#though inb4 'toby would never reward you for videogame violence and wanton cruelty'

[mirror-ralsei]

THOUGHTS: Threat Level and TwistedSwd

This is just a quick connecting of a couple of dots: the “threat level” demarcated by backing out of deleting a file at the last minute, and the ThornRing only being acquired by aborting a Weird Route at the last minute. (Shoutout to HalfBreadChaos for pointing out both.)

Notably, keeping the ThornRing - that is, a last-second abortion of Chapter 2’s Weird Route - is required in order to craft the TwistedSwd. We know little about the TwistedSwd beyond that it’s “a strange blade” for Kris that lowers Trance (contrasted with the ThornRing itself, which increases Trance).

“Twisted” kind of reminds me of Chara’s line to us about “a perverted sentimentality,” especially in context. Chara is specifically talking to a player who completed a No Mercy run twice, something most players would not do.

This, to me, is a bit similar to the conditions required to keep the ThornRing, and therefore obtain the TwistedSwd: a very obscure and deliberate path, probably followed for the purpose of obtaining a specific result. In the double No Mercy player’s case, it’s probably to see what kind of dialogue might change. In the TwistedSwd player’s, it’s obviously to obtain the TwistedSwd.

There’s also one more use of “twisted.”

Flowey describes you as “more twisted than [him]” if you subscribe to the newsletter “just to see what would happen if you unsubscribed. This does seem to line up with the way “perverted” is used to describe us by Chara.

Even if that’s not the case, and there’s no parallel between these ideas, I think “threat” and “trance” will probably be some kind of Chekov’s Guns for plot purposes later, as will the TwistedSwd. And I definitely wonder, like others, if we might have to do some, well, twisted things to get a “good” or “true” outcome.

(Screenshot credit: 1 2 3)