#I've been wanting to draw something for delta for a while though. his comic makes me happy. I've wheezed laughing at it a lot

[gophergal]

finally got around to making fanart for @another-delta-lover 's Milk Blueberry Popsicle comic

[whoaskedgottem]

My take on Deltarune and its connection to Undertale.

i am a funny man. i make funny pictures. but sometimes, i'm not so funny, and i make theories and fanfiction fuel instead. this is gonna be a long read, okay?

I've seen multiple ideas flying around on the significance of the Undertale/Deltarune parallels and what they mean for the story, and how these two games connect together. I'll do my best to present something new to the table, while organizing disparate factoids and thoughts into a well-formatted outline for the timeline of what could've been a kick-ass fanfiction or fan comic if I actually had the drive to be a Real Artist.

Please note that I don't think this is really a proper 'theory' or 'prediction' as much as it is what I would do if I had to write the rest of Deltarune, with what Toby Fox has already made.

That [sweet, sweet] [Freedom Sauce.]

Let's start with a quick recap so I can give you a little concept I haven't seen anyone bring up yet.

Deltarune has a pretty heavy handed approach to communicate its themes. Toby Fox has come out and said that it'll only have one ending, throughout Chapter 1 you're constantly reminded of a very central concept to the story:

"Your choices don't matter."

In fact, throughout that first chapter, the game's mechanics reflect this at nearly every step of the way. Your vessel is discarded, your choices are constantly disregarded or skipped over by the characters in fake-out sequences, the game's entire battle system and ending hinges on the fact that no matter whether you spared your enemies or not, it all still ends in much the same way, with only minor changes to show for it.

No one really missed this. Every single person discussing the themes and significance of Deltarune has brought this up before. Boring, I know. Stay with me.

Chapter 2 expands on this concept in an unexpected way. The game actually opens up. A lot. We're given plenty of chances to make choices that do matter. Mechanically, battles matter again. If you spare enemies, you can turn them into friends and bring them to your own town. If you don't, they'll be gone forever. If you're particularly chilly, you can make some [Frozen Chicken] with your [Hochi Mama.] More interestingly, though, we're introduced (well, we're shown that it's actually important and not just crazy rambling, because we had seen it in Chapter 1 with snippets of Jevil's dialogue that seemed like madman ramblings at the time,) to the concept of freedom.

The resident trashman, tiny awful gremlin, trade deal extraordinaire, needs no introduction. Nor do his themes of seeking freedom. We don't have to touch on this much just yet, but keep this idea in your mind that, thanks to Spamton, we now have a very defined idea of what the Tumblr Sexymen of each chapter in Deltarune have in common with each other.

Arcane, mysterious knowledge of their own existence, and their (lack of) freedom.

Now. Let's recall back to Undertale, because this talk of Freedom and being trapped remind me of something.

The Delta Rune in Undertale is said to be long lost imagery for an ancient Prophecy in which an angel will descend from the surface and bring freedom to the monsters.

We can start drawing parallels in Undertale and Deltarune's themes now. Or rather, name an overarching concept that's being explored in both games. The characters in both games are trapped in their own sets of boundaries. Whether that be imposed by the player, humanity's barrier, the knowledge of their limited existence in a game, a time loop, monsterkind's king's plan, or the closed doors and cut-off internet of a town, everyone is trapped in one way or another.

And everyone wants some freedom.

"hey. i know the feeling, buddo."

Let's move on. The games can be thematically connected, but that's lame. We're looking for some answer to what the hell's going on. We know the obvious things, like this being a 'parallel story,' an AU of sorts, separate from Undertale. We know the characters in Deltarune seem to lead separate lives, not having much knowledge of certain things we'd take from granted in Undertale. And despite broad strokes still being there-- their personalities are still left mostly the same, nobody seems to be exactly the same in this world.

Well, almost nobody. We don't have to get into how Sans doesn't seem to fit in with everything else in the game, everyone's already walked that path already. We also don't need to analyze too deep into his dialogue in Undertale, so let's paste it in for the sake of really good looking formatting.

Yeah, we've all seen it a million times. Sans seems to come from somewhere else, his circumstances in the Underground being something he wanted to escape from to go back to that "somewhere (or 'sometime,') else," and the world of Deltarune seems to be the most likely answer to that whole mystery.

So, mystery solved, right? Sans Undertale is ACTUALLY Sans Deltarune, and we're looking at the alternate timeline from which Sans came from, with a whole new storyline to give us context to this new world. A prequel of sorts, while still being separate.

I'm not sure about that.

The man who speaks in hands.

The presence of Gaster is obviously the biggest piece in this whole puzzle, and ignoring it would be foolish. I'm going to assume everyone's already poured as many hours as I did theorizing and reading up on as much about the bastard goop man as I have, so let's skip over defining who he is, his connection to Jevil and Spamton, his possible second identity gig as a Knight, and get to the heart of the matter.

I believe that the 'timeline' for these games is a little trickier than what someone might think at first, and far more connected than what Toby Fox lets on; while still most definitely being able to be seen as two separate worlds.

Deltarune is both the prequel and the sequel to Undertale.

The world of Deltarune, with its prophecies and characters and story is, chronologically, the prequel. After all, Sans (and Papyrus?) needs to have come from it, and for lack of a better option for his mysterious origin, the world of Deltarune is the best fit for said origin.

That said, that doesn't make sense with what we see in the game. His store is very clearly Grillby's, scribbled over. His house is very clearly the one from Snowdin. It doesn't look like he came from here. In fact, it looks like it's the other way around. And, although this doesn't prove anything, he's the only one that has just moved into town in the game, in a small community in which most people know each other.

Funny how we, the players, just got there too.

Now, I get that it sounds like some weird Schrodinger's Sequel conundrum when I put it like this, so let's revisit some previous dialogue and try to make sense of the whole thing.

HOW LONG IT HAS BEEN.

It's important that we fully understand that Gaster seems to know of our presence and contact us directly. Whenever a new Deltarune chapter comes out, it's Gaster that hijacks the Twitter account, and Gaster that links us to the file to connect into the game. The very SOUL we control in the game only appears once we 'establish a connection' with him at the start of the entire game.

The reason why is it's important, is that once we establish that he's responsible for our presence in this world, we can look into Gaster's tweets to see a very specific line that I need to highlight for the timeline to make sense.

This is the closest thing we have to Gaster's motivations in the entire narrative. This single tweet.

Creating a new future.

It sounds like a slogan, but mind the wording. A 'new' future. Obviously pedantic to write down, but that implies the existence of an old future. Or would that be the past?

What exactly is the future we're trying to create in Deltarune? why a new one? did something go wrong?

Speaking of which, why did Sans get stuck in Undertale's situation?something must have driven him out to get him stuck there, wishing to go back.

What if the original world of Deltarune fell prey to The Roaring?

Even in Ralsei's prophecy, The Roaring does happen. The Earth draws her final breath. Only after it do the 'three heroes' show up to save the day.

How about this: Gaster's motivation is creating a new future in which The Roaring doesn't destroy the world for good.

Entry Number 17.

(Or, how I ran out of image slots for this post and learned to write the rest of this out.)

It's a cool motivation, but there's a problem with it.

If he wanted to do that, then it'd be awkward that he's simultaneously the Knight. Why would he go around opening fountains, potentially causing The Roaring, if he wanted to prevent it?

This is where it gets a little weird. I'm relatively confident of everything up until this point being... fairly natural or obvious to follow a plot thread on without straying too far from what might feasibly happen in the game. Gaster's plans and motivations are a complete mystery, and most likely key to the entire game's unreleased story. To be honest, I've no idea.

I can make a guess, though. Take it as less of a prediction or theory and more of a fanfiction. What I would do with this as a writer if Deltarune was a writing prompt.

DARK. DARKER. YET DARKER. THE DARKNESS KEEPS GROWING. THE SHADOWS CUTTING DEEPER. PHOTON READINGS: NEGATIVE. THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT. SEEMS. VERY. VERY. INTERESTING.

WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK?

Gaster exists as a character in the world of Deltarune, and came to Undertale along with Sans and Papyrus. In the 'original' timeline, he experimented with the Dark World, opening fountains left and right in some arcane research he was conducting. My best guess is that, as a clueless Lightner who'd only just now discovered the Dark World and its properties, Gaster became the Knight without knowing the full extent of what his actions were doing. He told different people about his knowledge of the Lightner world in which they were toys in a game, and carelessly created fountains everywhere he found interesting. This eventually catches up with him, and the world is then enveloped in Darkness, causing The Roaring. Three heroes stand up to the catastrophe, but they either fail, or their fate is left unanswered. They seem to have been important, so Sans (or Gaster) keeps a note of them. A reminder for some other time, where maybe they can help.

This is when him and the others escape to (or the Darkness creates the world of--) Undertale. We learn through Queen in Chapter 2 that the power that allows Lightners to open Dark Fountains is Determination. The DT Extraction machine's blueprints and the mysterious machine in Sans' basement were designed to investigate and extract Determination from humans so as to find out the mechanics of the Darkness, Determination, and quite possibly find a way to return to their previous lives. In the process, they discover the timeline anomalies and other mechanics of Undertale. Whether the CORE was related to this or just another creation made by Gaster in his time in Undertale, which machine he fell into, and what follows is up in the air and more in the realm of Undertale theories than anything else.

Deltarune, the game we play today, is Gaster's recreation of this world after spending years spread across Undertale's code and in whatever meta-space Toby Fox has created in which the guy can post tweets and speak with the players. A world in which Kris, one of the three heroes, is controlled by the player. An attempt at creating a new future in which The Roaring is stopped with our help, reversing the mess that Gaster once made. Even if Kris has no idea what's happening, and is terrified at this weird presence suddenly possessing them and taking their free will from them.

Also I guess Sans got carried over to... like... oversee this whole thing and make sure the kids don't get lost eating chalk or stuck in a fridge somewhere.

Bonus Meme:

There's also a fun idea to play with that could be the fact that Gaster's actions as the Knight, despite being counter-intuitive, actually help us achieve the best ending. Even messing with Jevil and Spamton, teaching them of the game mechanics and instilling the concept of freedom in their minds, could be argued to be all for the goal of giving us powerful Darkners to get Shadow Crystals from. Whatever is made from them could be the key to defeating the Ultimate Enemy. Or he could just not be the Knight at all.

Also, the idea that Undertale is what could become of the world of Deltarune if it were to be shrouded in Darkness is quite a fun idea for me as well. A fantastical version of the world in which all the bits and pieces of the 'real world' of Deltarune get turned into a whole ass indie game darling hit from 2015.