane story potential.

For example Dess, Asriel and a forgotten prince of the dark could be a previous group of heroes who experienced the prophecy. Dess could be the previous 'cage'/human and her going missing could be the result of the cage's fate in the end of the prophecy.

This means 2 very interesting things.

As the monster of the prophecy, Asriel knows what happened to Dess. Hell, he might have even been there to witness what happen first hand but he can't speak a word of it to anyone because the dark worlds need to be kept a secret for everyone's safety.

2. whatever happened to Dess, whatever horrible fate befell her and lead to her disappearing for years and becoming the Knight is exactly what's going to happen to Kris if the prophecy isn't subverted.

As for what I think the prophecy ends with in this scenario, it'd probably be something like "The prince falls and the Cage is lost to the dark, leaving only the Monster"

[sausage-rolll]

The lord of frenzied flame ending is already reprehensible enough as it is, but it becomes so much worse when you remember that there are other, seemingly perfectly functional societies outside of the lands between that you also doom to oblivion through your actions.

It's a big reason I dislike the argument that it's justifiable because of the state the lands between are in. Your condemning everything in existence to that fate, not just the lands between.

[sausage-rolll]

I cannot stress enough that the souls like design philosophy of "keep trying the boss and learn its attack patterns and openings to succeed" really doesn't work that well when the boss run back is 45 minutes long and you have to remake your entire build each time.

It's like if every time you wanted to attempt a shard bearer in elden ring you had to go through the entire legacy dungeon again, mini bosses and all, just to get another crack at it.

It might not be as frustrating if Limveld changed more between runs, or if each nightlord had their own personalized overworld design to make each run even more unique. But they don't. It's always the same chunk of Limgrave with a slight variation to one of the corners if you're lucky, with the same miniboss, end of day boss pools, buildings, camps, invasions and events every single time.

[sausage-rolll]

Hi, hello, sorry quick question.

Why the fuck can Morgott the omen king randomly jump you at any point in a nightreign playthrough, completely ruining a perfectly good run?

It's not enough that fighting him is a massive timesink in a game that I think already doesn't give you enough time to do everything you need to do, but he also just has to give you a massive debuff if you die to him that basically ends the run then and there.

It's bad enough in co-op where only one person gets effected by the debuff, but you might as well just reset the entire run if you're playing solo and he gets you.

Just what I need in an already heavily RNG reliant game. The possibility that one of the hardest bosses in Elden Ring will descend from the heavens and strike me down with no warning when I'm busy with something else and have almost no flasks left. And to top it all off, he increases your damage taken for the rest of the run when you die to him.

[sausage-rolll]

Final predictions for deltarune before I go dark to play the new chapters

Chapter 3's castle is going to either be the oven or the fridge in Kris' house

Something horrible is going to happen in the dark world of Chapter 3 that makes it impossible to take the darkners we meet there to castle town, thus making it so we don't just empty out Kris' house at the end.

If Kris is not the knight I believe it's possible that the knight is currently unaware of the cataclysmic consequences of randomly opening dark fountains. Very few people know about the legend after all.

Kris won't be the one to close Chapter 3's dark fountain.

Napstablook will be the officer to appear in Chapter 3, not Undyne. (I'm pretty sure it says somewhere that he's the one who works night shifts)

The weird route is still going to have effects on the later chapters even if Noelle isn't around to manipulate.

If the knight isn't a character we already know about, I think it's possible it's another human.

Ralsei knows about the player

Chapter 4 is going to be much darker than the other chapters and will be a massive turning point in the story.

The darkners of chapter 3 will be familiar with Kris and Toriel because they're made of objects that they use daily.

Chapter 3's darkners are going to be heartbroken over the Dreemur family falling apart and a lot of the conflict will revolve around how their lives have been deeply affected by it, It'll end with them realising they don't have to serve lightners to be fulfilled and this will cause Ralsei to have an existential crisis/confront his biases towards himself and other darkners.

If Asgore's flower shop becomes a dark world, the darkners from there will be incredibly over possessive and protective of him due to the only objects existing there being stuff that he either uses on a daily basis or stuff that he raised himself (the plants)

[sausage-rolll]

I think it's pretty clear that season 2 of Ncuti's era was rewritten at some point and that a big chunk of the original story was lost.

So I thought I'd write up what I believe the original plan was, or at least what I think would have worked better than what we got.

First of all, I think Ruby was planned to still be the companion in this season. Belinda is depressingly underutilised and somehow less relevant to the ongoing plot than Ruby is, despite the fact that she’s the one actually traveling with the doctor. So unfortunately I think she was not a part of the original plan for the story. So in the version I plan to lay out now, she isn’t going to be present.

Now, I just want to stress that me writing Belinda out of this version of the story isn’t because I do not like her or that I don’t want her in the show. It is because I genuinely believe she wasn’t planned to be a part of it until something happened midway through season 1 that led to Ruby’s role in the story being cut down. In my perfect version of the show Belinda would still be a part of it, she would just be a part of a 3rd season (and beyond) alongside Ncuti where she can be actually plot relevant.

Now, with that cleared up, let me quickly lay the groundwork for this alternate version of the story, then we can really get into the meat of potatoes of things. 

It’s quite simple really, only two major things are different.

Ruby is still traveling with the Doctor during season 2 but frequently takes breaks from the TARDIS in order to live her normal life and spend time with family (this allows the events of Lucky day and Joy to the world to happen basically unchanged.) 

The mystery of Ruby’s past and her mysterious and elusive mother is not solved in ‘Empire of Death’ and Ruby is still silently craving answers about everything.

Now let's finally begin.

The Doctor and Ruby, after another adventure in time and space attempt to return to Earth on the 24th of May so Ruby can spend time at home for a while, only to find that… They bounce right off of it? That’s strange… that’s certainly never happened before. The doctor is silently concerned about the implications of this, but makes sure to keep an upbeat and carefree attitude to hide his worries from Ruby. Ruby isn’t necessarily happy about being unable to return home at the time, but just assumes that it’s another quirky “timey-wimey” thing that the doctor can figure out. Overall she’s slightly annoyed but not worried.

The doctor whips out the vindicator and explains that it can be used to triangulate the coordinates to get them back home. Things continue relatively identical to the original version for now. They go to Earth 1952 where they face off against Lux. During the 3-dimensional part, the doctor confides in Ruby that he is terrified he won’t be able to get her home safely, that he’s worried he’ll never be able to save Rogue. And one other thing… something that (I believe) he’s never admitted to Ruby before. He isn’t just a timelord. He’s the last of the timelords. The soul survivor of his species. This pops him back into full 3D. From here the episode continues as normal.

The well happens essentially unchanged.

Lucky day also happens unchanged but is an episode set slightly in the past during a time Ruby isn’t travelling with the Doctor. However young Conrad sees Ruby and the Doctor together in the opening segment with the vindicator which is part of the reason he tries so hard to get close to her during the events of lucky day. He recognises her from his childhood and it drives him mad because that isn’t possible.

The story and the engine once again happens mainly unchanged, however Poppy does not appear this time. (I can’t think of a way for her to fit into this rewrite)

The interstellar song contest occurs, once again, almost unchanged. They finally have enough vindicator juice to force their way back to May 24th and rush into the TARDIS without saying goodbye after hearing Earth's history and how it ceased to be on that very day. Miss Flood Bigenerates and all the cards are set as she, using her own TARDIS (The Doctor doesn’t have the only one, fuck you) uses the vindicator coordinates to also get back to earth. Well after a quick pit stop to pick up one more thing. Flood is dropped off in modern day to break Conrad out of prison while Rani goes to the past to find their trump card. Desiderium the god of wishes.

-

Wish World

John Smith (The Doctor) wakes up in his house. He’s alone as he starts his day. No partner, no pets, just him in an empty house going about his morning routine. It’s not that he didn’t crave companionship, he did. He deeply did. But he was never particularly interested in women and… well there certainly wasn’t any other options. Not in this world.

Not in this world. This perfect little world.

John realises he’s running late for work and rushes out the door, only to be greeted by an unfamiliar face. A girl. Young, short and blonde. She asks John if he was… The doctor? No, of course not. He’s just an ordinary office worker, but if the young woman needed help he’d be happy to call someone, it’d have to be quick though since he was running late for work.

The girl quickly apologizes and mumbles something about her being mistaken before running off… How strange.

How strange indeed. Desiderium’s power… it doesn’t seem to work too well on Ruby. yet another oddity to add to the list. Her oddness was what drew Ms. Flood to her in the first place, not that Ruby would know this . She wanted to understand what made her tick, she needed to understand what made reality bend around her. 

Now from here things continue as normal. John Smith goes to work and Ruby stews in her confusion and false memories.

After work the doctor sits down in front of his TV and watches Conrad's channel. The only channel. But… then something else fizzled into the picture. The stark white background was drowned out in a deep red and Conrad was replaced by someone else. Seeing him made the Doctor’s heart drop. There was something about the man on the TV. He liked him. He really liked him.

He listens to his advice and slowly begins to snap out of his delusions, but before he can, Miss Flood arrives and takes him to the tower.

From here Rani's plan is revealed and the doctor is plunged into a decaying London.

-

Reality wars

From here, things once again happen almost identically to the original, however without Belinda there is no need for the stasis cube.

The doctor and Ruby free Unit from the Wish, confront Miss Flood and Rani and make the plan to infiltrate their tower, take Desiderium and stop the Rani from freeing Omega.

The doctor encounters Rani, keeping them distracted as Ruby goes after Conrad.

Omega appears, killing Rani and Miss Flood escapes.

The doctor forces Omega back into the underverse and Ruby defeats Conrad and returns the world normal.

Everyone meets back up at Unit and celebrates defeating the Rani and the Wish world. The doctor walks over to Ruby who is still holding Desiderium, a nagging feeling eating away at him as he approaches. The two of them talk for a short while and the doctor neutralises Desiderium powers with a wish.

It isn’t foolproof mind you. There’s no knowing what their life is going to be like. Their powers could reawaken at any moment, and even if they didn’t it could still bend reality around it just by existing. But to the doctor it was worth the risk.

Then why was he so scared?

Ruby sees The Doctor’s concern and offers for him to hold the baby. He agrees.

The doctor picks up Desiderium from Ruby’s arms and looks down at the baby.

And his heart stops.

He’d seen this baby before. He’d held this baby before! But where?!

His mind raced trying to grasp what gave him such a suffocating sense of deja vu.

And then it clicks.

Then it finally made sense.

Everything finally made sense.

The Doctor looks up at Ruby and thanks her.

He shouts out into the Unit headquarters that he knows exactly what to do with Desiderium. They would be safe, happy and loved, he would make sure of it.

He runs into the tardis clicking buttons and pulling levers, all the while never letting go of small Desiderium.

He knew exactly where he was going.

He puts Desiderium down for just a second, just long enough to throw on a long, hooded cloak from his wardrobe. He picked it so the young baby wouldn’t get cold. It had a built-in heat regulator that would stop the small thing from freezing. Ironic that it also covered The Doctor’s body head to toe.

He picks Desiderium up and steps out of the Tardis into a cold, dark alleyway.

He would have parked closer but he knew what was about to happen. He couldn’t risk being spotted by anyone lest the timeline unravel itself at the seams, and he’d had quite enough of reality breaking for one day.

As he walked through the dark street looking down at Desiderium, he thought about his time with this face. It was all so nostalgic. 

His mind wandered to Ruby. He thought about how snow and soft tunes of Christmas hymns followed her everywhere she went. How no technology in the universe could track down her past. How Mistro was terrified of her. How Sutekh was curious about her. How Desiderium’s power failed to keep its grasp on her.

She had defeated the very gods. And now he finally knew how.

After a short walk through the snowy streets he finally found his destination. A small, simple church. Snow falling heavily all around him and the sound of singing getting ever so closer.

He gave the small child a light kiss on the head and set her down on the front step of the church before turning around and walking away.

Away from Desiderium. He didn’t even look back. Afterall, he knew she was in safe hands here. 

He knew she would be safe, at the church on ruby road.

He returned to the present with a grand smile on his face, stepping towards Ruby and pulling her into a hug. They had a lot to discuss.

[sausage-rolll]

I would also like to know why the fuck she randomly appears in The story and the engine??? Like, was that just RTD jangling keys in our faces to get us talking? Gotta be honest, these are some of the weakest and nonsensical mysteries Doctor Who has ever had.

And like you say, Poppy was a real person with an actual life. So either the wish created a life out of Doctor and Belinda's memories and wishes or space Poppy is just fucking dead and was placed on earth during the reality war and later got her life rewritten to be Belinda's daughter.

you know what's bizarre? poppy was a real person. i feel like i'm going insane here. like in-universe poppy was a real child with her own life before she was retconned into being belinda's daughter. what the hell

[sausage-rolll]

I am so disgusted with how Ncuti was handled as the doctor. The first queer and the first POC doctor and he only got 18 episodes (2 of which are incredibly doctor lite so in reality it's more like 16 episodes.) And they managed to completely underutilise him throughout the entire time. Not to mention all the loose plot threads. He never got to reunite with Rogue (meaning until further notice the other queer character in this run in fridged in a hell dimension because the doctor never bothered to go looking for him???), The gods haven't been properly defeated, Susan never returned and Miss Flood is still out in the universe causing mayhem.

Overall it was an incredibly short and weak run which failed to wrap up all but 2 of its story threads and just left me feeling that Ncuti was robbed so hard by the writers.

Not to mention that his run began and has now ended with him being overshadowed by two incredibly big Doctor who actors.

[sausage-rolll]

Belinda's first appearance: criticising the doctor for scanning her without permission

Belinda's last appearance: happily watching him do the exact same thing to her daughter without comment.

These are not the same character.

[sausage-rolll]

Y'know, for a show that's constantly trying to parade how progressive it is in the most hamfisted and performative way possible they do sure as shit keep doing their minority actors and characters a massive disservice.

[sausage-rolll]

I feel like the way the series is heading, the doctor is being set up to be revealed as part of the pantheon himself. The way the timeless child just appeared one day from a place outside of reality is very reminiscent of the rest of the gods we've seen, and much like the god of wishes, the timeless child was used more as a tool to others than a force of nature themselves.

But that just begs the question, what god will the doctor be? The god of time seems like the obvious choice but no, I don't think it'd be that. Time was always more to do with Gallifreyans and while he is the 'timeless child' his inherent powers really have nothing to do with time. I think the doctor will be something different, and I think I know what it could be.

I think the Doctor is the god of life.

Think about it, what is the timeless child's one power? The thing that the time lords siphoned and abused for themselves? It was the power of regeneration, the power of eternal life. Timelords may have had command over time and space but that extension of their lives and power to regenerate and cheat death over and over was never theirs, it was something that they stole from the timeless child.

Not convinced? that's fine, it's not exactly a flawless theory.

How about the fact that fairly recently the Doctor has figured out how to use his regeneration to heal others. At the start of space babies the doctor uses his power to bring a butterfly back to life. He literally breathes life into another creature. And this actually isn't a new thing either. It's just never been this powerful before.

Eleven heals River using his power and Twelve does the same to Davros.

There's also the fact that his power was fully compatible with Lux, another god of the pantheon. Mayhaps because they come from the same source?

Not to mention that the doctor is, for all intents and purposes, the primary protector of life in the universe. Whenever the doctor dies, it's shown to have horrific ramifications on the universe as a whole. Specifically in the name of the doctor and turn left, where it's shown that if the doctor were to be killed, entire galaxy's would be snuffed out and the sky would turn dark.

He also has a deep inherent respect for life and an even deeper aversion to death. He hates to kill, and will avoid doing it by any means necessary, even when it would be the preferable option (Like in Arachnids in the UK, where she refuses to kill a group of overgrown spiders despite the fact that they were suffering and could not sustain themselves due to their size.) Or when death would be by far the preferable option, like in Family of blood, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos and rogue. Granted he does kill sometimes, but that's only really when all other alternatives are expended and he has no other choice. Even when it comes to his enemies, there's rarely a time when he's in his right mind that he'd let them die without trying to save them. He doesn't just hold back from killing, he wants so desperately to save as many people as possible.

It even comes down to his very name. The name that he chose. The Doctor. The man that makes people better. The man that saves peoples lives.

[sausage-rolll]

It always annoys me when people say that the Jurassic Park movies are ‘proof that bringing extinct species back is a bad idea’ or that the message in the movies is that a dinosaur zoo is impossible to safely run, because the parks in those movies literally never fail because of the dinosaurs. They fail because of corporate greed and general incompetence.

The original Jurassic park? Failed because of security malfunctions, sabotage and general lack of knowledge on the living specimens due to incompetent levels of research before they were introduced to their enclosures and guests.

Jurassic world? They had it in the bag. They’d created a profitable and incredibly safe system that had very few structural weak points and even less incidents involving guests being harmed by the dinosaurs. That was of course until they decided they wanted more money and fame and genetically spliced a superweapon dinosaur that could outsmart and overpower everything else on the island. Which obviously led to a security breach because they didn’t even do the bare minimum of research or even tell the people watching it WHAT IT WAS SPLICED WITH TO BEGIN WITH!

And then we have all the times where dinosaurs were released in rural areas and caused insane amounts of damage and death, which once again, only happened because greedy, underprepared and incompetent business men brought the dinosaurs to those locations without any sort of plan.

[sausage-rolll]

I've had a bit of a mixed opinion on the newest doctor who stuff for a while now, and for most of that time I've really struggled to pin point what exactly it is that's been missing. The writing isn't bad (for the most part), the actors are great, the settings are interesting and overall its felt like a very needed breath of fresh air for the show... but there is something missing, and I think I've finally figured out what it is.

The aliens are gone.

No seriously, look back on all of 15's episodes from both the current season and the last and count how many of them include some sort of alien civilisation or society. Not just a singular monstrous alien that acts as an antagonist but an actual collective. There are very few. And no, aliens that are visually indistinguishable from regular humans do not count.

from what I can tell, there are three. Just three. Three alien species across an entire season and a half of doctor who.

There's the slugs from dot and bubble, the birdmen in Rouge and the singular Silurian in joy to the world.

And from those three all of them act as antagonistic forces.

Just as a quick comparison, the first season of new who, which came out in 2005 and had a significantly smaller budget had at least 6.

Sorry, wait, did I say first season? My mistake what I meant was first two episodes.

Where have they all gone? The universe of Doctor Who used to be teeming with so many different reoccurring and one off alien races that all interacted and coexisted. They weren't just throwaway villains, they were living, breathing creatures.

It used to be so rich with so much diverse life. The living plastic, The Slitheen, Daleks, Adipose, Sontaran's, The Catkind, The Ood, Silurians, The Silence, The Atraxi, The Racnoss, The family of blood, The mighty Jagrafess, The Reapers, The Judoon, The Hath, The Ice warriors, The vashta nerada, The Sycorax, The tree people, The Zygon.

But now the best they can do is regular humans and sometimes the odd robot or two. It's kind of depressing when you really look at it. The universe of doctor who has lost its magic, the life that was once abundant wherever the doctor landed is now sparse and non-existent. We don't visit alien civilisations anymore, we don't even encounter aliens anymore.

[sausage-rolll]

While I doubt they'll actually get added to wilds, it occurred to me recently that Seltas and Seltas queen would work really fucking well with wilds' Alpha/Pack system.

Like, imagine a quest similar to Alpha Doshaguma and it's massive pack that happens in the windward plains but it's a Seltas queen and her swarm of Seltas followers in the scarlet forest. I just think that'd be neat, especially with how underutilised the Alpha monsters were in wilds.