#i was very nervous when the post went viral but ppl have been very kind and the comments have been awesome

[deltaruminations]

i didn’t want to keep reblogging that ch.1 game over post over and over so here are some more comments from other users that i thought were really cool and wanted to share/expand on

@determinators

Gaster knowing personally of Chara when they died is something i hadn't really considered in any depth and it's SO interesting and i can't stop thinking about it now

my current (admittedly convoluted) line of thinking is that G originated in the Deltarune universe, and his strong desire to un-doom its timeline is motivated in part because it's his home and he feels a sense of duty (maybe because of past actions) to the people in it -- especially the kids, maybe kris in particular (again, for any number of possible Reasons). i think Egg as a symbol of young, vulnerable life being given out to teenagers represents a gesture of nurturing (even if a very weird/unsettling one from the recipient's POV lol), and when we consider the repeated references to eggs not hatching...

so from there, if we hold that G hopped over to UT at some point (maybe with the "followers"? maybe to flee the Roaring?), and was royal scientist when chara was still alive... holy shit dude.

given just the sheer similarities between kris & chara (and especially if we believe kris & chara to be instances of the same character "model"), the idea that he was able to see kris alive "again" in some form before having to experience their terrible death and the fall of "darkness" a second time... i could see that driving him to a point where he might just feel like he has nothing left to lose, you know?

idk there’s so much i’d like to say but i feel like i’m veering a little too far into speculative fanfic territory whenever i start getting into it. but imo the G/chara parallels definitely seem to be there thematically and i think there’s potential for narrative significance to it as well (is G maybe taking extra interest in Kris in Deltarune the game in part due to what he saw happen to chara in undertale, and/or his particular sympathy for chara because of how his own well-meaning past choices led to harm like theirs did, and/or how his own inaction/indecision in the Undertale universe factored into them making their big mistakes in the first place? is anything about that ethically fraught from kris deltarune’s POV???)

@abandoned-quiche & @torchiiko

one of the things i find so interesting is that he doesn't just say they're wonderful — those statements are among the very few times he ever breaks from his "script." they’re among the only moments of spontaneity we see from him in the whole introduction sequence.

if you pick someone else’s name, even "sans" or "papyrus" or "asgore" or "gerson," he just says HM WHAT A COWINKYDINK. and if you give one of the kids’ names to the vessel alone, he responds similarly neutrally, as if he knows that because you’re giving that name to the "character," you already have some amount of meta knowledge and therefore have already "met" them as a character. he even said on twitter that he knew we were looking for him — he knows we’ve played undertale, and that might be why he’s seeking us out in the first place.

possible masking for personal reasons aside, if we consider that we’re participants in a "survey" or test case, that kind of neutrality is both polite & professional and necessary. whatever biases he personally has, he needs to minimize his betrayal of them, because that could influence the behavior he seems to be attempting to study. and if he’s aware of our (from his POV) tremendous metaphysical power and knowledge, then i think he might be just as skeptical of us as we are of him.

and yet, if you give yourself one of the main lightner kids’ names, he seemingly assumes it really is a coincidence and he just completely breaks. he is so excited for you to meet Kris, Noelle, and Susie for what he thinks is the first time that he can’t stop himself from telling us how very, very wonderful he thinks they are. it’s like he pauses from taking a note, looks up from his clipboard, and says, "NOELLE, YOU SAY. I HAPPEN TO KNOW OF A NOELLE MYSELF." he doesn’t just like these kids, he likes them so much that despite his best efforts he just can’t hide it.

the only other seemingly spontaneous moments occur when we give ourselves his name (discussed below) or when we give the vessel and creator identical names ("OF COURSE OF COURSE. OF COURSE THEY ARE THE SAME.").

@cogentsummoner

YES the name thing is something i’ve been thinking about a lot too.

to explain that more for anyone who’s unfamiliar: in the intro/"GONERMAKER," G ends the survey session as soon as the last letter of his name ("GASTER") is typed. he doesn’t wait for you to submit it, and he doesn’t ask you to change it to something else, he fully just takes the player out of the session. as soon as he sees his full name, he removes you (and, it’s worth noting, himself) from the situation.

this could be taken many ways, but i definitely think "startled" is accurate regardless of anything else. beyond that, it could be skepticism wrt your meta knowledge of him, as discussed before, but we’ve also established that he knows we likely know who he is. he knows we were looking for him. i also don’t think such spontaneity and haste would be expected to follow from skepticism, frustration, or fatigue alone.

PERSONALLY i believe that confronting his own name brings up deep discomfort for him (for, again, whatever Reasons). just seeing it causes him to panic. it causes him to break beyond affection for certain kids and even grief/disappointment after a game over. whatever it stirs in him makes him feel so exposed that he can’t even allow us to be present for it. note that while he doesn’t return us to menu/title after dying, he does that exact thing in response to seeing his name.

maybe interesting to note, "WINGDINGS" and the like don’t cause any particular reaction. it’s just "GASTER" that sets him off.

the survey sequence in general is very very interesting. why does G even give us a character creator in the first place? i know everyone’s already talked about "choices don’t matter" with the discarding from a thematic perspective but could there be narrative/characterization potentials as well? if G’s trying to help the player, his collaborator & participant, feel comfortable, what does the offer of a customized "vessel" say about what he values, what makes him feel comfortable or uneasy?