#I just like this theory

[madbard]

Ralsei’s True Appearance

There are so many fantastic and weird Deltarune headcanons floating around out there, and in this post I want to discuss one of my personal favorites - that Ralsei’s appearance as revealed at the end of Chapter 1 is not actually his real appearance, but rather another disguise to make himself more palatable for the Lightners.

Now, there is some meta textual explanation for having the face reveal at the end of Chapter 1 instead of the beginning. First of all, it lets Ralsei be his own character for a bit without being instantly categorized as “Deltarune Asriel.” It keeps Ralsei from stealing the spotlight during his lore-dumping section (I suspect many players would be just a little distracted by the Asriel doppelgänger). It also gives the game some plausible deniability with everyone’s reactions to the Asriel resemblance.

I’ll explain that last point a little - once Ralsei removes his hat, it is clear that Susie recognizes him. But she doesn’t really confront him about it, doesn’t demand to know why he looks like Toriel (I’m not sure she’s met Asriel). I’ve stumbled across a good deal of people saying that her reaction to him is actually kind of underwhelming, that it doesn’t make sense for her to basically accept it and move on. I would argue that this happens because by this point, she’s actually gotten to know Ralsei. She’s fought with him and beside him, learning a bit about who he is, what makes him tick. They’ve bonded, and seeing his face doesn’t undo that bond: whereas at the beginning of the game she probably wouldn’t have been able to see anything but a weird Toriel lookalike, now she sees Ralsei first, the Toriel resemblance second. It’s also not impossible for one person to closely resemble another even if they aren’t related, allowing Susie to explain this resemblance to herself as just ‘one of those things’ instead of having it thrown in her face right at the beginning, when there is no way she could have accepted it.

So, we have the meta textual explanation for why Ralsei has a different design for most of the game. Of course, canonically the face reveal is portrayed as Ralsei becoming more comfortable with being his true self around the party. And this works - with the time he’s spent with the others, it would make sense that Ralsei would gain the courage to accept himself and believe the others would accept him too.

But when you start thinking some more about Ralsei’s personality and actions, other options start to present themselves as well. A major and somewhat unsettling aspect of Ralsei’s character is his near-religious devotion to Lightners and the prophecy. He believes that Darkners can only achieve true satisfaction by serving Lightners and helping them achieve their goals. Combine that with his clear loneliness from living in near-complete solitude for who knows how long, and it is clear that Ralsei would do or be anything to please the Lightners, and Kris/the Player specifically. (I combine them here not because I think they are the same person - they aren’t - but because there is a good deal of ambiguity around Ralsei’s awareness of and attitude towards the Player.) If he somehow sensed that Kris/the Player had a fondness for a certain appearance, it would make sense for him to want to replicate said appearance.

We also see that Ralsei isn’t exactly a stranger to disguising himself, considering the River Person-looking getup he is wearing when we see him first (I know that’s just a cloak and any resemblance is almost certainly unintentional, but the small visual parallel is fun to point out). Either he saw Kris and Susie coming and whipped out a mysterious outfit to heighten the moment he’s long been waiting for, or he was just walking around the castle like that. Both options suggest that Ralsei is at least capable of, and likely enjoys, dressing up and changing the way he looks.

Finally, Ralsei’s appearance completely changing when he removes his hat doesn’t make too much sense. This argument is not extremely strong due to the art style, but it bears mentioning that Ralsei’s hat is knocked askew at multiple points in the game, partially flying off his head during many reaction shots. In these moments, he very clearly has fuzzy black fur, not shadowed white fur.

In combination, Ralsei’s desperation to please the Lightners, his proclivity for disguises, and the hat’s inability to account for all the changes to his appearance suggest that the hat removal scene at the end of Chapter 1 might not actually be a face reveal, but instead a transition to a new and improved disguise, based on Kris’ longing for their brother to come home and/or the Player’s enjoyment of Undertale. It’s possible that Ralsei doesn’t even realize that he resembles Asriel, or that this might put Kris and Susie on edge. He just fulfilled an unconscious wish - leading to rather interesting results.

All this to say that I really enjoy this theory. I doubt that it’ll end up being canon, but who knows? I expect that Deltarune will continue to surprise us, and until the next chapters come out, all we can really do is make fan content and come up with bizarre theories. Even if this theory is not true in the slightest, I think it could be interesting to explore in fan content, at least.

[fesenmoon]

no fucking way

[chloesimaginationthings]

That was Michael’s room in FNAF 4,,

[egophiliac]

can't believe that skeleman has turned on us, and Halloween Prom is tomorrow.

(what a top-tier UM...we are about to be just totally obliterated in the absolute silliest way. what possible use could this power have outside of bringing us to the brink of utter holiday disaster.)

[tadfools]

You guys are commenting on the fics you read right? You’re at least leaving kudos on the Astarion smut and the pairs that have less than 20 fics for them too? You’re bookmarking stories you really like that are still being updated and ones that haven’t been touched in over a year right?

You know that even the smallest interactions are like cocaine to fic writers right? You understand how important a string of emoji hearts left behind on a chapter at three am is right?? Right????

You’re treating AO3 like a community and not a content factory….right?

[ale-arro]

you know. kinda cringe that we live in a society where the primary acceptable reason to be single is to sell your soul to capitalism. the easiest response to "why aren't you dating anyone?" is "oh, i'm focusing on my career at the moment." man i don't want to focus on my career. i want to live a life where i make enough money to not make work my life and then go home to focus on personal pursuits that aren't dating people or having kids

[hinamie]

big fan of panels where they look like they wld beat me up

[acetier]

i'm So Normal about him

((close ups under cut bc idk he's pretty asdsfksdf))

[keferon]

......So originally I wanted to make just a sketch of the hug scene but mhmgkhllgkh here we are haha

Based on Mistakes on mistakes until

+ close ups of their eyes because I sprinkled them with the tiny extra details

[somehow-a-human]

DO NOT ASK NEIL ABOUT FAN THEORY

Michael babygirl, I apologize now for the close-up screenshots of your mouth I am going to put on the internet. Call Neil if you have issues with it, it's his fault. Brain-rotting brought on by the lovely @melbatron5000!!!

Honey, why are you chewing on a ball bearing? I was going to be lenient and say it's a glint off of some saliva but nah are you sucking on a damn pie weight. I didn't see you take a bite of any dippin dots??? Who let her near my stash of Buckyballs that I've been hiding from the Consumer Product Safety Commission? Just because you are bbgurl doesn't mean you get to eat bbpellets.

[trans-axolotl]

one of the reasons it's really hard for a lot of intersex people when intersex topics are on the news cycle is because the public's reaction reveals how little anyone knows or cares about intersex people, including people who call themselves our allies. almost every time intersex topics are trending, the discourse surrounding them is filled with misinformation. people who only learned today what the word intersex means jump into conversations and act like an authority. endosex/dyadic/perisex people get tripped up over things that are basically intersex 101, with tons of endosex people incorrectly arguing about the definition of intersex, who "counts," DSD terminology, and so much more. i've seen multiple endosex people say today that they've been "warning intersex people" and that we should have known that transphobia would catch up with us eventually, which is an absolutely absurd thing to say given the fact that consistently over the past ten years, it has often been intersex people sounding the alarm on sex-testing policies and also the fact that many, many intersex people are also trans, and already are facing the impacts of transphobia. there is an absolute failure from the general public to take intersex identity seriously; people seem not even able to fathom that intersex people have a community, history, and our own political resources. instead, endosex people somehow seem to think they're helping by bringing up half-remembered information from their high school biology class which usually isn't even relevant at all.

and this frustrates me so fucking much. not because i want to deny the impacts of transphobic oppression--i'm a trans intersex person, trust me when i say i am intimately aware of transphobia. this frustrates me because there is no way we can achieve collective liberation if our "allies" fail to even engage with basic intersex topics and are seemingly unaware of the many forms of intersex oppression that we are already facing every fucking day. if you are not aware of compulsory dyadism, if you are not aware of interphobia, if you are not aware of the many different ways that intersex people are directly and often violently targeted--how the fuck do you think we're going to dismantle all of these systems of oppression?

if you were truly an intersex ally, you would already KNOW that this is not new, and would not be surprised--interphobia in sports has been going on for decades. you would know that we do have a community, an identity, a history--you would have already read/listened/watched to intersex resources that give you the background information you need for allyship. you would know that although there is a really distinct lack of resources and political education, that intersex people ARE developing a political understanding of ourselves and our oppression--Cripping Intersex by Celeste Orr and their framework of compulsory dyadism is one example of how we're theorizing our oppression. It's absolutely fucking wild to me how few people I've seen actually use words like "interphobia" "intersexism" "compulsory dyadism" or "intersex oppression"--endosex people are seemingly incapable of recognizing that there is already an entrenched system of oppression towards intersex people that violently reshapes our bodies, restricts our autonomy, and attempts to eradicate intersex through a variety of medical and legal means.

you cannot treat intersex people like an afterthought. not just because we're meaningful parts of your community and deserving of solidarity, but also because intersex oppression impacts everyone!!! especially trans community--trans people will not be free until intersex people are free, so much of transphobia is shaped by compulsory dyadism, the mythical sex binary, all these ideas of enforced "biological sex" that are just as fake as the gender binary.

it makes me absolutely fucking livid every time this shit happens because it becomes so abundantly clear to me how little the average endosex person knows about intersex issues and also how little the average endosex person cares about changing that. i don't know what to say to get you to care, to get you to change that, but we fucking need it to happen and i, personally, am tired of constantly being grateful when i meet an endosex person who knows the bare minimum. i think we have a right to expect better and to demand that if you're going to call yourself our ally, you actually fucking listen to us when we tell you what that means.

okay for endosex people to reblog.

[chloesimaginationthings]

The true meaning behind FNAF princess quest

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[lucabyte]

monologue

[hajimedics]

I'M NOT YOUR DOLL AND I'LL THINK FOR MYSELF AND I'LL LIVE FOR MYSELF