#undertale audio narration

[naturaldreamer]

Mmmm...

I'm half tempted to read Reader x Undertale Characters out loud again. I did have fun with the first one I did and I did get permission a while back to read a well-known author's work...

I already know which fanfic to read and work on first!

Yeah, I think I'm going to go for it! ♥

[micalpixel]

May Flowers Game - June 2024 Progress Report

Another month has passed, so here’s another update on my gamedev journey. The goal is to create my first video game using the Godot game engine.

(Prior Updates: May, Initial)

Research

The main goal for June was research. Play other character/exploration-focused games with no farming or combat elements and see what they do to keep things fun. Here’s what I played (or watched others play)

A Short Hike: A game about a penguin climbing a mountain. Finding new people, new areas, and moving/gliding were very enjoyable. The game’s 3D environment with pixelated graphics was also a new experience for me. A very nice cozy game.

Rakuen: I love this game. You play as a kid stuck in a hospital, trying to help other sick patients, while also exploring a fantasy world described in a book. Lots of exploration, puzzles, and focus on characters. Catchy music too. Kind of exactly what I was looking for. I think Undertale fans would enjoy this one.

The Stanley Parable: A choose-your-own-adventure game. No NPCs, just movement and a very entertaining and well-crafted narrator.

Potion Permit: You play as a chemist who just moved into a town, and must make a living brewing potions while getting to know the town, its people, and the wilderness. The first life-sim game I’ve actually beaten. The lack of time limits was greatly appreciated.

Shenmue (Watched not Played): An important piece of gaming history. I watched a playthrough of this one, just so I could see this game at its best, and not miss any important events.

Freddi Fish 2 (Watched not Played): A point-and-click adventure for children??!… What’s this doing here?!?! Well, this one wasn’t on my original list, but I realized the point-and-click game genre had many similarities with the walk/talk/trade-items gameplay I originally envisioned. Plus this one had no game-overs and no frustrating trial-and-error like many do. Studying how a different genre handled that kind of gameplay, while making it very accessible and entertaining, was a good learning experience.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits (WIP): I started this one, more for fun than research, but haven’t finished it yet. Beautiful game. As others have noted, it’s like playing a Pixar movie.

OneShot (Not Started Yet): Ran out of time. 😒 Next month. Really looking forward to this one.

All in all, I took 10 pages of notes. Things I noticed, liked, disliked, wanted to think about.

Prototype

On June 20, I began work on an actual prototype (“Prototype 1”). Code from my earlier Godot projects was collected, combined, and improved. The goal is to implement every important mechanic in the game. Everything the player should be able to DO in the game, the prototype should have at least ONE place where the player can do it. In a very condensed environment that's easy to test. Physics and graphics can be fine-tuned later. This prototype is all about functionality. For example:

Walk in 8 directions.

Talk to an NPC.

Choose an answer when the NPC asks a question which triggers different outcomes.

Walk to the edge of a room and appear in an adjacent room.

And overall, things have gone very well! I have a page-long checklist of everything I want to implement in this prototype, and it’s about half-done. :D

Except menus.

And except puzzles.

Puzzle mechanics aren’t added yet. I realized the mechanics I was planning did not have much synergy and were very simple. I also want to review the notes I took during research and study puzzles in general. So, back to the drawing board, for now. Puzzles are the next major step. And I think I have a pretty good idea how I want to change them.

Audio

I made a text-blip sound effect (hear it in the video above) and a placeholder “song” of 6 notes to use for testing music. Since this game’s art style is based on the Game Boy, I did some research on the Game Boy’s sound capabilities.

It has four “instruments” that can play sounds simultaneously, aka “channels”:

Channel 1 and 2: Pulse Channel. Each can emit a quadrangular wave

Channel 3: “Wave” channel with user-definable waveform

Channel 4: A noise wave (think static)

Channel 3 is the most fascinating imo. You can define your own timbre of the sound to be played. If you ever played a Game Boy game that had a unique-sounding song that, chances are it was a custom waveform via this channel. (Also, if you ever played Mother 3, the movie theater part with the retro-sounding music did in fact use the original Game Boy audio capabilities in the Game Boy Advance, and also includes these sounds.)

There is software that can reproduce the capabilities described above in order to create Game Boy-sounding music on a PC. I’d like to experiment with that in the coming weeks. The Game Boy was capable of some really good music. Limiting my scope to its capabilities for the same of my own sanity, plus the flexibility of that wave channel to create custom sounds, seems like it can produce some really nice results, which is very appealing to me.

Graphics

I made a font! It only includes English letters, for now, but it works! I used it in the “Save Pointy” art earlier this week and the prototype video above, and intend to use it for everything going forward.

Closing

And that’s June! Have a nice July, everyone!

[thepandalion]

yeah no finally going insane over being unable to refind this video. send help??

looking for a video that explains how undertale groups font+audio combos for specific characters. at this point Im half thinking I might have hallucinated new undertale info because I legit cannot find it but also I know it was a video I watched because I know literally nothing about coding and would never have thought that audio and font need to be specifically told to be together (probably wouldve just. idk. overlayed the audio as a separate thing. I have no idea how but also I would have no clue how to group them together either so. idk).

like it explained that each "character" has like, a specific audio, and some of them have specific fonts (like the skeletons) and colors and I think the speed at which the text was moving was part of that too? and that a lot of those are saved so you can have an automatic toriel audio+text (font+speed+whatever idk what goes into making a game) for scenes and stuff idk. like a retrieve function I think? but for fonts? and that because of said ability to retrieve they just numbered the fonts and its like the narration is 0 and flowey is 1 etc etc and just. I swear I remember the wingdings font from room 264 with the like. typing noises that are overlayed on mus_smile. being saved together as like font number 666 or something. I swear I have very vivid memories of seeing this in a video somewhere. really need help finding that please help

[queenburd]

stanley truly having agency is one of my favorite parts of tsp canon. in the bucket destroyer ending, for example, he very clearly is holding it tighter rather than putting it in the bucket destroyer. he’s not just defying the narrator, he’s defying US. the player. he is not just a vessel—he is a person within his universe!

i really love that in games, when you’ve got a personality-less protagonist who’s just a blank slate for you to project upon but you look closer and you realize they’ve been there all along. undertale does this very well, and with tsp it’s subtler—but it’s there. stanley can make choices, and any choice we make for him is merely our experience of every possible choice he could have made. you know?

I find this fascinating and I need to rewatch the bucket destroyer ending (I've gotten so used to just having the game audio as a bg tab that I havent really WATCHED in a while...)

I've been struggling to confirm my own mental "canonical timeline" in the game just bc Stanley the Person keeps throwing monkey wrenches into my theory lmao.

Like.... the general conclusion I had come to was that, in the interim of the skip button room, during those longer and longer pauses, THAT is when the narrator makes the Stanley Parable 2, as a way to distract himself. the Stanley that goes through all those endings prior to the Epilogue Unlocking is either the PLAYER, or the Narrator's idea of Stanley, and NOT Stanley himself.

and then, once you get the figurines ending the Narrator decides "Im about done playing", at which point 432 steps in with the epilogue (which may or may not take place after the Narrator has truly left. Im uncertain.) and the "real" Stanley escapes the Skip button room, with no goddamn clue what's up with this bucket (but it has his name on it!!) or these Name buttons but.... oh this one says his.

and then 432 gets Stanley to reset with the assist of the player who HAS context, and the Narrator completely forgets everything prior to the Ultra Deluxe.

but Stanley keeps contradicting me! first with the bucket escape pod animation and now this! my dude!

but yeah, Stanley being his own person in the same vein as Undertale is *chef kiss*. we really are just along for the ride up until we close the game and they go on to do what they like (me thinking abt Stanley in the Ultra Deluxe announcement fuckin HIDING)

anyway I have thought a silly amount about a fun fic where the game data on someone's PC glitches and chara gets put into TSP with the fellas. (look. I have a fave. chara is me) and the Narrator does a cursory google search and is like "THATS A DEMON IN MY GAME" which is just. so IC for him but also so awful.

Stanley is just like "would you PLEASE not call a literal child (who is MUTE from FEAR) a demon."

anyway they basically have to be Parents for this kid until the PC owner fixes the bug.

the first time they hear Chara make any sound at all, is in the Rocket League map. The narrator has spawned in many balls.

Chara starts laughing in delight. Stanley and the narrator just melt. That's THEIR kid now.

[sirius-bizdness]

I posted 1,902 times in 2022

That's 1,851 more posts than 2021!

82 posts created (4%)

1,820 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@oncillaphoenix

@dingbats-dust-n-darkness

@entryno17

@thelazyrogue

@prokopetz

I tagged 1,793 of my posts in 2022

Only 6% of my posts had no tags

#deltarune - 306 posts

#spamton - 166 posts

#others' art - 160 posts

#deltarune kris - 110 posts

#funny - 100 posts

#oh wow - 93 posts

#undertale - 88 posts

#ralsei - 85 posts

#deltarune susie - 80 posts

#cats - 74 posts

Longest Tag: 103 characters

#honestly the 'does this make sense for a writer to do?' test is criminally underused in the utdr fandom

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Masterpost of all music-filename discoveries I've made on the Spamton Sweepstakes secret pages:

If you inspect the source for each page, two versions of each audio track are linked: one in .mp3 format (widely supported), one in .ogg format (used in-game). When I give a track name, assume that's "[trackname].mp3" and "[trackname].ogg".

Unique Dogcheck music is called "results".

On the 5% chance you get the maraca dogcheck instead, that music is called "baci_perugina2".

The music player at the top of the sweepstakes will randomly pick a different music track whenever you resume. The choices include MIDI remixes of: A Cyber's World. Pandora Palace. NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A. Spamton. And BIG SHOT. These are only offered in MP3, unlike most of the other music.

(Sidenote: By ShinkoNetCavy's own admission, the MIDIS without their name in the filename are Toby's work. This turns out to only be the MIDI of Spamton.)

When you find the chair in the 1000000th-customer banner ad. And eyes jump you for a brief moment. The sound that it plays is called "face", and if you listen all the way through, it is in fact lightly-corrupted laughter. (I say this because on my computer, it was only on for a fraction of a second.)

The file used for the Green Room is not the same as the one shared in the September 2022 update!? It seems to be slightly more distorted, and is called "greenroom" instead of "update2022-greenroom".

The slowed-down Rude Buster in the Weather page is called "battle_vapor". (When it plays on the Shadowmen video, that's baked into the video.)

On the note of the Shadowmen video--I notice the graze sound doesn't play when the soul grazes the music staff bullets. Whatever music plays during these two's fight, I doubt it's gonna be battle_vapor.

The dog-champion fanfare is just called "dog".

Spamton on the toilet? The music is literally just "digitalroots". I hoped it might be a version wthout background noise but hah hah NOPE

Spinning Lancer plays under "lancer-spin". Go figure :P

The music when Noelle muses about Kris and the piano, that's "pianpian.mp3". There is no .ogg version. The normal music on Noelle's blog is also .mp3 only ("midi-holiday-country.mp3" if you're curious).

Most interesting in my eyes: on the as yet unrevealed page "deltarune.com/dess", the music is a guitar rendition of Lost Girl. The filename? "findher".

"findher".

71 notes - Posted September 17, 2022

#4

94 notes - Posted March 19, 2022

#3

Realization I just had:

Susie is commenting on...the narration?

Does this mean some of the game's narration is diegetic?

(I mean, in light of the NarraChara theory, and assuming Kris = Chara....)

142 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

#2

292 notes - Posted March 30, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

(source)

"The other night I dreamt that Deltarune chapter 3 released and Spamton set up shop in the castle town. The building looked like this and none of the items he sold was for battles, just car stuff." -u/superbooper

778 notes - Posted March 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[synistersyrup-blog]

Doing an audio narration of “Strange Places”, by Ayu Ohseki! The artwork featured in the video is by TigyShark. 

Fanfic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5170448/chapters/11911172

Tigyshark: http://tigyshark.deviantart.com/

[colourful-void]

my meta psychological horror game concept because my father was not impressed by it.

meta games like undertale that mess with ur playthroughs r great, and ddlc does that And has cool stuff in the files and OneShot is the king of messing with playthroughs and files and meta on your computer! its really amazing how meta these video games can get.

but here are some things i wanna see in a point and click style viddy game like that that aims to be as under your skin disturbingly real as possible. this is my euthanasia coaster, my theoretical psychological horror game.

again this is a theoretical game, this does not exist in any capacity, and i currently have no plans to bring it into reality.

- OC it's gonna detect ur playthroughs via hidden files, and detect if a file was there and then deleted - its gonna detect what version of the game ur playing on (if there's like,, windows ver vs mac ver etc) and then make fun of you for it. if you get one ver of the game and then use another the game knows and it taunts you - self crashes for days ur gonna get so tired of rebooting this thing itll be like malware fake crashes too!! - one time you'll be forced to make a choice and all the options will seem bad and then like,, a little bit after but not immediately, just enough for you to get a taste of the concequences, at a seemingly random time (maybe there's a window in there oo that'd be fun), it'll close itself under the guise of a crash, and then you'll have to make the awful and hard choice again. and if you choose something different ur characters are like 'haven't you made me suffer enough? are you hell bent on seeing me in pain?" - i wanna make the window! look! like! it's! dripping! a character exists the window later because they're so angry with you they can't contain it. - pop ups on the actual computer screen - you get a neat little cursor in game and then at some points it starts moving on its own - the in game close button will move itself if you try and click it. - the game has second person narriation for flavour text and things and sometimes it'll go first place with smething jarringly different than what you expect the player cjharatcer to say and then when you click it again its "normal" (like, say its been established over and over that the player character loves oranges and then u click on something orange related and the narrations like 'disgusting things id love to seen smashed to pieces and consumed by maggots' and then u click it again and then its like 'you appreciate the painting of an orange fruit =D" - you can't play the game again once its finished because theres a little file hidden on your computer so when u open it its a dark screen or something and if you delete it ***there's another secret back up file*** and it punishes youb for deleting it or mocks you or something - graphics are all pixels and such until it decides to switch to photo realistic for sake of freakyness, i know its classic but its banger - yes we r detecting ur name and calling you by it but i will also allow u to change ur name with no concequence because Trans Rights - you WILL play the game in windowed mode and if you move the window outside the boundries of the moniter the chaaracters will cry and scream about the darkness and the horrors beyond the walls. - can we change the background to ur favourite character and then glitch em out? why yes we can you clicked the disclaimer u knew this was coming. - it's gonna ask u a whole bunch of innocuous questions about ur preferences and some of them will come back and some wont but some of em will be like "favourite colour" and some will be like "choose one body part to save legs or arms" and when the favourite colour question comes back its gonna send so much distress to the player but the other questions not coming back lmao its just there to scare you - there are voices in the audio tracks and they get added in and taken away. they are saying things for real but they're heavily distorted - there r no jumpscares btw its all atmosphere, jumpscares r cheap im more epic than that.

theoretically if i had the coding skills i would make a video game i woulsn't be able to stand playing myself

[gender-haver]

I'm terrible at directly telling people about the things I'm interested in, so, this is how I'm indirectly doing it by listing the fandom I'm in/some notable media I like (I don't necessarily participate in the fandoms but I enjoy the them).

- Sander Sides (it's genuinely very wholesome, makes me very very happy and has some really good acting) - Doctor Who (FRICKEN LOVE THIS. I started at the ninth doctor and worked my way up, my favorites are David Tennant and Mat Smith 10-11. Amy Pond or Rose Tyler are probably my favorite companions too.) - Undertale (I like the comic dubs especially, it's how I got into the fandom and is just very comforting =^=) - Black Butler (FRICKEN LOVE THE SHOW AND ITS ASTHETIC. The darkness and grittyness is right up my ally!! one of my faviorte animes-) - Inkheart (I LOVE THIS BOOK SERIES. I have all of the physical copies, along with the audio books and I've also seen the movie though that was lack luster. I love the audio books especially much since after book one the narrator changed and MY GOD that man is a saint, a true blessing! plus the story and concept is so good!!!!! aghh definitely my favorite book series to date.) - Sherlock Holmes (I haven't watched the show, but I really really like the Sherlock Holmes books! I've got two, one is a hugeeee one with a bunch of the stories!! I genuinely enjoy the books though it's not my very favorite series-)

[zirkkun]

hey, ur a undertale fan content creator, which a multitude of dif projects u do. i have an idea for one, but wanted to know if even sounds like an interesting idea. i wrote out basically almost a fic i never posted, because i usually do comic formats of stuff. but the way i wrote it is very visual and ambiance, and idk if it would have the same feel via comic. (its why even tho ive tried to make it a comic twice, i quickly lose interest in it since it doesnt feel like i want it to.) but then i had a thought, of making it like a visual audio story thing. like people on youtube do of some fics or with their own created stuff. but those usually have voice actors and etc. and i dont have the voice, skill, or money for that. but like.. what if i did it with the beeps the game already provides.. does that sound like something even remotely plausable or even interesting?? idk. i dont wanna spend hours on it if its just too bizzare or something. need advice ;; overall, would have pics drawn by me, but almost being narrated by the characters with their beep boops, ya know?

Well yeah -- that's pretty much what Underverse and Glitchtale do already, and they're both really popular, so I don't think people would worry about that at all!! Besides beep boops are cute 💞💞

I say go with your gut and go for it anon!! Hope to see the fruits of your effort someday💕

[listdepot]

Top 10 Indie Games of the Decade (5 - 1)

5. Celeste

I don’t find difficult games fun. I can understand and appreciate people who enjoy the challenge and I’m not afraid to dive into something hard as long as its balanced right but more often than not, I find it purely frustrating and the result often gives me a headache. Celeste is... a hard video game. There are moments in the game where I had to put my controller down, take a breath, and pick it up again before dying a bunch more times on a single screen. But never once did I feel frustrated as I often do with games that are difficult. Because that’s what Celeste is about.

Madeline, the protagonist, is just coming off of what’s implied to be a big mental breakdown and her bad brains and anxiety-riddled feelings feel the best way to defeat it is to climb Celeste Mountain. Despite warnings from others, and offers of help from fellow climbers, Madeline is determined to make it on her own. She has to do it by herself. And soon her determination is taunted by her own internal monologue, manifested on his mysterious mountain by a spectre-like mirror vision of herself.

But Madeline never stops. And despite my occasionally need to put the game down, neither did I. The game at no point pulls a dirty trick, even during the vastly more difficult B-side challenges it provides. Its pure pattern recognition. So every so often I would put my controller down, take a breath, and pick it up again. Because I was as determined to control my frustration as Madeline was to conquer her fears. The headaches I often get with hard games never manifested. Sure, my hands hurt after every level from gripping the controller but, in the end, I had felt satisfied, even proud, to have scaled Celeste Mountain along with Madeline. Even if well... take a look

16 hours and 3000 deaths and it was fully worth it.

4. Cuphead

I remember it fairly vividly. A quick cut of indie games for the Xbox One back in 2013 at E3. Just a sizzle reel of the games coming and I saw Cuphead. I believe my exact reaction on Twitter was “HEY WAIT WHAT WAS THAT HOLD ON” or something similar. 

As someone passionate about animation history, it stood out strong for all the reasons everyone loved it. The bouncing rubber hose animation (fully hand drawn and digitized), the echoes of Fleischer Studios and extremely early Warner Bros, the intensely jazzy soundtrack full of washed out audio. But what made Cuphead really unique to me was it wasn’t just a tribute to one old form of media.

Sure, of course, the 30s animation style was my big draw, but as more stuff came out about it, I noticed it was essentially just Gunstar Heroes, Treasure’s incredible frantic run and gunner for the Sega Genesis. With that element, Cuphead transformed for me from a game that looks pretty and has a fun concept to a game I knew I would love. And, despite waiting 6 years for it to come out on a platform I could actually play it on, I absolutely did love it.

Unlike Celeste, I did eventually put down the punishingly difficult ode to old school cartoons, but I know its there waiting for me to pick it up again and marvel at every focused enemy encounter and every lushly animated boss fights and stages. 

3. What Remains of Edith Finch

Annapurna Films came out swinging hard in 2017 with their game publishing branch Annapurna Interactive by releasing Unfinished Swan creator Giant Sparrow’s follow up game, a simple “walking simulator” focused on familial lineage.

Edith Finch returns to her old family home located off the coast of Washington. A large estate full of locked doors full of rooms frozen in time, preserved as shrines. You see, the Finches are, in a way, unfortunately cursed, forever plagued with dying in often odd circumstances. As you explore this home and Edith’s narration guides the player. Each room lets you experience a minigame of sorts, a vignette of that very death, told often from the perspective of that very Finch, each one interpreted in its own way.

As morose as that sounds, and there are plenty of sad moments (you play as a damn baby who drowns in a bathtub for crying out loud), its a game who’s whimsy and gallows humor is proudly worn on its sleeve. One story has you playing as a hermit Finch who lives in the home’s basement, desperate to avoid the curse, as you open cans of food over the years. That’s it. That’s the gameplay. And as soon as that Finch feels confident to have survived the curse, he walks out through a hole in his bunker, only to find himself on the railroad tracks with a train approaching.

And in a lot of ways, that’s what Edith Finch is about. Its a game that exists to be about the absurdity and peculiarities of death, what makes it sad, what makes it often funny and how it affects those who love those who have died. Edith Finch is like playing an interactive eulogy to a family that never existed and there are multiple moments that gave me a good laugh and plenty that made me tear up. 

2. Undertale

I don’t have anything to say about Undertale. Its an insanely popular video game and for good reason. A story full of heart and a weird sense of humor, a game that subverts traditional RPG mechanics by not only letting you whether to fight or spare your enemies but turns an enemy’s attack into an always cool bullet hell sequence. 

Its a game who’s characters are well known, its lines are repeated often, its soundtrack has been turned into memes and is intensely beautiful constantly.

I have nothing to say about Undertale because Undertale speaks for itself. It is an independent underdog game that blasted into the stratosphere of video games. Its good. Play it sometime.

1. Frog Fractions

I wish I could even begin to describe what Frog Fractions is but I can’t begin to express my love for this free weird browser game. Ostensibly a parody of edutainment games, you play as a frog eating bugs to keep them away from fruit and those fruits you collect go toward upgrades. Its fairly simple until, uh... it isn’t.

The ultimate joke of the game is that this fraction game about frogs is barely about frogs and, of course, never about fractions. The only fractions that you actually see are the weird points you gain when eating the bugs. And then that edutainment game becomes a shoot-em-up, which becomes a maze, which becomes a text adventure, then a DDR-like, then it just keeps going on like this until it just suddenly ends. Frog Fractions just kinda never stops until it very quickly does.

What makes Frog Fractions incredible to me is there aren’t many other games that came out this decade that, despite the vast connection between people that now exists with social media and chat platforms like Skype and Discord, elicited such a strong “Hey you gotta check this thing out” reaction as Frog Fraction did in my circle. I remember there being a lot of talk about both not spoiling what happens in it and helping each other try to solve that goddamn text adventure section where you’re fixing a spaceship.

Frog Fractions, for its pure word of mouth weirdness, managed to create enough buzz to even make a sequel, one that came out years after the first one that was slowly revealed with an insane ARG that included hidden images in other indie games (Firewatch included) and eventually launched inside ANOTHER game that you had to dig deep to find. And as fun and weird as Frog Fractions 2, it only has its progenitor to thank for the pure weirdness that it. A game that exists to be “Check this out”, especially in an era of social media, and a game that is just so fantastically bizarre that sends you on a journey through Bug Mars and beyond. That’s the best indie game of the decade.

[suzyundertale]

How we know the person in the intro of Deltarune is almost certainly Gaster

This post is a summary of all the evidence that the person speaking in the “vessel creation” portion of Deltarune, and by extension the Game Over sequence, is W.D. Gaster.

1. Connection to the Twitter

For those that don’t know, on October 30th, 2018, the day before Deltarune came out, the official Undertale Twitter changed its icon and display name, and tweeted a number of cryptic tweets, which we now know to be teasing Deltarune.

As you can see, the tweets are clearly written in the same voice as the person in the intro. This is a very unique voice, so it’s extremely unlikely it would be anyone else.

This gives us a hint to who the speaker is - look at the display name. It’s “██████”. If you can’t tell, that’s exactly six characters of black “censored” boxes - the exact number of letters you need to spell “Gaster”.

2. References to Entry Number 17

Undertale’s hidden “Entry Number 17” is one of the more well-known Gaster Things. But in case you don’t know about it, Entry 17 is a section of text, in the form of a True Lab entry, written in Wingdings font, and only accessible by editing the game’s files. Here is a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jfHh88p5hk

Translated from Wingdings into plain English, it reads:

ENTRY NUMBER SEVENTEEN

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

Of note is the part that I have bolded. The phrase “VERY VERY INTERESTING” seems to be a… catchphrase? of Gaster’s. It’s used in the tweets in the lead up to Deltarune to make a very clear callback to Entry 17.

In addition, another possible reference to the line is in the save menu screen of Deltarune before you clear the game. If  you don’t know, the main menu is different depending on if you’ve already cleared Chapter 1 once before, or if you haven’t cleared it yet. If you haven’t yet, the save menu will not only appear different, but the dialogue for copying and erasing save files will be different as well.

Of interest is a line of dialogue that only occurs when you delete 10 or more save files, then go to delete another one, then back out when asked if you want to “TRULY ERASE IT”. If you do this, the text will read, “VERY INTERESTING.”

Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRnliRKGMBM

3. “mus_smile” in Deltarune

Speaking of Entry 17, You may have noticed the creepy “music” playing when it is being displayed. This piece of audio is titled “mus_smile” in the files. Interestingly, it appears in Deltarune not once, but twice.

The first is when you try to make a phone call while in the dark world. Any game music that was playing will stop, and instead “mus_smile” will play, and the narration says that the cell phone “doesn’t seem to be working”. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7FuP_AkbRU

The second is, of all places, in Hometown during the epilogue. Specifically, when you’re near the bunker south of town. If you’re close enough to it, a very slowed down version of “mus_smile” will play. Video showing the sound at both original speed and sped up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPQYXiUEpPk

4. Typer values and the number “666”

This one requires a bit of explaining on how Undertale and Deltarune function. Each line of dialogue, in both Undertale in Deltarune, relies on what is called a “typer” value. Basically, all the information about the text - the size, the font, what sound the text blips make - are all stored in this “typer” value. Usually, each character has a specific typer value associated with them, sometimes several. When a character says a line of dialogue, the game uses this typer value to determine how the text will appear.

And, again, we return to Entry 17.

You probably know that Gaster is heavily associated with sixes. In Undertale, his unused battle stats are all sixes - for example, his attack and defense are both “66666”. The “fun” value needed to encounter the “mysteryman”, commonly believed to be Gaster, is 66, and the fun values for all of the “Gaster followers” are in the 60s as well.

You may have guessed it by now - The typer value used for Entry 17 is “666”. This is definitely intentional, as the highest typer value below that is “111″.

So, then, what’s typer value “666” used for in Deltarune?

Why, it’s the intro sequence. Interesting. (Except the “No one can choose who they are in this world” bit - that part uses typer value “2”, which could provide further evidence that it’s a different person speaking.)

Similarly, typer value “667” is used for the Game Over sequence.

This, in combination with “VERY VERY INTERESTING”, seems to make it very clear that the speaker in Entry 17 and the mysterious speaker in the “vessel creation” part of Deltarune are the same person. Although you need knowledge of the game’s files to find this particular piece of evidence, you also need that to find Entry 17, which is a huge part of the Gaster Lore™.

5. What the “vessel creation” is actually called in the files

In Deltarune’s files, the “vessel creation” sequence is referred to as “GONERMAKER”.

This is significant, because the term “Goner” is tied to Gaster.

Gaster is pretty clearly linked with the “grey NPCs” in Undertale. Two of these grey NPCs are explicitly referred to as “goner” in the game files:

“spr_mkid_goner”

“spr_clam_goner”

The latter is the “goner” form of Clam Girl, who speaks of Suzy, and, in the Nintendo Switch version of Undertale, which came out less than two months before Deltarune’s release, claimed that the time we will meet her is “fast approaching” as she turns into her “goner” form. This was possibly foreshadowing Deltarune’s release. (I say “possibly” because we don’t actually meet “Suzy” in Deltarune, but “Susie”.)

In any case, these so-called “Goners” are almost certainly linked to Gaster in some way. We don’t know exactly how, but the fact that the intro is called “Goner Maker” is almost certainly very significant to the story.

6. The music during the “Goner Maker” sequence, and its title

Undertale has a hidden sound test which does not actually include songs from the game, but notably, includes a song titled “Gaster’s Theme”. In the game’s files, this song is called “mus_him”.

And, as you can see on the bandcamp page for Deltarune’s soundtrack... The title of the song that plays during the “Goner Maker” sequence is “ANOTHER HIM”. In addition, the song seems to use “Gaster’s Theme” as part of the melody, as does “Darkness Falls”, the game over theme.

7. Hidden messages on the Deltarune website

Way before Deltarune was revealed, the website still existed. But it looked a bit different.

Luckily, we have archives on the wayback machine, so we can see what the website looked like in the past.

August 17, 2016:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160817183540/http://www.deltarune.com/

The page appears to be completely blank. However, in the top left corner there is an image, titled “him.png”. when brightened, it reveals a message written in Wingdings:

It reads,

THREE HEROES APPEARED

TO BANISH THE ANGELS HEAVEN

Which, as we now know, is a quote from the Legend in Deltarune that Ralsei tells Kris and Susie.

However, there is also an archive of the link to the image itself. And it turns out this image was different at some point.

December 9, 2015:

https://web.archive.org/web/20151209013205/http://www.deltarune.com/him.png

When brightened, the image once again reveals Wingdings, this time reading:

THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT

SEEMS

VERY

VERY

INTERESTING

Which, you may remember from earlier, is a direct quote from Entry 17.

This, once again, strengthens the connection between Gaster and Deltarune.

These are all the major pieces of evidence that Gaster is speaker in the intro. Of course, we can’t 100% prove it just yet. But there’s no good reason to deny it. With so much of the evidence clearly pointing to Gaster, at this point Toby going “haha actually it was someone else the whole time” would just be bad writing. And Toby’s good at writing! I really don’t think he’d pull a pointless, unnecessary “plot twist” like that. So it’s very, very safe to say that this person is Gaster.

[elijah-cornejo]

“What aspect of video game storytelling could be improved?”

May 26, 2020

Regarding the question brought up during yesterday’s lecture, I think it is quite difficult to pinpoint an aspect of storytelling in video games that could use improvement since narration in video games has evolved rapidly ever since the early days of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. Thousands of different video games and video game franchises have been developed, many of which follow one story with the same events occurring through every playthrough, and others which provide the player with the ability to alter its ending depending on the choices they make throughout the progression of the game. Some games even have the ability to remember every action you have done throughout the history of your interaction with it. For example, Undertale is a hit game where the message conveyed is to make peace with your enemies. If you do a playthrough of the game where every single enemy is spared their lives right after a run where you killed the same characters, the visual audio cues of the game at the very end give you a hint that you wouldn’t be forgiven. In the ending photo, there would be “X”s on the faces of those you killed on the previous run, which would not be there had you spared at least one of them during your first playthrough.

Perhaps one thing that could be improved is personalization. So far, in games such as Saints Row, Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto, character creation gives the player the opportunity to customize their physical appearance within the game to their liking. Sometimes, they would be shown interacting with non-player characters throughout the cutscenes.

Nintendo’s “Mii”s do a similar thing with a variety of Nintendo games, such as Wii Sports, Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers. Despite how far gaming has gotten in terms of physical personalization to create a much more immersive experience, I have yet to come across a game where the non-player characters are able to directly say the player’s name, which is often also customizable but only through text in heads-up displays and account settings screens.

I think that the addition of customizable audio cues would further enhance the immersion in future games. As of late, there only seems to be general terms such as “our friend”, “me”, “you”, “the hero”, etc. by characters when referring to the protagonist in-game. It has appeared to be too difficult or expensive to get the non-playable characters to say spliced phrases or words without sounding similar to a cheap text-to-speech program, which would put them out of character. Some ESRB ratings would prevent this due to the possibility of child-inappropriate phrases being entered.

Despite this, I believe that it would be much sooner than later where we get to see audio and character voice personalization in games. I recently found out about a free online program, on the website fifteen.ai, where one could get a popular character, such as Spongebob Squarepants or the Soldier from Team Fortress 2, to say anything inputted in a text box with the use of advanced audio-splicing technology. What makes this significantly more different than regular text-to-speech programs is the fact that people can choose the type of expression the character is conveying, such as neutral, happy, angry, or crazy. The application shows that the ability for artificial intelligence to create custom sound clips that sound as natural as the voice actor themselves is within our reach, and that we will eventually see cutscenes in video games where we would not only see a visual representation of ourselves, but hear ourselves in conversations between other characters as well, making us feel like we are actually in the game.

[fastsalad]

The middle school production of Undertale the Musical I that I watched a couple of nights ago seems a bit like a weird fever dream now so I thought I’d watch it again and post my thoughts. Reactions and reviews under the cut:

-I was wrong about them misgendering Frisk and I apologize, they said genderless child at least ten times in the intro.

-They used the intro from the game as a little slideshow/overture in the beginning, which would have been fine if the person who was managing it hadn’t moved the mouse, causing the little YouTube thing to show up on the bottom.

-There are a crap ton of technical difficulties in this show a couple being: Music randomly starting and stopping for no reason, EXTREMELY long transitions, I’m talking like 5 minutes, and poor lighting, video and audio quality.

-Flowey was a phenomenal actor, but not the best singer. It did not help at all that his music quit out on him halfway through the song and he had to sing a’capella.

-Toriel was good singer, but her acting was kind of flat. (I’m not going to blame her, she’s young.)

-Did I mention the lighting could be horrendous at times? And that random crashing noises would happen in the middle of scenes for no reason?

-From what I saw, Heartache had some really cool visual effects, but I could barely see anything because of the horrendous lighting.

-Toriel sang a nice possibly original song after Heartache, but it was a little hard to follow because there was no background music. (And I might be wrong about the Frisk’s gender thing? I can’t tell what Tori’s saying but it kind of sounded like little girl)

-Did I mention Flowey is absolutely hilarious?

-The Sans scene had some strange blocking and the music malfunctioned, but overall it was alright.

-PAPYRUS IS THE BEST ACTOR IN THIS SHOW AND I LOVE HIM

-He has the best costume too.

-They had the cutest little setpiece for Snowdin.

-The lights got kind of unnecessarily weird when Papyrus showed up but it didn’t affect the scene too much.

-This wansn’t an actual part of the show, but I found it hilarious when either Frisk or Sans’ mic was on during a scene change and they kept repeatedly whispering: “WHERE’S THE JACKET GIMME THE JACKET I DON’T KNOW WHERE THE JACKET IS” because we’ve all been there.

-The annoying dog was played by an actual dog and that was an absolute gem.

-Did I mention how in character Papyrus is? And that I can actually hear him?

-Papyrus literally reminds me of me when I was 11.

-Frisk asked: “Does Grillby’s have food” and I found that absolutely hilarious for some reason.

-There might have been a music malfunction before Bonetroustle, and if it was a malfunction then Sans Papyrus handled it FABULOUSLY with their imrpov skills.

-Papyrus’ singing kinda sounded like shouting and he was a little off-key but he was tap-dancing so bonus points for making my vision come true.

-There was a Chara and Asriel scene which was cute but I could barely tell what was going on because of the light and sound.

-The entirety of the first Waterfall scene was so dark I legitimately could not see.

-There was a very cute and funny scene in Temmie Village, but it went on for so long I kinda felt like I was hallucinating.

-Undyne pulled out an extemely long scroll when she referenced her speech and then immediately threw it away when she said screw it.

-Papyrus answered the phone with, “Hellow human, it is I... WALUIGIIIIII!!!!!!! Wait wrong number.

-Undyne made some nice character choices.

-”Why are you calling me if you’re standing right there?”

-Undyne chased Frisk around the aisles which I greatly appreciated.

-Alphys was making one of those coke and mentos things when Frisk walked into the lab.

-And she was wearing pajama pants which I appreciated.

-”I’ve been watching you all this time-” “Well that’s not creepy at all.”

-Frisk is very salty in this show.

-Mettaton was a person literally wearing what looked like a trifold with armholes. I don’t know whether that was a poor or amazing costume choice.

-They included intermission in the video which was kind of annoying to have to skip through.

-Since Mettaton couldn’t see he had to be escorted around by another person which I first thought was a poor choice until the guy said, “I”m not your slaaaave.” Then I thought it was a hilarious choice.

-Since Papyrus couldn’t take a flying leap through the window during the Undyne date so he just kid of awkwardly wiggled out the window.

-”Why don’t you use the door?” “THE DOOR IS FOR WHIMPS! THE WINDOW IS FOR THE GREAT PAPYRUS!” “Are you caLLING ME A WIMP?”

-Sans showed up at one point and started playing the trombone for no reason.

-”Oh my god I just burned your house down I am sooo sorry.”

-The sound definitely got better during the second act and there weren't as many malfunctions.

-Muffet had a rather strange costume.

-Spider Dance had some nice choreography but the ensemble wasn’t really all that energetic about it.

-Spider Dance was overall a kind of weird scene.

-Mettaton had a rather strange singing voice but it wasn’t necessarily bad.

-Aaaaaaand now he’s off-key.

-Honestly everybody in this musical is off-key at this point. Mettaton’s off-keyness was probably just a result of the song being too low for the actor.

-The MTT resort waitress had a ROCKIN’ costume for a character that wan’t even in the game.

-Sans: “YOU’D BE DEAD. RIGHT WHERE YOU STAND.” (Blackout as he runs away)

-Let me just say Burgerpants was AMAZING.

-Sans and Papyrus showed up at Burgerpants’ shop for literally no reason but it was kinda funny. I like how this show went off-script in llittle ways.

-Mettaton’s slave: (Fixes mtt’s costume)

-I’m pretty sure mtt’s slave was played by the guy who played Flowey which is hilarious.

-Mtt had some nice backup dancers.

-Frisk: “Well those Broadway people are... narcissistic.”

-There was kind of an awkward pause before Death by Glamour where everyone just kinda stood still while the music played.

-Mettaton EX’s costume was really cool but the hair was a bit weird in my opinion.

-Undyne and Papyrus literally showed up during Death by Glamour.

-Papyrus and Mettaton started dancing together at some point in the song and let me just say the choreography was ROCKIN.

-Honestly though the minute they called Mettaton ‘She’ I kinda noped out on this show.

-Frisk had some rad fake crying.

-Undertale was a cool dream sequence or something I don’t really know what it was but it was cool.

-Narrator: “One day, a human fell down below the mountain.” Chara: (Falls on their face)

-Asgore’s costume was very strange.

-Asgore: (Fighting Frisk) Toriel: (Runs in) “ASGORE YOU USELESS PIECE OF TRASH!”

-They skipped over all the true lab stuff so there was no Alphdyne and I lost most of my faith in this show.

-They made Papyton a thing and I would have been happy about that if they hadn’t made mettaton a friCKEN FEMALE

-Asriel had the best costume in the show everyone else go home.

-He also had some neat flying effects.

-Dreemurr family reunion awwwwww

-NEVERMIND BABY ALPHDYNE IS IN THIS SHOW I’M ECSTATIC

-(Toriel and Frisk having a tender moment) (Cue Mettaton and Papyrus running around the audience screaming)

-THE ANNOYING DOG WAS PLAYED BY FLOWEY

There’s what I think is a Q&A at the end so I’ll talk about that and post my overall review of this show later.

[gobbochune]

Over the Garden Wall is a fall miniseries special made by cartoon network in the early years of the latest animation boom that has unfortunately been placed in the same club as Rick and Morty, Portal, and Undertale as a legitimately good though not flawless piece of media no one can talk about for fear of being associated with an infamously horrible fanbase. Cursed to obscurity because the mere mention of its name will call upon antis and fans alike who will take a mile from any inch of analysis given.

Introduction: 

I think the fact that we’ve come to a place where fandom is a deciding factor in whether or not to watch something is depressing in its own right, but more so with Over the Garden Wall specifically because it’s themes are becoming more and more relevant in western animation trends lately. Specifically with the increased demands for darker more mature themes in stories made for children.

Fans of animation from a technical standpoint want stories in their medium of choice that reflect their mature sensibilities while people with an interest in children’s media demand for lighthearted family fare they can either watch with their kids or appreciate from the standpoint of someone with an interest in child development.

And both sides have a point. Cartoons weren’t always considered to be just for children. Pretty much anything can be told through an animated story, the medium’s flexibility allows for a wide range of tone and performance that is under-utilised as children’s programming. There are some truly brilliant stories that are told though animation that not only push the boundaries of how a story can be told but also what an animated film can look like. People who happen to be writers tend to pretend that writing is the only thing that matters and that a piece of animation is only as good as the writers behind it. I can see why they feel that way but I don’t think they realise how closely interwoven visuals, audio, and text can be. Ideally, writing, visuals, and audio are all different languages that weave together to tell a story and all three mediums need to be given the same amount of care to sell a setting. I’ve seen no shortage of brilliant pieces of writing lost to the annals of time because they look like shit and I’ve seen beautiful animation that stays popular even though its written like shit. Film as a whole really negates the need to have dialog or characters at all, so long as the choice to do so is deliberate and carries a specific intent. Indie darling Don Hertzfeldt for example uses simplistic and bizarre cuts of animation alongside a monotone narration to represent a man with degenerative brain cancer in ‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day”. The narration could have easily been set to more traditional visuals or even negated entirely in place of standard dialog between characters but only Hertzfeldt’s signature style could depict what it’s like to feel your mind slowly imploding in on itself to such a chilling effect. The story was more about the visuals than the narration, and more reliable context could be drawn from the way the visuals are presented than anything the narrator says throughout the film. This is a really cool and interesting way to explore the potential animation and things like these are sorely under-utilised in mainstream studios. 

But at the same time there is legitimate genius to be found in children’s shows themselves that has absolutely zero interest in appealing to adults or even carrying themes at all. There is an art to speaking to people who haven’t developed an understanding of themselves yet that takes a lot of effort and care. Fables are devoted to this concept, designed so that the listener can understand the world through a proxy. It comes from a place of narcissism to think that just because you personally aren’t engaged by simplistic stories it means there wasn’t a level of mastery in creating it. In the Night Garden is a spiritual successor to Teletubbies with an emphasis on fostering a better relationship with bedtime. There is absolutely no entertainment to be gained from this show unless you’re high or have a boner for costume design, and yet kids love it. Toddlers love The Night Garden more than actual kids like Steven Universe. It is an incredibly successful show despite not having anything significant to say because its goal is to entertain children as they’re lulled to sleep and it works. The most beautifully designed and animated show I’ve seen all year is an irish production about baby puffins made for toddlers to learn animal facts. While there is significant scenery porn for parents to appreciate, the goal of the show is to play with all the cute animals and learn how they live in the wild. Mrs. Frisby is much the same in both versions of the show and its major goal is to act as an entry point for complex scientific concepts. Peppa Pig is legitimately fucking hilarious and requires no defense whatsoever. I’ve said before that the phrase “Just for kids” doesn’t mean that something doesn’t appeal to adults but that adults shouldn’t feel entitled to it. You can watch if you want but only with the understanding that this does not cater to you and you shouldn’t expect it to. Viewers outside a show’s demographic are only tourists, they shouldn’t demand to be stimulated with more complex narratives that could confuse or even frighten the intended audience. If it’s too simple and juvenile then watch something else. Practically everything is made for adults, you can handle the pony show not caring about your sophisticated intellectual sensibilities every now and then.

Animation studios want to find a happy medium between these two approaches to animation. On the one hand, they want to push the boundaries to appease critics and make headlines. Most of the markets surrounding these things value new ideas over well executed ideas, and studios need those clicks just as much as youtube analytics do. But on the other they know that their show can only be seen by people who can afford to see it. As much studios want to mix it up things like merchandise and advertising keep the lights on so they’ll need to stay on brand to feed their staff.

Animation is fucking expensive and a lot of studios need to keep up a reliable flow of money in order to satisfy their investors whilst affording their passion products on the side. Sony Animation for example seems to follow this pattern of making legitimately good films between lukewarm branding deals, usually sequels to their previous successes. Pixar and Dreamworks have adapted this pattern as well, and unlike so many animation critics I can’t fault them for that. It’s like every time Pixar announces a sequel or a toyetic franchise fans act like this is the last film they’re going to make, despite many of these losers using the same damn tactics on their own channels. I know a hustle when I see it, and unless they’ve obviously given up I don’t really see the cause for concern.

But TV animation works differently…I think. 

Let this be a disclaimer that most of what I know about production comes from film studies and the indie scene so it’s entirely possible that my explanation of things like statistics and scheduling is either absurdly simplified or outright false. I am entirely open to correction, and in fact actively encourage it from someone who has done more reading on the subject.

From what I understand the way it used to work was that a schedule would be designed under the assumption that once a show caught the viewer’s attention they’d stay on the channel until they got bored. Emphasis was put on stuffing as many different programs as they could into one day so a higher percentage of tastes would be attracted to it. Things become more complicated with the advent of the internet, because unlike the benevolent tv channel feeding you shows it thinks you want audiences can pick and choose for themselves.

Often times fans will show loyalty to a single program instead of the whole channel, hopping between networks to take their pick from the cream of the crop. This is why Crewniverse all but begs fans of Steven Universe to watch the show on tv even if the alternative is legal. It doesn’t matter how many people buy episodes in itunes if the stats show more eyes on Cartoon Network when Teen Titans Go is playing. The kind audience who likes Teen Titans Go is more likely to watch it on TV and will watch anything else on the channel like commercials and other shows. Teen Titans Go does in fact have an audience that audience is more loyal to the network than fans of Steven Universe are, so it gets priority on the schedule. And, despite what small-minded cynics like to say about media at large, its not like the only things these studios want is to make money. They are made up of individuals who entered a less than lucrative industry because they like what they make and want to make things they can be proud of when they can afford it. But money will always need to be a factor and respect for a project feeds artists only slightly less than exposure dollars do.  

Shows that have the memetic writing of TTG but with the fakedeep shock value of Steven Universe are becoming more and more popular because the jokes and reusable formula to attract views so the themes and representation can be explored once the show has paid back its cost for existing. But often what we’re left with are shows that are annoying or embarrassing for adults and are boring or upsetting for children. We’re brought right back to the initial debate of mature themes vs. consistent tone.

But what does any of this have to do with Over the Garden Wall? It’s not avant-garde experimental animation or childish educational animation. It doesn’t really swap between methods but attempts to be both at the same time. Like Gravity Falls it makes sure to let the audience know what it is early on and stays that way throughout. Cartoon Network even resisted making it an ongoing story, it had a pre-determined ending that it stubbornly refuses to expand no matter how much money the fans are willing to throw at a second season. It has more in common with a film than a tv show, it had a specific story it wanted to tell and knew that enjoyment of that story was limited. There was very little in Over the Garden Wall’s synopsis that could be recycled, every decision in story and design had a deliberate reason for being there and if any of the aspects that made the show enjoyable were reused they would lose their effect.

But, like so many modern cartoons, it still fell into edgy trappings that made it too scary for children and too cutesy for adult swim. When thinking of the core demographic I can only assume it was made for animation buffs either in highschool or their first year of college who happen to have a preference for nostalgia over intrigue. Homage is the best way to describe its artistic intent; constantly referencing movements in American animation through technique and shot composition. Its subtle enough that the design is cohesive but blatant enough for anyone who’s taken a class on storyboarding to recognise.

So yeah, it’s a pretty good show if you’re into that sort of thing but why is it such a tragedy that it’s been blacklisted? Well, I believe that Over the Garden Wall not only balances its desire to appeal to goth adults with being appealing for children but actually manages to have something significant to say about excessive darkness at the same time. To prove this I have to dive into the more subtle themes of the show that might not have been made so apparent on the first viewing which means I have to dissect some very uncomfortable implications.

And I’m gonna spoil the ever living fuck out of it so that was my warning.

Summary

On the surface Over the Garden Wall is a story about a pair of brother’s shared death dream as they slowly succumb to hypothermia at the bottom of a pond. The dream itself is the Unknown, a place that can be read either metaphorically as an allegory for depression or literally as the suicide forest of Dante’s inferno. The Unknown attracts the hopeless and lost and there the boys meet others who have been ensnared by anxiety and doubt.The boys are stalked by The Beast (an entity that functions as a satanic male version of Dante’s harpies) while the bluebird Beatrice (named for the muse of Dante) tries to help them find their way home. This eventually leads to a confrontation between the brothers and the Beast where the older brother Wirt must overcome his own anxiety and escape the Unknown to rescue them both from drowning.

Of course that’s a pretty rigid recap of what happens and there are a lot of hints that the Unknown is actually a real place or that the happy ending is a lie or other shit but after several viewings of the show in a relatively short amount of time I notice those hints were only added at the very end whereas every other big plot twist is referenced in each episode leading up to the reveal. Generally, it seems like they wanted to leave a door open for the comics. From what I understand the Unknown is real the same way purgatory would be real. Its less a place than a black hole of negative emotions people are sucked into at difficult points in their lives that is haunted by a poltergeist made of their combined despair.  The fact that the beast feeds on the souls of suicide victims and its true form is just a bunch of Edelwood trees confirms this in my mind.

But here’s the thing about the Unknown- it’s a fucking sham.

Why The Unknown is a Fucking Sham

The Beast isn’t some great and terrible truth that all must fear and respect, he’s a con artist who tricks people into doing his work for him by playing on their anxieties.

The Woodsman states in the first episode that everyone has a burden to bear and his is the dark lantern containing his daughter’s soul. But it’s not his burden and that’s not his daughter’s soul. His daughter is still alive, patiently waiting for him to come home, and it was only his fear of learning the truth behind her demise that keeps them apart. The comics confirm that she was almost captured by the beast but narrowly escaped, which can be an allegory for a near death experience or terminal illness. The Woodsman is overwhelmed by the idea that he couldn’t protect his child, and becomes obsessed with delaying the inevitable. In his frantic refusal to accept Anna’s mortality the Woodsman unknowingly abandoned her. This carries some pretty disturbing implications if Wirt hadn’t intervened, he would have stayed in the unknown while his daughter wasted away completely alone.

Beatrice, who has been estranged by her family because of a mistake she’s trying to atone, doesn’t realise that no one in her family blames her and they’d be perfectly happy to live as bluebirds so long as she comes home. They love her unconditionally, and are so okay with the bluebird thing that they lightly tease her for it over the dinner table. It’s treated as a stupid kid mistake that the family looks back on fondly, and Beatrice being lost in the unknown was the product of her guilt and pride. 

Greg’s reason for being lost is subtle and well hidden but prominent if you’re paying attention. His naïvety and good nature has caused him to believe that he is a bad person because he did exactly one thing wrong: He stole a rock. This is so tiny and insignificant and so real to children that age that it stings. One of my earliest memories is that of accidentally breaking the seal on a bag of candy and waiting in terror for the cashier to notice and send me to jail. Greg is only five years old, and that secret was burning inside of him the whole time its no wonder he crumbled under the guilt the minute Wirt cast any shadow of blame onto him. When Wirt finds out why the Beast was able to capture Greg he’s utterly flabbergasted, and says as much as Greg feebly insists that he deserves to die because he picked up a rock without a permission.

There’s a reason why all but the main cast’s problems can be solved in quick episodic succession. Its because the answers are so blatantly and obviously simple but couldn’t be seen through the self-hatred and doubt. The beast is ultimately defeated not through self-confidence, sacrifice, or true love but through admitting that, well.

(this is actually the big badass moment where Wirt defeats the beast not a one off joke)

The moral of Over the Garden Wall is that excessive angst, especially that which is found in its own narrative, is dumb and shouldn’t be indulged in.

Nothing that is presented about the Unknown is as bad as the characters initially believe and the solution becomes clear once they stop feeling sorry for themselves. The show presents attempts to atone for one’s sins or dwell on one’s flaws as actively damaging and unpleasant for the people around you. 

This can be a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of reasons. Ignoring the obvious things like societal or monetary restrictions there are a lot of ways people can be trapped in this mindset. From the outside it looks as though people are hung up by such simple problems by a lack of self-autonomy, not realising that a personal crisis can be exhausting to address at the best of times, let alone whilst suffering from depression. 

Over the Garden Wall is sympathetic to those who are lost but warns its audience that despair must never outweigh the actual severity of the problem. Many of the more unsettling inhabitants of the Unknown are perfectly good people who are trapped in a bad situation, from the souls of those abandoned in unmarked graves to a loving aunt forced to manipulate her niece in order to save her from herself. 

Nowhere else is this made more apparent than with the two protagonists. No matter the severity of each resident of the Unknown introduced, Greg’s childish optimism always wins out over Wirt’s cautious pessimism. Almost every solution is found either by Greg doggedly hoping for a good outcome or Wirt lapsing into hopefulness, and it’s only when Wirt’s despair causes him to lash out at Greg that the Beast is finally able to find them. 

And this leads us to Wirt. 

Lets talk about Wirt

Wirt is the older brother and thus made responsible for his and his brother’s actions. But Wirt doesn’t really want to do that because Wirt kinda doesn’t like himself all too much. Wirt is just as quick to push responsibility onto his five year old sibling as he is to lament his own inability to preform, despite successfully preforming various tasks mere moments after insisting he can’t. 

*Proceeds to ride expertly through dark unstable terrain one handed without reigns*

Every moment of Wirt’s badassary save for his final gambit against the Beast is proceeded by a declaration of incompetence and excuses as to why he’ll under preform. All character flaws are the product of Wirt’s self-depreciation and any strengths he’ll admit to having he perceives as worthless or abnormal. All of his relationships are incredibly positive or supportive and yet he believes himself to be a tragic outcast who is upstaged by his rival Jason who is superior to him in every regard. Often times Wirt will wax into dramatic purple prose lamenting a lost love that turns out to just be a botched confession and his deepest darkest secret is the fact he writes poetry and plays clarinet. 

All of this serves to make Wirt a pretty pathetic little edgelord, and he would be completely unbearable if not for the aforementioned theme.

Wirt’s angst exists entirely between his very large ears, is very obviously a temporary product of being a teenager. Wirt looks like he could be anywhere from 10 to 13 years old until we realise that his childish appearance is a costume and he’s actually in his mid teens. An excursion into the real world shows the audience that not only Sara, the subject of Wirt’s affections, is totally into him but that he is generally embraced by his peers and his ‘rival’ Jason is a loser everyone tolerates out of pity. Even the Police, who he initially entered the Unknown trying to escape, were merely putting on a facade of chasing them as apart of some misguided Halloween fun. Even as the brothers run in fear from authority, that authority calls out to them that he’s kidding and he only wants them to stop running because he’s afraid they’ll trip and hurt themselves. Absolutely nothing in Wirt’s life is out to get him.

Every time we learn more about Wirt the characters openly mock or chastise him for being so down on himself, and its through realising the ridiculousness of his angst that he is able to defeat the Beast. Even his killing-blow one liner is robbed of its badass appeal because his voice cracks on the first try, only for Wirt to clear his throat and try again. It’s not even him who kills the beast at all, realising that defeating the Beast isn’t necessary to find his way home. All he has to do is stop letting the Beast get to him and he’s able to escape the Unknown without a second thought. The Beast’s fate is left in the hands of the Woodsman, a fitting punishment for manipulating him into doing its dirty work all these years. 

And its not as if Wirt is unlikable either. Certain points in the series we see him open up a bit more and show the genuinely kind and insightful young man who endears himself to the people around him. Though he often mistreats his younger brother Greg, Wirt tries to take care of him where he can and will even indulge in Greg’s silliness when he’s comfortable enough to express himself. 

The cruelest thing Wirt ever does to Greg is tell him to bug off while he takes a nap, and even this he regrets within minutes of waking up to find his brother gone. For all Wirt insists towards the end that he doesn’t care about either of their survival anymore, the mere suggestion of Greg falling victim to the Beast is enough to sent the exhausted and suicidal Wirt into an overprotective frenzy.

Most of Wirt’s problems can be solved not by believing he is good but abandoning the idea that he is bad. Happiness is treated not as a depleting life force but everyone’s natural state. After all, being lost is temporary by definition. To have a home is to have a sense of normalcy you wish to return to, and to be away from that home is to be lost. 

The Beast tries to trick you into forgetting you’re capable of ever finding your way back, or that you aren’t strong enough to escape the Unknown. But giving up is never the answer, for so long as you refuse to give up the Beast can’t touch you. The Beast is a lair and a sham. He grows twisting and winding paths designed to confuse and disorient you. He’s such a weak piece of shit that he needs to tire you out for days until he can even show his pathetic face. 

Conclusion

While media can provide an escape, it also can be a cage all its own. 

In these trying times its so easy to feel as if the only way to keep yourself from going batshit crazy is to accept mediocrity and succumb to apathy. From horror stories on the news to harassment online or even something as petty as your favourite cartoon not living up to your expectations, the relative insignificance of these things is what causes us to leave them unchecked. We let our problems fester because it is our instinct to press on despite the pain before stopping everything to take apart our lives and look for a problem. We hide the things that bother us behind prickled branches that we drag through the dirt until they’re too heavy to proceed. We make up reasons as to why even thinking of a solution is more exhausting than happiness is worth. We pretend our feelings come from an impossible source in order to justify their existence. 

That is the Beast’s lie. 

You DON’T have to choose between wandering forever or surrender to the forest, you can make a better option. Escape the Unknown. Fight for your happy ending. Don’t give Beast what it wants. Unlike everything else, the Beast is the only thing that can’t hurt you. It’s not fucking easy even though it should be and that sucks but you still need to go home. You deserve to go home. 

And odds are its closer than you think.

[neonhalcyon]

W.D. Gaster Theory Expanded

TLDR: Audio files from Undertale and Deltarune link the unseen narrator of both games to W.D. Gaster.

A few weeks ago I watched the Game Theory series about W.D. Gaster. As I played through Undertale again (switch version), I tried to look for references in-game to Dr. Gaster. The next time I landed in the Game Over screen, I had a realization. What if, perhaps, it was Dr. Gaster who was speaking to you as the unseen narrator? 

The mystery voice (a text sound we’ve never heard elsewhere in game) talks about “determination” (something Gaster had been researching) and gets you back to your save point (messing around with time and space, something Sans and Papyrus can also do). 

Now, let’s look at the original Undertale soundtrack. I’ve tried to collect all the tracks I can from bandcamp, fangamer special edition, and even going into the original ogg files to find the missing tracks. 

Buried in the middle of the ogg tracks, is one called “mus_st_him.ogg” I’ll include a picture to show you the route I took to locate the file. (Some things are blocked bc they have my personal name etc)

So, this file ends up being what people consider Gaster’s theme. (Sound can be found here http://undertale.wikia.com/wiki/File:Mus_st_him.ogg )

Let’s skip to Deltarune. The opening track, in which a mysterious narrator urges you to create a vessel is titled “ANOTHER HIM.” I believe that this song title and  corresponding scene helps back the theory that the mysterious narrators are, in fact, one and the same: Dr. W.D. Gaster. 

[karma-voice-acting]

Voice Commissions (Temp CLOSED)

$10 SFW Commissions:

-Provide me with a script of what you want voiced.

-Tell me the file format you’d like the lines delivered in.

-Anything that exceeds 2 minutes will be an extra $5 per 30 seconds.

-If you would like me to do multiple voices, it’ll be $5 per additional voice.

$15 NSFW Commissions:

-Provide me with a script of what you want voiced.

-Anything that exceeds 2 minutes will be an extra $5 per 30 seconds.

-To commission something NSFW you MUST be 18+ (sorry kiddos).

-I reserve the right to refuse anything I’m uncomfortable with.

$20 Singing Commissions:

-Anything past 1:30 will be an extra $5 per 30 seconds.

-Provide me with one or more of the following: sheet music, a backing track without vocals, a good recording of the original version.

-Provide me with me lyrics.

-If the song is an Original Song there will be further discussions. Just message me.

-If you want me to sync my vocals to a backing track it will be $7 extra. 

-These commissions will take longer, and I reserve the right to refuse anything I cannot comfortably sing. 

Here’s a list of what I can do:

Female: Teen, Young Adult, Adult, Middle-Aged Woman, Motherly, Narrator, Announcer, etc

Accents: America (Standard, Southern, New York, Valley Girl), British (RP, Cockney, various others), Irish, Scottish, French, German, Russian, New Zealand, Australian. 

I’m also willing to try any accent so if you want something you don’t see, just ask. 

Singing: I’m trained in Musical Theatre, but I’m comfortable singing most genres. I’m a Mezzo so I have a pretty wide range, but to be sure just send me the song and I’ll let you know if it’s comfortable. 

Established Characters:

Overwatch: Moira, Mercy, Tracer, Zarya, Widowmaker

Undertale: Frisk, Chara, Toriel, Alphys, Undyne, Young Asriel, Bratty/Catty

BATIM: Alice 

Villainous: Demencia

Pokeman: I do a pretty good Ash Ketchum 

Anime: Various

(If you don’t see the character you want, just ask)

Equipment: 

-Rode NT1A Microphone

-Scarlett Solo USB Audio Interface

Link to my YouTube channel

If you want to get in touch you can message me here (or my other account @thechronicarly ), Twitter (@karmavoiceact), or by email: karma.voice.acting@gmail.com.

All commissions will be paid through PayPal, you’ll receive my email when you commission me.