#right now im taking a break to organize stuff and also to draw/write various deranged headcanons apparently

[deltaruminations]

i put on this video last night and i think patricia touches on an idea here that i’ve been struggling to articulate wrt to Gaster Lore which is like. the fanbase historically and at large tends to get super deep into gaster’s mechanical roles in the story and forget to consider "surface level" readings of the information. the difference being, of course, that deltarune (unlike the interpretive artworks she’s discussing here) DOES have an explicit and coherent narrative. that means detailed lore explorations are certainly worthwhile, but i think understanding things on a "surface level" is sort of what makes the difference between throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and like, sorting through the stuff ahead of time to see what might actually be sticky in the first place.

this is why i think stuff like friendship propaganda adds value to discussion — we know that characters like Kris and Ralsei have layers and are capable of more than what they let on. looking carefully at the text and simply asking, "what does this tell us about the characters? how do i feel about it?" gives us a reasonable idea of what their interests are and what they’re willing to do for it. is Kris trying to end the world? no, probably not. is Kris willing to do something risky or irresponsible as a way to spend time with someone they like, and/or as a way to find a missing loved one? yeah, maybe!

one of the reasons why i think gaster has become so obnoxiously over-discussed in theory spaces is because we for a long time had no real indication of his actual means and motivations. it seems like he can theoretically fill in a gap, so we assume he does. he’s a good guy! he’s a bad guy! he’s unknowable! he’s all-powerful! he’s whatever the theorist needs him to be in that moment. to a certain degree we could call that lazy, but i also think that’s kind of unfair, because it is hard to get any kind of real grip on the guy’s intentions or the scope of his abilities. before deltarune chapter 1, it was impossible. the information wasn’t there. nowadays a lot of us are just tired, and we tend to just shrug and say, "yeah, gaster’s in deltarune. who knows what his deal is."

the reason i’ve spent so much time overthinking his scenes & music in chapter 1 is because i think the information there can be taken as a rosetta stone for beginning to translate both means and motivations. i don’t think Gaster Theorization is moot, i think we’ve (again, speaking of the fanbase at large) just been lacking the foundations of that surface-level approach to contextualize the lore.

ex. i would have never considered the possibility of him (sort of) being the unseen/"Roaring" Knight if i hadn’t started going through those scenes, leading to an observation, then questions: gaster isn’t just distantly invested in this world, it seems like he’s tearing himself apart trying to save it. why does this matter so much to him? why this world? if he just found it somehow, why does he feel so committed to it? if he created it, then why doesn’t he just rewrite the ending himself?

i definitely don’t think GKT is the only logical conclusion (FAR from it lol) but it is a non-arbitrary possibility among other non-arbitrary possibilities i’ve seen proposed since chapter 1, and i think it’s really interesting that we can like… start to come up with anything like that at all now i guess lol