#undertale made the player actually an entity in the game

[agirlking]

I love how fandom actually encourages you to vague, cause goodness forbid you actually disagree with a take on a fictional character where someone can see it. Even if you disclaim multiple times your intentions and how you don’t care if people like or dislike said character, you’re told how YOU feel about it.

[freakbullet]

cant believe when im consuming deltarune theories i have to sit through takes like "yeah I guess ANOTHER HIM sounds kinda like gasters theme but theres no proof" or "yeah people assume the intro narrator is gaster but we dont actually know"

like do yall need Toby to spell it out in big block letters for you?

OH WAIT. HE DID.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Happy Groundhog Day! I think it is so wonderful that there is an entire holiday dedicated to a specific burrowing rodent. Americans love this thing! And who wouldn't? Their burrows aerate soil, and provide homes for many other critters!

A lot of people wouldn't love the groundhog, actually. In 1883, the New Hampshire Legislative Woodchuck Committee put out a statement calling groundhogs "wayward sinners" whose grooming habits suggest good manners, but who in reality have "not made any material progress in social science". You think the Discourse is bad today? They used to form committees to complain about a squirrel's moral character!

However, this is not the extent of the disrespect toward groundhogs. It happens to this day, and we all take it for granted, and most don't even bother to realize it has to do with a marmot in the first place! Let's talk about...

Name: "Mole"

Debut: Whac-A-Mole

Sorry this picture is not very good. There are just not many pictures available that show that weird old "mole" figure that I have in mind specifically! Here's a green one.

Anyone familiar with the "Mole" series of animals will know that this is very much Not A Mole! The distinct head, the visible ears, the blunt nose, the buckteeth... this, my friend, is 100% Ground Squirrel! And this game is FAR from the only instance of moles and burrowing rodents being mixed up.

It actually makes sense that this mistake would happen, though! Moles are synonymous with burrowing, to the point unrelated burrowing animals are named after moles (including Mole Cricket, perhaps the ORIGINAL mole). But moles spend ALL their time burrowing, rarely if ever coming to the surface, so even though we all know moles, we are rarely blessed with SEEING moles. I have never seen a mole in person... yet! I would love to! Ground squirrels, such as groundhogs and prairie dogs, are also little burrowing critters, but these ones are commonly seen on the surface, ever alert. I think it's reasonable to mistake them for "moles"!

Alas, the popularity of Whac-A-Mole has cemented Ground Squirrel as essentially the "canon" Mole design for this context. And what a context that is! A classic, even GENRE-DEFINING game, all about whacking critters as they emerge from their burrows. So rude! They're not posing any danger, and the player isn't hunting them to eat, either. This is simply a game of spite. How DARE that rodent try to see the sun! This is just like Undertale.

Whac-A-Mole is one of the most straightforward types of game for any device with a touch screen or anything similar. Just gotta tap a thing! Very easy. This has led to such variations such as Whack-a-Monty from New Super Mario Bros., where the player bonks Monty Moles (more like Monty Gopher am I right) while sparing the many, many Luigis. Obviously, the Luigis must surface in order to initiate courtship, ensuring future generations of Luigis.

Now that I think of it, Mario is one of the only times I've seen the ethics of Whac-A-Mole called out, through the endangered Whacka from Paper Mario! I'm surprised the genre is not deconstructed more often (I love that this sentence is about Whac-A-Mole).

I think this is where I will end the post, because this silly game has so permeated human culture that I could go on and on and on! So strange that an entire animal now has a reputation of "pops out and gets bonked on the head". Conceptually, I certainly prefer the "parasitic aliens emerging from an astronaut's body orifices" aesthetic for this kind of game, but obviously kids aren't going out and bludgeoning real rodents because of this game, so whatever.

But still, what if instead of moles, the whacked entities were something humans have no problem attacking with a second thought...?

Get ready for an action-packed new game set in the Bowling universe!

[canadiancryptid]

So I started thinking about the game on Asriel's computer, and now I can't stop thinking about the possibility of Asriel and/or Kris being the ones to create Undertale. I mean, if Gaster might have created Deltarune, why couldn't they have made Undertale?

I mean, its clearly supposed to be a reference to the Asriel fight, but I started questioning if there might be more to it, and here I am.

They way this has been piecing together in my brain, I see it as more Kris picking up what Asriel started and never finished some time after the events of Deltarune, with every intention of having it played by the same entity that controlled them.

All of the similarities between the games can easily be things that were based of their actual adventures and people from Hometown. What I'm interested in are the major differences.

- Most of the magic used by monsters could be based on what little magic they can use in the Light World, as well as magic used by both Lightners and Darkners in Dark Worlds.

- Frisk and Chara being so similar to Kris makes perfect sense if they were inspired by them. They both share a ton of traits with Kris, but Chara seems to have the most. Frisk is the player character based on their experience while under the player's control, and Chara is the self-insert that fills their role in the Dreemurr family, but is also one of two characters in the game who directly speak to you as the player.

- Gaster and all his mysteries could be based on whatever entity we've been assuming IS Gaster in Deltarune. They never fully found out what was going on there, but they knew putting in references to it would drive the curious players insane.

There's something about the idea of Kris creating Undertale because of the events with the player in Deltarune, only for most of us to find Deltarune in the first place because of Undertale.

The one major part of this theory is how Asriel is depicted in Undertale. I guess it could be explained as Asriel's edgy OC from when he was working on it getting reworked for the story, but that might be stretching it a bit.

Do I think any of this is even close to canon? Not for a second. Pure crack theory. But I can't stop thinking about it and it makes a concerning amount of sense. There are a bunch of other smaller things I can think of that could be looped in, but these are most of the main ones. I don't like how deeply this has infected my brain.

[tastyfresh]

my least favorite UTDR character is without a doubt "The Player". This supposedly canon entity that is, yknow, YOU, playing the game in a meta way and controlling the characters through the funking screen. I really dont find that concept interesting and think it actively would make the story of Undertale and/or Deltarune worse if it were directly canonized. The upside being "The Player" isn't technically directly actually stated to 'exist', so much as they are heavily implied.

But i think the story of Undertale is SIGNIFICANTLY more investing if its a story of how the power to Save And Load can corrupt someones curiosity and drive them to do horrific things, when they think that their actions have no consequences, ultimately teaching the lesson that your Actions, Do, have Consequences despite your weird superpower you got from being really determined to stay alive. And i think that's a valid interpretation of the story, rather than it saying "oh you the human being in real life playing the game are actually a piece of shit because you engaged with the story in the evil way". That's just un-immersive and uninteresting, to me.

And i think the story of Deltarune (though unfinished obviously, i cant predict what they will actually do) would be dampened if it is, in fact, "The Player" playing the game and controlling Kris and telling them what to do against their will. I think its a lot more compelling if it's the Knight or some other antagonist within the story that does not force me to confront the fact that i am playing the game and therefore am not longer invested in the story because im made aware that it is fiction, despite how much it tells me that its actually for real and i should feel bad for being the bad guy in the story. I would rather feel bad for my actions as a character within the universe, because that's immersive and that lets me engage with the fiction instead of being forcably reminded "this fiction is fiction its not real you cant be invested because its a fake story right now and there is no 4th wall". It just supremely dampens my engagement in any story when the 4th wall is broken, or in the case of "The Player" being a real entity, when there essentially ISN'T a 4th wall because im canon in the game.

HI!!

I wanna know who's your LEAST favorite character in deltarune/undertale

[carlyraejepsans]

do you prefer frisk being the genocidal one and chara being the pacifistic one or vice versa?

much much, MUUUCH more complicated than that buddy. from a meta/actual game's message pov? i think it's important that frisk has the space to live their own life and be themself only after we've set them up to be a merciful person with true pacifist. at the same time, they're also willing to fight when we want to!

as for chara, i think the distinction between their and the player's will is pretty much useless in any run other than genocide, where we DO push them to become as bloodthirsty as we are, but we make them so powerful they become their own entity, completely alien to our will and ungovernable once the run is completed. in this run, frisk is progressively pushed aside by the narrative as the focus shifts on the separation of us and chara, until frisk is completely taken over. honestly... i really like the theory that frisk is, technically speaking, chara's reincarnation, and that while pacifist allows chara's unfinished business to be dealt with and their spirit to be put to rest (allowing frisk to move on as their own being), killing everyone in the underground will do the opposite, make chara's spirit stronger and stronger through LV and EXP (kind of as an inverse parallel to flowey taking everyone's souls and turning back into asriel in PP) until they eventually take over entirely and confront US, player, face to face.

from a more... how do i say. fanfictiony pov, taking undertale not as a videogame with meta elements but as a story that stands on its own... i like to imagine they made decisions together. it's implied that when a monster absorbs a human SOUL and is killed/defeated, that human SOUL dies/disappears entirely. so if chara still lives on as a ghost bound to frisk, they're technically SOULless like flowey, which would cause a sense of detachment in the event of violence taking place. i think... they feel through frisk. so if frisk behaves with kindness and mercy, their feelings will follow, and if they don't... well. same thing really. they're partners :]

[leshyleaf]

YOU TALKING ABOUT THE PARALLELS BETWEEN OFF AND UNDERTALE-

Just, that whole post has so many great just!!! You know?? Its such a good post, and now I wanna rewatch someone's playthrough of the game.

YEAHHHHH DUDE THERES SO MANY ITS CRAYZAYY.

Off is such a weird, trippy, complicated game (not really gameplay wise, but lore wise, yget me), and I know that toby literally did take some inspo from it, but my neurodivergent brain loves finding the similarities between two things and pointing them out to me like some kind of overexcited bird dog.

If you play undertale blind, you’ll probably kill everything in sight because this is how you have been taught to play rpgs your entire life (assuming you have been playing rpgs a lot lol). Throughout the game, you may slowly realize that what you are doing might not be as neutrally necessary as you once thought. And that actually, you might be making yourself into The Bad Guy by acting this way.

off spoilers below if you mind

Off is like that, but that feeling is obligatory. Whether or not you slowly begin to understand that your objective to “purify the world” isnt really the holy mission you thought it was, (which, if you visit the previous zones after you “purify” them, you might realize this very suddenly), there is no pacifist route. You continue, that’s your only option.

But that absolute wipe of all life; the merciless mass murder of monstrous beings in the pursuit of, well, something…(in both games, the player is a character who is left in the dark about the batter/chara’s true intentions until the end) is one of the biggest similarities between the two games for me.

To expand on the player thing: both in Off and in Utdr, it is purposefully made abundantly clear that the player and the protagonist are two separate entities. In undertale/deltarune, this is slightly more subtle, (but no less true), while in Off, Pablo (the judge), and Zacharie both pretty much only speak to you, not the batter. You are called “the puppeteer.” Even the batter speaks about you, and is aware of his lack of control over his own actions. Unlike some other puppet from deltarune, but much like Kris (minus the snowgrave route), he is unconcerned by this.

Now, deltarune. This is a game where we explore worlds created by something called “The Knight”. We navigate through some crazy imagination land, probably brought into being solely through someone’s determination, their mind expanded outward.

At the end of Off, we find out that the world was already destroyed long before we begin the game, and that we are navigating through some crazy imagination land, probably brought into being by someone (Hugo’s) determination, their mind expanded outward.

I like to connect deltarune and off with these themes of apocolypse and creation, although they seem to be happening in the opposite order. 😳

And damn I mean, not only are a lot of the themes between these games similar, with a similar vibe for secret bosses and puzzles as well, but even in Off’s overworld artstyle you can see, like…especially looking at undertale in comparison: The simple but bold and saturated color schemes, the box-like platforms your character is laid upon…they’re both just really simple but effective,I don’t know how to explain it better lol.

Mannn and don’t even get me stahted on the character parallels :,)…

Two royally-appointed judges with a lazy streak and little brothers? Who have neglected their duties and therefore have to fight you in an epic fkin final battle at the end?

Two younger brothers in law enforcement…ruthlessly killed by something seemingly small and innocent…

Two watchful guardians of their own zones, looking after their denizens, and seeing you, a threat (their duty?) and making it their mission to stomp you out.

Self aware shopkeepers…they know they are in a video game, and lemme tell ya, they are apathetic and sad about it! (And a little crazy too)

Two old entities…leaders, rulers, former lovers. One abandoned their post long ago (one of them to live in the ruins and wait for the protagonist, and one of them to live in the void and…wait for the protagonist), and one rules still, neglectful in their own way without really meaning to be.

I don’t know how to end this rant bwaha. I’m running on 3 hours of sleep cut me some slack 😔🤟

In any case, i love these games a lot lol

I’m responding to this ask woefully late, but yeah, you should totally rewatch it if you haven’t already ^^

[rayshippouuchiha]

*deep breath* OK SO-

An important aspect of Undertale that makes it so fascinating is the way it turns classic RPG mechanics on their head, and at times even uses them against the playe. It masterfully hands you little tidbits that help you figure out the truth very gradually, until you are hit in the face with the unavoidable truth only near the end.

Deltarune is much the same, but it targets a very specific aspect of RPG gameplay - the player's control of the main character. It's something we think about so little, since it's so ubiquitous to nearly any game, but in Deltarune it is made increasingly clear that something is... off about it. Initially, you set off on your adventure with someone you don't know very well and meet a bunch of new people and nothing seems strange there. However, once you make it back home, if you take the time to talk to your neighbors and friends, inconsistencies start to pile up.

People will start to mention how the main character, Kris, looks very pale or sick, is acting more extroverted/strange than usual, and other such things. At one point, you can try to play the piano and apparently their skill level has changed?

Then, at the very end of the 1st chapter, it is implied very strongly, in a rather dramatic fashion, that Kris and the player are two separate entities entirely, and Kris might be trying to shake off their control.

The differences are made even more stark in Chapter 2. When given dialogue options at certain points, sometimes the other characters will comment on how Kris' tone doesn't match their words, making it clear that some of the player's choices are made against Kris' will.

Later on, you can return to that piano from before with a friend in tow, and they will comment that Kris looks frustrated at their inability to play to their usual level of skill.

Then, most damning of all, Kris will freak the fuck out after they encounter a puppet-like character, who seemingly dies when we try to set them free.

I was left with so many freaking questions. Kris can seem mean at times, but their reactions when made to take actually "evil" actions make me doubt they are completely evil themself. They clearly want to be free, but then how did they become like this? Did someone FORCE our connection to them? Will we be split from Kris by the end of the game? Were they actually the villain all along? It's all so intriguing and exciting, and I can't wait to see where Toby Fox goes with it from here! There's ton of hypothesizing online, tons of people making theories about Kris' real personality based off of the little crumbs given to us by the dialogue options. It's a lot of fun.

I also love how the game makes me think about the implications of this for other RPGs. It may even be possible that the same is true of Undertale, but because the main character there is a complete stranger to everyone they encounter, no one was able to tell whether they were acting off or not.

In any case, while I initially thought Deltarune Chapter 1 was just "pretty good", Chapter 2 blew my entire mind. The visuals were upgraded to an outstanding degree, the plot Thickened(TM), the OST reached Undertale levels of Amazing, the battle mechanics were improved, and I fell in love with literally every single character new and old. There are other mysteries buried in there besides this one, as well as some of the best humor I've seen in a game for a very long time. It had me crying from laughter at least 4 separate times. I really recommend playing through it. Both chapters are available for free on Steam, give it a shot if you have the time I promise you won't regret it!

Btw, if you do play it would be good if you looked up Let's Plays of a certain... Weird... route afterwards. I don't know how he did it, but Toby Fox managed to inspire an even deeper level of emotion in me than in Undertale's no mercy route with that one.

Not gonna lie, I live for your enthusiasm

[starlightshore]

Why do you think the player is an in universe entity? In undertale specifically. I feel like it takes away a lot of what Frisk could be if they are only a puppet

it’s both! frisk is both their own person and under the control of the player. I think Frisk has more control than Kris, but still very much influenced by the player.

long post because i don’t want to clog ya’ll’s dashes.

I think we can all agree on this? you control the soul, same as you do in deltarune.

See, even choices are chosen with the soul. This is the same.

Now, for the choices themselves, I believe they are the opinions of each kid.

They can drastically different opinions!

But I think the biggest and most important viewing of these choices as each kid matters the most here, when you’re at Toriel’s house.

Chara wants to stay and is inquisitive about the Snails. However, Frisk is persistent about leaving, referring to their original home and asking the same questions three times.

And Frisk does more than just supply potential replies -They can even talk on their own without your input.

Frisk will ask Gerson: “What if the child is a human” which -at this point, Frisk wouldn’t know about Chara and is actually about themself. (Chara should already know this information, so we know this is Frisk asking.)

And then in the pacifist ending, you have two choices: “I want to stay with you” and “I have places to go.” Now, either Frisk is unsure of staying with Toriel, or because of the chat with Gerson I believe it’s Frisk who is sure. They want to stay with Toriel -but Chara prefers Frisk go somewhere else. (Each interpretation is valid, who’s to really say!) But here we are! An actual character arc, right here! So Frisk isn’t just walking along the ride but rather reconsidering their choice to leave the Ruins. Toriel even finds it funny.

So on a quick tangent, i promise this is relevant: the plaque in the first puzzle room recommends you stick to one route and stay on that route -that a middle ground is not an option. Which references the Deltarune prophecy, and also references your actions as the player having to stick one method of either FIGHT/MERCY to get the two major endings. In addition, monsters believed was Chara originally, and now view you to be it.

Asgore in neutral/pacifist: (It’s Chara-Frisk’s hopeful eyes that remind him of the hope for monsters/the prophecy. He believed in both kids.)

AKA: this is me proving the Deltarune is important to both Chara, Frisk and the Player. How it’s both shown repetitively to matter to your choices and the game’s routes pretty explicitly -or at least as explicit Undertale gets.

Anyway the point of this is to show that both routes are majorly important, and that Your specific choices influence both kids (both literally, as you playing the game and in-universe here) depending on your choices of FIGHT/MERCY.

Going to briefly recover this talking point, sorry to go over it again so soon:

The dog food bag changes depending on your exp. How Chara views the world within the glass half empty/half full depends on if you’ve been killing or not.

If you punch the dummy, depending on your LV, Frisk will feel different about hurting the dummy.

Frisk is only named in Pacifist, while in No Mercy is defined by You, the player, selling Frisk’s soul -aka the culmination of Frisk’s entire being. A name has power, a name is also the culmination of someone’s being in a sense. The two routes are two extremes on the spectrum.

Now, back to Toriel and Frisk at the pacifist ending. Toriel talks to Frisk, naming them and talking about their choices on this. When Toby is very clearly separating the player characters and You the player in both Undertale and VERY explicitly in Deltarune, this matters a hell of a lot. We, the player, don’t have the choice to stay with Toriel forever because Frisk made that decision to move forward -and it’s their choice and their life to live with Toriel or not.

It’s why it’s so important that Flowey emphasizes this if you try to True Reset:

So, please.Just let them go.

Let Frisk be happy.

Let Frisk live their life.

I think that sums it up. Frisk goes on this journey WITH you, and is not you. It’s still partly their choice -as much as someone who is under control of the Player can choose of course.  And by the end of no mercy, they have zero input if their literal soul is sold or not. And it’s your choice if Frisk gets keep their happy ending, too.

EDIT: this is just more for fun than for the analysis i made above lol.

so like, Frisk acts out their own in cutscenes. I think if Chara’s control is only relevant in No Mercy, because the moment you spare Chara steps back and is unsure of the plan. that you showed kill or be killed in not a rule anymore, and that its possible to get by with sparing. Anyway, Frisk will do things like chase after the annoying dog on their own, play along with the puzzles in snowdin ect.

for more frisk characterization, they’ll have opinions and feelings that chara describes.

* (Playfully crinkling through the leaves fills you with  determination.)

* "Ballet Shoes" - Wpn AT 7 * These used shoes make you  feel incredibly dangerous.

* (Your face reflexively scrunches up.) (referring to Papyrus’ spaghetti)

* Look at these cool toys! * They don't interest you at all.

Tldr;.....frisk is baby :)

[agyrius]

a Red SOUL and a Knight

a somewhat sequel to "What even is the Red SOUL?" in which I talked about what I believe to be the Human SOUL, which basically concluded with:

-An Human SOUL that is fully independent in its existece and not Kris or Frisk's actual SOUL being possessed, instead a Red SOUL of unknown qualities that has retained sentience and upon inserted into a human can possess them

and having all that in mind, the question I want to answer about the Red SOUL is:

What is the Red SOUL's Origins?

The Red SOUL isn't the Player, not in a 1:1 kind of way atleast

The Red SOUL IS meant to be representative of us the players, but only in a Meta way, Kris isn't being possessed by Frank from the Marketing department

Kris is being possessed by weird eldritch entity that has travelled here from a different universe and is pretty much immortal and unmurderable

Which begs the question, if the Red SOUL is a character within the world, then does that mean that it existed and keeps on existing even when we are not around playing?

in other words...If the Red SOUL isn't the player...then Who are they?

as I've said the Red SOUL is a Human SOUL

And Red SOULs are something that people can be born with...Tho their capabilities are entirely unknown other than what the Ball Game Flag flavor text, which says:

Which implies that Red SOULs are like...on a whole different level in terms of capabilities unlike the rest of the common Human SOULs

in other words, Red SOULs are special...Which just makes it harder to understand what they can actually do since this would mean that the limitations of the other Human SOULs might not really apply to them

so there's that

so let's focus again on the question...What is the Red SOULs origins?

well assuming that it's not something along the lines of "It's the Player's SOUL"

this leaves us with 2 options on its origins:

1. The Red SOUL was artificially created, which basically means that someone made it, which would explain all the wacky stuff it's capable of doing...Like Possessing people, or travelling between different universes or in general being fully sentient, things that normal human SOULs...don't do

As to who could do such a thing...It's entirely unknown, we haven't met anyone capable of creating SOULs, not even Gaster, who when meeting us treats us like a soon to be partner or something like that, not like we are his creations....so yeah, no way to know who would be capable of creating a Red SOUL

but again, this could just be explained with the fact that the Red SOUL....Is Red, apparently being something entirely above all other SOUL traits.

and on the other side we have:

2. The Red SOUL once belonged to a Human....Because it's a Human SOUL, it would make sense that it once belonged to a Human

but to who? The KFC gang are all confirmed to not be the owners Red SOUL, so who does that leave us with?

are there any other humans that we've seen that could possibly be the owners of the Red SOUL?

....Well there is one...

THE (human) KNIGHT

-images from undertale collector's edition booklet drawn by Temmie (aka they are mega-canon)

As in the Human Knight that has a sword and fancy cape and seemed to be the Leader/Hero of humanity during this war

which would mark them as quite the important figure and not just a random stand in for Humanity (Like they are literally there about to face off Asgore, I think that's telling)

and they even were present when the monsters were about to be sealed, right next to who I assume is the Head Mage

which make it even more convincing that they are not a random human warrior but rather the Leader/Hero of the humans that fought the monsters during the war, and here they are, overseeing the entrapment of the defeated monsters

....and as you have just noticed...They are...Very Similar to Kris

and well I have 2 different ideas as to why:

1. Is that, IF the Red SOUL is or once belonged to the Human Knight from UT, then when Kris enters the Dark World while they are being possessed by us, the Dark World would choose an outfit that wouldn't be meant for them, But for us, in other words

think of it like some sort of "advanced possession" , where the possessed person's appearance begins to twist and change in order to match the one of the person possessing them when they were alive....Which would mean that if Kris entered a Dark World without us they would get an entirely new armour, which would be dope!

personally speaking seeing as Kris has an interested in the occult and one of their searches in their guest room in Queen's palace was about magic, it could be argued that their preferred class would be more akin to a Mage (which might have some implications for the Human Mage that stood along the knight)....But then again the Dark Worlds might just be racist and humans cannot become Mages cuz they are made out of meat

...But also this could explain certain details...Like the fact that Kris can no longer play the piano, it's not like Kris forgot how to do it, its just that they can no longer use the skill they learned

...And why is that? The Red SOUL doesn't tamper with Kris' mind in any way, only their body and we are not given the option to play it either, meaning that it was Kris themselves playing it....but they just cant...

My theory on why is that, is that Kris' skills have been Replaced, which would explain how they are a capable combatant even thought they are lacking in magic like the other Monster and Darkners of the Fun Gang (like come on, Susie uses her Rude Buster spell on everything she considers alive and an enemy and her normal attack seems to be more dependent on raw strength rather than skill)

...Because Kris' only method of attack are the standard melee attacks, which are purely physical

...So...

What if the Possession took away their own Skills like playing piano and replaced them with all the sword fighting skills of a Human Knight (even during the Snowgrave Spamton Neo Fight, Kris' new Damage attack is still purely skill based, they didn't get more powerful, just more talented in their sword use)...And the Dark World would on top of that give them the equipment and weaponry they wore during their prime to best use said skills (although changed a bit to fit Kris' Teen self)

...So that would mean that the Human Knight upon their death underwent some as of yet unknown event that lead them to end up underground and in Frisk more 1000 years after the war that trapped the monsters in the same Underground, and from there the rest is history

....Tho an issue arises with the idea that....The Knight can choose to befriend the monsters...and date a skeleton....and even in deltarune want to hug a fluffy goat boi.....So yeah, their personality will need some explaining as to why that is thing they can choose

2. Would be that....Kris IS the Human Knight, as in Kris in the world of Undertale WAS the Human Knight

Kris is neither Frisk or Chara and neither a combination of the two...since nobody else undergoes a change in personality or appearance other than clothing so I highly doubt Kris being the exception

And as for why the Human Knight that lead the humans that trapped the monsters beneath the earth of untold generations....Is now devouring Toriel's pies at 3AM, more than a 1000 years into the future....

Well the short answer is that time seems to also have been greatly shifted in DR than the one of UT, since you have Undyne being the same age she was in UT being older than Asriel who died like a 100 years before the event of UT even though Undyne and many of the other monsters weren't even alive at that point in time

....and if that can happen then I think it's more than possible for a Knight from a thousand years to be present in here during their Teens

...Soo yeah!

Either the Human Knight is who the Red SOUL once belonged to....Or they are who Kris was in the world of UT

Can't really find anything to make one option more likely than the other...So...I guess we can leave it at that...as unsatisfactory as it is...

soo in conclusion:

The Human Knight that appears in the Intro UT is the most likely candidate to be the one to who the Red SOUL possessing Kris and the one we play as belonged to

thank you for reading!

[inbarfink]

Your analyzes are awesome 😭, keep'em coming. Adding to the theme of eyes, your thoughts on why we can not see Kris's expressions? nor hear/read Kris's talk? What could be the meta explanation for it ? And in-universe explanation for it? Illusionary magic? The SOUL having expressions blindness towards Kris?

Well, from a meta-perspective it's kinda the same thing as with Chara. Kris is currently the most mysterious of the Deltarune main cast. BECAUSE they are always under our control, we can't truly know who they are. All the info the fandom we have is through inferencing hints and we can't be sure until... well, until we'd get a real chance to interact with the real and free Kris.

And so the game deliberately obscure Kris' dialogue, expressions and eyes - to make it clear that we cannot see the 'real' Kris and to keep the idea that they are distant and unknowable to us. Notably, the only time we get a glimpse of Kris' eyes and see their expression changing is... when they are free from our control.

And as from an in-universe perspective... well, not seeing their eyes is mostly cause Kris is an emo teen who won't cut their darn bangs, but as for the lack of expression and us not 'hearing' their dialogue. I have two theories.

1. Being unable to see the expressions\hear the words of your host is just Part of What Happens when an Unkillable Time God posses something. Namely, it's interesting to note that being unable to read when the player character's expression has changed or what they are saying IS consistent with Undertale.

It's harder to notice, because the game deliberately tries to obscure it rather than intentionally shove it in your face like Deltarune does, but there are several instances in Undertale where Frisk is described by the other characters as having a certain expression even though we can only ever see them as -_-, or a few cases where Frisk is explicitly speaking words but we cannot 'hear' them (most notably when they tell Asriel their name).

And also notably, when the player encounters Chara at the end of the Murder Route... We can read their words, but they're the only character without voice-blips.

2. But the second thing is... back in Undertale, it's not we just couldn't hear or read the expressions of the human we were possessing... we couldn't hear Chara either. When we flashback to Asriel and Chara's meeting back in Waterfall, and when we watch the Dreemurrs' home videos in the True Lab, we only ever hear Asriel's half of the conversation.

This can be explained in Theory 1 with, well, Chara's spirit is along for the ride with us and Frisk so we might be just as unable to perceive them as we are our physical 'host'. But it's a bit weird that this perception field extend to video recording made long before we started sort-of possessing them. So what if...

What if a perception filter for whatever kind of otherworldly entity we are playing as is Just a Thing With Humans in this Multiverse? Like, whatever we are in this universe, we are a Thing that cannot hear humans' words or read their expressions. It's just hard to notice when all of these games have like... a maximum of 1.5 humans. The only reason why Chara was able to speak to us at the end of the Murder Route is because our actions have made them something other than human and even then, their words could only be read and not heard.

Since Human SOULs vs Monsters SOULs doesn't seem to matter as much in Deltarune as it did in Undertale, that could be the new angle for why Humans Are Special. They're the ones who have the best chances at subterfuge against mind-controlling, all-seeing, unkillable time-gods.

Both of these ideas work well with the Meta interpretation. This is all, like, a statement about the relationship between Player and Player Character, right? About how Player Characters are actually the characters we know the least about because they are forced into being our 'blank slates'? Well, being processed by an unkillable time god IS basically what being a 'Player Character' is in this universe. And Undertale had that Thing where Humans were the "Player Character Race" on an in-universe level. And that mostly manifested in the explanation of how levels of powers and SAVEs worked, but for Deltarune, it could be instead about the fact that they make for easier and blanker slates for the amusement of the Time Gods because we can't see their expressions.

The real difference is in what it means for Kris, if Theory 1 is closer to reality than we can see Kris' expression in the ending cutscenes because they are free of our control. Simple enough. But if there's merit to Theory 2, that means that Kris might have the ability to turn into something other than human. Which would also explain the glowing red eyes, humans generally don't have that.

[bananonbinary]

Holy shit there's a secret "genocide" alternate ending. It sounds super fake but it's NOT. https://youtu.be/lz_1uVYDhBA

okay so a friend already showed me a google doc about that route and it is WILD, but i hadnt seen the video. here's all my thoughts in a long reaction post:

umm?????? i was JUST speculating about who the angel could be, is it NOELLE? why is she the only one that can geno, why can't the player geno through just kris??? what does it MEAN to be able to be the angel? @ericvilas and i were talking about how this felt like noelle, susie, and berdly were the main characters, and we were just kinda...Also There, is there some sort of property that "main characters" have? the power to fundamentally change the state of the world from "zany adventure" to "fucked up horror", that we needed noelle to take advantage of? is that why we needed chara in undertale?

is "the angel" more than just a prophecy, but some sort of...RPG Game Role, that the genocidal player covets? why couldn't we fill that role in chapter one? why noelle and not susie? is it because ralsei wouldn't let us? or is noelle, daughter of the mayor, a secret Boss Monster? and the Angel has to be a human soul and a boss monster soul, like asriel and chara were?

why does NOELLE level up, but kris, the one who's soul we're in control of, doesn't?

.......

what if that's not kris' soul at all. what if we can't control them very well, and there's no Determination, because it's not a real human soul we're bonded to, just a crude facsimile created by gaster?

the similarities between being frozen solid and being turned into a statue as like, the only other thing we know of that "kills" a darkner is...i dont know what it means but its something.

wondering again if things *actually* happen when they're offscreen. did those things just happen because the player forced it through sheer force of will? Determination, if you will? and there wasn't any game mechanic to allow it, so reality itself just faded to a version where it was done?

oh, this video doesn't go all the way to the end, so i found another video that does.

DNAJSKFLNSADJKFNJKDSAL TOBY PLEASE I KNOW HES A SPAMBOT BUT YOU CANT PUT FUCKING "PIPIS" IN YOUR BAD ENDING HORROR VERSION OF THE STORY

i don't understand why us going geno lets a spambot take over. like, what about going on a murder spree that he was unrelated to gave him power?? it made sense in undertale for mettaton, undyne, and sans to become super powerful to fight us, but this is just like...Some Guy. he has nothing to do with anything.

HEY WHY THE HELL DOES THE SOUL TURN YELLOW???? is this echoing undertale's route because of multiverse shenanigans (ie, "time remembers what it used to look like" or some shit), when alphys gave us that power? because there is NO reason for us to have it here. there's no way the player would even know how to USE that mechanic without having first played undertale.

this feels like we somehow...modded the deltarune by doing geno. like it reskinned the mettaton ex fight, but like, thematically. like rather than reusing assets, it reused *concepts* from undertale and mixed them all up. but i don't know what that MEANS.

hey. hey. h e y. what does this mean dont fucking throw the undertale neutral ending at me what is HAPPENING. (also notice tho that "kris" is in the third person here. not "you." no idea what that means either)

again, it's like someone scrambled a lot of themes and disparate elements from undertale, but they make NO SENSE in this formation! it's like...a youtube poop of undertale. which is guess is appropriate for a spambot, but what am i supposed to DO with this toby????

?????????????????

oh god okay, so KRIS wanted their friends to save them from this fucking NIGHTMARE, but WE wanted noelle to come finish the job. i think that pretty firmly indicates it is indeed the PLAYER, and not KRIS who is evil here. god, poor kris. poor noelle. i am VERY suspicious now of whether closing the fountains is a good idea or not.

okay i already knew berdly fucking died at the end of this run, so this isn't a shock, but it IS startling to see an actual corpse. not turned to dust, not a statue, not frozen in place, actually just a dead body. that....i also don't know what that means.

god it feels so much worse actually to have destroyed the integrity of the game and then it just....keeps going. no one even knows the horrible things you did.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

okay so i think we're getting to a point that the Player is a genuine character, not literally us anymore. like, they have an agenda? they know somehow that noelle is important, even though we, the literal player didn't? it feels like this Entity may represent us in-fiction (like the mspa reader started out in homestuck), but in undertale the geno route was clearly like, "the version of us that dicked around just to see All The Content." this feels different. pre-meditated. they have a SPECIFIC plan, that somehow requires noelle, and jevil probably. hm. it feels like the player knows where the genocide route is going, and is doing it intentionally, even though we the audience obviously have no idea what will happen in chapters 3-5.

[mtt-brand-trans]

Ok I’m seeing a lot of discussion on whether the player is a literal character in Undertale and personally I haven’t seen anyone say anything along the lines of my take on things. So.

No, I don’t think the player is an in-universe character. All of the choices are Frisk’s choices, the characters(even the “fourth wall breaking” ones, yes even Chara) are only ever talking to Frisk, not You the player. (Personally I don’t think the characters ever break the fourth wall, it’s just that the laws of the Undertale universe operate like video game rules.)(the only exception to this is when Flowey asks you not to reset, but I see this more as the game breaking character to be direct with you, like in 17776 when Eddie breaks the fourth wall to tell the readers not to climb into a carbon monoxide filled cave in real life, than Flowey actually having meta awareness. You’ll see what I mean in a minute) This means that no, non-pacifist routes are not Literally your fault and you shouldn’t feel guilty about them. They are a part of the game(that you are not a part of), not something that never would’ve happened if you hadn’t uniquely acted so heartless.

However.

You would be missing the point entirely if you thought it wasn’t supposed to feel like you really are a part of the game. Like you’re talking to the characters and making the choices. Because while the characters don’t break the fourth wall, the game does. Not by outright shattering it by directly talking to you, but by nudging you in different directions to experience the world and story through the lease of someone who knows it’s a game. For example, how lots of people who go into Undertale blind kill Toriel their first time, load their last save and spare her, then get the special dialogue from Flowey. That is some heavy fourth wall breaking, but it’s not done by any of the characters and it’s not the game itself coming out and literally telling you “I know I am a game.” And I’m not saying the game is an entity either, just that the story was written by Toby in such a way that these things happen to you.

And since the laws of the Undertale world are designed to be like video game rules, characters talking about their world is supposed to feel like they’re talking about the game. When Chara tells you to start the world over your first thought is supposed to be resetting the game. When sans asks if in another life you could’ve been friends you’re supposed to think about another route of the game, and when he tells you not to come back you’re supposed to think of not loading your save file. When Asriel says everything is a game your first thought is supposed to be “yeah, it is.” When people are afraid or upset on bad routes or happy on good routes, we’re supposed to feel like it’s because of us.

For those of you who don’t know, there is a concept in literary analysis called “Doylist vs Watsonian,” which is basically two different perspectives you can take when analyzing a story. The names come from the original Sherlock Holmes books, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the books and John Watson is Sherlock’s friend and partner. If you are looking at the books from a Doylist perspective, you’re looking at it through Doyle’s eyes, thinking about what he was thinking when he wrote the books. If you’re looking from a Watsonian perspective, you’re looking through Watson’s eyes, the eyes of the characters in the universe as they see everything.

You need both to analyze Undertale. With a Watsonian perspective we know that the characters of Undertale aren’t knowingly breaking the fourth wall, they don’t know they’re in a game, the player isn’t really a part of the game and the characters aren’t actually talking to you.

But you also need to use a Doylist perspective to see that you are supposed to feel like all of this is true. The delivery of the game’s themes depends on it. You’re supposed to feel like you made them happy or you hurt them your first time playing, and if you can suspend your disbelief you can feel like that when you replay it too. Because the lesson Undertale tries to teach you is to think about your choices and the consequences that come from them, but it does this in a controlled environment where there aren’t actually any consequences—but there could’ve been.

So what about Frisk? I think it’s reductive to think that they’re only ever good or only ever bad, or that only one route or the other is what they “really” want. Remember that our choices are Frisk’s choices, and we’ve seen another character have this power before—Flowey. Frisk is going down the same route he did. Frisk’s journey spans all the routes of the game; when you kill Toriel and go back and change it, when you do a neutral route then a pacifist route then a no mercy route then a pacifist route again. Or when you do a no mercy route and a no mercy route again, or when you do all the possible neutral routes, or when you play pacifist over and over. Those are all things that someone who can manipulate time would do. That is what Flowey did. And we don’t have to analyze why they did that because we know our reasons for doing it.

[maxknightley]

"Re: The third point, I could go on about the specific example of Dragon Quest and how I think Undertale works best when read as a response to that franchise + similar series in particular" do you think you could find the time to elaborate?

Fair warning. This one is a bit long.

Let’s talk about Dragon Quest.

Overview

The Dragon Quest series of games (originally localized as Dragon Warrior in the U.S. due to a copyright/trademark issue) is pretty much one of the “Big Two” JRPG franchises alongside Final Fantasy. It’s extremely big in Japan, while enjoying more moderate success in the United States. 

I’m not going to go into too much detail comparing the two or talking about their history, but I think it’s relevant to note that Dragon Quest games tend to be straightforward, high-fantasy stories in a way that a lot of beloved JRPGs (Final Fantasy included) aren’t. You’ll fight a robot from time to time, but sci-fi elements beyond that are rare; explicit social commentary/allegory is extremely rare; the plot rarely becomes especially bizarre or complex, with the narratives tending to rely a lot on characterization to make an impact; and so on.

(I should note that none of this is a bad thing, per se - I love Dragon Quest games. DQ8 and DQ11 are some of my favorite RPGs of all time, in large part because of their gorgeous settings and excellent character work, and I’ve played a fair few!)

Monsters

With that being said, if you know anything about JRPGs, you probably know how the player spends most of their time in a Dragon Quest game - going from town to town and dungeon to dungeon, fighting a wide array of whimsical monsters. (big ups to Akira Toriyama for his excellent character designs, with the exception of the Cyclowns, which I hate a lot.) There’s sidequests and minigames and such, but by and large, this is how the player interacts with the world - find monsters, fight monsters, get strong enough to fight the Big Boy monsters, maybe halfway through you start fighting the occasional anime boy or possessed dog.

The role that monsters play in the narrative is also, for the most part, very simple: they’re almost exclusively the minions of either the local boss/miniboss, or of the big mean demon lord you fight at the end of the game, and pretty much all they do is terrorize villagers, cause mayhem, and so on.

Note that I said almost exclusively...

“Don’t worry, I’m a nice monster!”

...because in basically every Dragon Quest game, some monsters are chill and friendly. Most commonly, this will be a slime, the franchise mascot:

Sometimes they’ll show up at the bottom of a well and give you a trinket for talking to them, other times they’ll hang out in a dungeon and give you some lore or a hint about a nearby puzzle. They say a lot of things like “goo-ness gracious” and it’s very cute and charming, and, uh, hang on, these guys talk, and make puns, and aren’t just bags of XP and herbs? Okay. Sure.

Depending on the game, you can often encounter other monster friends as well. Sometimes there’ll be a town with friendly monster NPCs to talk to; other times, beating monsters allows you to recruit them to your party or your Monster Arena team. It’s neat.

But what never changes is that it’s some monsters that are nice. A tiny minority. And they’re only ever a curiosity, a side note. They’re the exception that proves the rule, and the rule wants to kill you.

Which brings me to:

The One Guy Who Isn’t Evil

There’s a thing that a lot of speculative fiction does where cultures are set up as broad and all-encompassing. These are the Primitive But Kind Bear Goblins, and over here are the Mafia Slugs. These are the Prissy Forest Guys, and they hate the Gruff Cave Guys.

This isn’t necessarily bad writing, but it can be a bit repetitive and one-note after a while, so a lot of speculative fiction also has The One Guy Who Isn’t Like That. The illogical robot, the pacifistic/intellectual barbarian, the pragmatic and materialistic guy who bailed on the monastery.

And, of course, The One Guy Who Isn’t Evil. The vampire who doesn’t drink human blood. The dark elf paladin. That one dragon from Skyrim with the cool speech. They’re very useful characters, in that they soften the Troubling Implications of an entire species or ethnicity of bastards, and there’s a lot of cool stories you can tell about their conflict with family and former friends, and perhaps even... with themselves... with the beast within.

At the core of these stories is the assumption that a creature capable of thinking independently and acting on their own free will can always choose to be good, regardless of their “nature.”

But this goes both ways. If something is capable of choosing to be “good,” or even “nice,” they have to be able to conceive of these concepts. To make that choice. They can’t truly be Made Of Pure Evil, or be beasts acting on instinct, or be slaves to the will of a much more powerful entity.

Are Slimes People?

So, in the example of Dragon Quest, we’ve reached a conundrum. Some monsters - very few, but some - are nice, or at least open to conversation. Most are only there to, pardon the phrasing, kill or be killed.

Which means there’s basically two main possibilities:

Some slimes are nice and they’re always already nice. They attacked you first so it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.

Slimes are definitely all thinking, feeling beings, and it’s probably a little fucked up to kill a bunch of them because you’re saving up money for the casino, even if they “attacked you first” after you spent a half hour running in circles, Erdrick.

The first one works fine for the context of a story like Dragon Quest, because we can employ suspension of disbelief. But it kind of unravels if you look at it for too long. In some installments, there are evil but non-hostile monsters who won’t attack you, but will deliver a whole little monologue about how cool Lord Merdur of Fort Finalboss is. And, hey, what causes a monster to decide to be nice instead of evil? 

For the most part, we never learn, because it doesn’t matter. The Nice Monster is a throwaway character, usually a bit of a joke. They’re there for flavor, not because of what their existence implies.

And that’s kind of weird, right?

Undertale As Response

It’s obvious how Undertale works as a critique on level grinding and the like, but this alone would be kind of facile, imo. People will say, “well, that monster was trying to kill me, so I acted in self-defense. It’s only fair.” And it can be difficult to argue against this without getting into weird arguments about monsters’ Actual Motivations or the relative negative utility of thousands being imprisoned beneath a mountain vs. seven children being killed.

Here’s the thing that I think a lot of people ignore, though. Undertale is also a critique of the idea that Some Monsters Are Nice, as seen in Dragon Quest and similar games. And part of why that critique works is because it does not allow you to set up a dividing line. All those monsters have a place in Underground society - you can’t simply write some off as Fights while viewing others as worthy of kindness or redemption.

If you spare Toriel and Papyrus, because they’re nice and well-meaning... then how can you justify killing Undyne and Mettaton, who are kind of assholes, but have good intentions, and are pillars of the community?

If you spare Undyne and Mettaton, how could you justify killing Whimsun, who’s terrified of you? Or Temmie, who’s just kind of scatterbrained and weird? Or Snowdrake, who constantly tells bad jokes, just like your friend Sans would if you had to fight him?

So how could you justify killing Tsundereplane and Vulkin, so desperate for affection?

So how could you justify killing Muffet, so desperate to save her family and friends?

And so on, and so on, until we reach Moldsmal.

Oh! That One’s A Slime! Is Maxie Tying It All Together?

Trying to, anyway.

This is Moldsmal and Moldbygg. They’re called that because they’re Jell-O Mould monsters.

Moldsmal just kind of sits there, lazily firing bullets. Its description says it has “no brains.” If any monster is okay to kill, it’s this one, right?

Moldbygg pretends to be a Moldsmal, but is actually big. It also has explicit boundaries and preferences: It does not want to be hugged. You spare it by Not Hugging it. It’s goofy, but still: Moldbygg, explicitly, has thoughts and emotions.

And if it’s not okay to kill Moldbygg, how the hell are you going to justify killing Moldsmal? They’re both slimes! They’re practically identical! Maybe they have family reunions where instead of eating the Jell-O one of them just sits on the dining table! You don’t know!!

So Here’s My Thesis On The Morality of Undertale Or Whatever

Fundamentally, the commentary Undertale is making on the idea of the “nice monster,” the “recruitable monster,” the “monster town,” is this:

If one monster can be your friend, is there actually a reason all of them can’t be?

And it says “no, what, that’s dumb,” and I don’t think it’s wrong to do so. Viewing Undertale specifically with this additional context, of the weird push-and-pull certain RPGs have between “that’s a monster! kill it for loot!” and “okay well not that monster,” shores up the related critique of XP grinding by rooting it in a more specific moral core.

Anyway I hope that all made sense, I’m gonna go eat exactly one maraschino cherry and have a glass of water

[sharada-n]

Could you elabirate about why Papyrus reminds Flowey of Chara? I'm really curious.

Sure, but I want to preface this by saying its been ages since I’ve written Undertale Meta so excuse me for being a bit rusty. Also, there’s a lot of personal conjecture and interpretation here so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt…

This is pretty much a counter argument to people claiming that Papyrus resembling Asriel is the reason why he’s Floweys favorite. I’ll get into why I think that isn’t true in a second (and why I think he actually is more like Chara) but first I’d like to point out that this theory doesn’t even make sense.

Flowey’s relationship with Asriel is complicated. On a technical level they’re the same person, yes, but in reality, they’re more like separate entities. While I do believe there is some Asriel left in Flowey, Asriel himself states at the end of the pacifist route that Flowey and he are not the same. More importantly though, Flowey talks about Asriel with clear resentment. He says Asriel was weak and blames the failure of the plan to free monsterkind on himself.

Keeping this in mind, it doesn’t make sense that Papyrus reminding Flowey of Asriel would be a positive thing to him. Especially considering the way Flowey speaks about his first encounters with Asgore and Toriel. Flowey doesn’t seem to want a constant reminder of his old life around, let alone a constant reminder of his old self. If Papyrus was like Asriel, I can only imagine Flowey would resent him too and not have him as a best friend.

“But Shara,” I hear you cry “Flowey is hardly a good friend. In fact, he's kind of a jerk and he manipulated Papyrus in the pacifist ending!”. Which, yes, that’s a fair point. I’m not saying he deserves a “friend of the year” award, but I’ve definitely been over why I feel their friendship is not just a charade on Flowey’s part. It might have started as such, but it's not anymore I think.

For example, the plan to use Papyrus to lure everybody into his trap at the end of the pacifist route wasn’t concocted until after Frisk fell, and they were friends long before that, so it can’t be the reason why Flowey befriended him in the first place.

Granted this is veering a little into headcanon territory, but there also is canon evidence to support this, such as the anniversary event where Flowey was the only one who knew what Papyrus’ favorite food was, and was seemingly annoyed at the fact that nobody else knew.

And also the dialogue you get if you keep doing neutral runs without ever attempting a genocide or pacifist run.

Here Flowey accuses the player of continually resetting and visiting him out of curiosity and boredom rather than a genuine desire to befriend him. This mirrors the part where he talks about his friendship with Papyrus being a result of his own curiosity and Papyrus (for some reason not actually properly explained in canon) being “fun to mess with” and a character that took a long time for Flowey to get bored off. Then we get this tidbit:

Not only is this line very interesting but the facial expression is important too. You can read it as discomfort, clearly, but it is also very much a guilty expression. This is the same expression Flowey has at the end of the pacifist route when addressing the player and compelling them not to reset anymore because it would take away everybody’s happy ending. It also happens to be the same expression he has when talking about the Flowey Fan Club as well as at the exact line I mentioned above, where he admits Papyrus was his “favorite”. 

Seems to me like Flowey is expressing guilt or embarrassment about his original intentions behind befriending Papyrus…

Now to get into the main thing: Why do people think Papyrus and Asriel are similar? The hard part is that we don’t know that much about Asriel when you think about it. He’s been long dead before the events of the game. We get some bits and pieces here and there but most info comes from Flowey himself, who is hardly an unbiased source. However, it's fair to say Asriel was very kind, innocent even, and pretty naive. A crybaby, in his own words. And if you take the most shallow, basic interpretation of Papyrus (the kind of fanon that makes me want to pull my hair out) what do you get? That Papyrus is kind, innocent and naive.

The only word in that list I do not take offense to is kind. Papyrus is undeniably a very kind person. But he is not innocent or naive. I could go into why I say this but honestly, it has been argued to death not just by me but by the entire fandom at this point, you’ve all heard it before. Papyrus is an actor. He’s good at showing people the parts of himself he wants them to see. It's unlikely that he’s completely faking it, I do believe Papyrus is genuinely a positive and quirky person. But he’s also playing up those parts to the extreme. Which leaves us with a lot of subtle clues as to his real feelings. Meanwhile, Asriel wears his heart on his sleeve. Crybaby, remember? And what about Asriel being a coward? Papyrus is anything but a coward.

So let's talk about Chara then. Once again we face the same problem we did earlier. Chara is long gone and we don’t know a lot about them besides what Flowey tells us, unless you subscribe to the “Chara is the narrator” theory, which I personally do, but since I know some people are still on the fence regarding this I’ll keep to strictly canon dialogue first. 

Asriel says Chara wasn’t the nicest person. True enough, their plan to destroy the barrier by means of killing themselves and then a bunch of humans wasn’t exactly a solid idea. However, it was made with good intentions. Chara was willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of freeing their newfound family. Chara wanted to help fix something they saw as undeniably wrong: the way humans treat others.

But this was also about revenge. Chara was bitter. They didn’t climb the mountain for a happy reason, according to Asriel. Asgore tells us something different too. He says he can see “the same hope in Frisk’s eyes that he saw in [Chara]”. So here we find what is both the big similarity and the big difference between Chara and Papyrus. Both of them are genuinely filled with hope, with belief, and with the motivation to make things better. They just manifested it differently.

Where Papyrus seems to maintain this disposition even in the face of adversary and unkindness, believing in you all the way until his death in the genocide route, Chara has already faced the kind of behavior that has made them resentful of things they consider unfair or unjust.

Both of them are willing to act upon these feelings of righteousness at least, however ill-advised, in contrast with Asriel (or ironically: Sans), who seems to be a more static, laid back person that didn’t like shaking up the status quo and just went along with what others did. Even Flowey himself only engages when he’s sure he has an ace up his sleeve and is unwilling to act thoughtlessly or impulsively. 

As the tape in the True Lab betrays, Chara was also a hard person to read, and both an excellent liar as well as an actor. They were hard to figure out, at the very least, and Asriel expressed joy at seeing a glimpse of their unguarded emotions when they smiled genuinely. Once again though, Chara seems to do this because they want to come across as colder and more emotionless than they really are, giving the impression that they don’t care about anyone or anything. While Papyrus is always trying to come across more happy and untroubled than he really is, and rather keeps his more negative feelings to himself.

The result for both of them is the same though: they are distanced from their friends and family, I’d almost go as far as to say that even those closest to them barely know them, and they are misunderstood in the most fundamental way. Their motivations are harder to figure out than those of most other characters, for sure. It would definitely go some way into explaining why Flowey was so fascinated by Papyrus from the start…

If you do believe in the Narra!Chara theory, there are some small details that match too. Chara is a rather goofy person actually and often makes jokes, but expresses disgust at puns and Sans’ rather lazy sense of humor where he goes for the most obvious wordplays. Just like Papyrus, who the fandom often portrays as hating puns when in reality he loves them, just not the kind Sans makes because they’re easy. Chara is also implied to be quite fond of books/reading and cooking, as is Papyrus. They both come across as inquisitive to me. The narrator's retorts can be unexpectedly sarcastic, or even dark, not unlike some of Papyrus’ dialogue. There’s some other minor things but honestly this post is way too long as is so I’ll just leave it there

Conclusion: Flowey made the same mistake the fandom made in assuming Papyrus was a one-dimensional person who is easy to fool, only be confronted with his new best friend being strangely similar to his old one and now he has no soul and a weird attachment to this strange skeleton who everybody underestimates. He even admits that Chara is the only person he would still care about now. Kind of a weird statement, except if you consider he has found somebody like Chara that sparked some kind of actual emotion in him (whether that be friendship, compassion, guilt, or something else)

What do you guys think? I’d love to hear your thoughts, or if you want to tell me this post was a horrible read from start to finish you can do that too

[suzyundertale]

Deltarune Theory - The Red SOUL

It’s pretty clear that, in Deltarune, the person we are “playing” as is not Kris directly, but the red SOUL that is controlling them. 

After all, when Kris tosses the SOUL out of their body, we can still control it.

So then, the question is... Who IS the red SOUL?

In this post, I’ll go over several theories, their main points, and evidence for them and against them.

It’s not Kris’ SOUL.

With the information we have, it’s nearly impossible for this SOUL to belong to Kris.

First of all, in the Dark World, Kris’ description describes them as follows:

“Body contains a human SOUL.” Not “THEIR” human SOUL, “A” human SOUL. That’s just about the most suspicious-sounding way you could possibly word that.

Second, the first time we go to save the game, a save file titled “Kris” is overwritten by one with the chosen name of the “creator”.

And, throughout the epilogue, everyone keeps pointing out how strange they’re acting, how they aren’t like themself...

They’re acting unlike themself because they aren’t themself - they’re being controlled by someone else.

... Someone who knows some things Kris doesn’t.

(Because of the above two, I’m going to assume that all of the dialogue choices come from the red SOUL.)

The SOUL also seems a little, um, opinionated:

And they apparently don’t know who Rudy is, when Kris definitely does.

So... who could they be?

Theory 1: The Player (“Player Theory”)

This is probably the most popular theory going around right now. In this theory, the red SOUL represents us, the “player”, as an actual in-game entity. 

This is an understandable interpretation, as Undertale is known to be very meta at times. It’s not totally unthinkable that ‘we’ exist as an actual force in-universe.

Evidence against Player Theory

There’s a significant amount of evidence that the red SOUL has their own personality and is their own person, such as:

They have their own opinions on Mew Mew 2.

They can’t play the piano. I’d imagine a lot of players can, so it’s strange to put this here if they’re meant to be the player. It would be odd to exclude a significant amount of the player base (including Toby himself) for, um, literally no reason.

Support for Player Theory

According to Deltarune’s official website, Deltarune is a game “intended for people who have completed UNDERTALE.” Therefore, the “player” is supposed to know everything that happens in Undertale.

Therefore, these interactions make sense:

... Because the player knows who Sans is, and they know that Alphys and Undyne were dating in Undertale.

...However, there is someone else who knows all the same things about the Undertale universe that the player does.

Theory 2: Frisk

From Undertale, we know that Frisk has a red SOUL. This theory says that the red SOUL present in Deltarune is also the very same Frisk from the Undertale universe.

Evidence against Frisk Theory

Toby has said this about Deltarune in relation to Undertale:

...so, that shoots a bit of a hole in this... but. Hear me out.

[EDIT]

On February 14th 2019, a FAQ section was added to the official Deltarune website. One of the questions is:

Basically confirming that there are “connections” between the Undertale and Deltarune universes.

So... I guess there isn’t any evidence against this theory, now.

[END EDIT]

Support for Frisk Theory

Like the “player”, Frisk knows everything that happened in Undertale. They’re friends with Sans, so they would be excited to see him. They know Alphys and Undyne are dating, so they would be eager to ask Undyne about her girlfriend. And they don’t know who Rudy is.

And, of course... there’s the intro sequence.

Gaster prompts us to create a “vessel” to hold our SOUL...

A vessel that just so happens to always have exactly two stripes on their shirt.

However, the person that interrupts the intro - Chara, if you remember my post about it - doesn’t seem very happy about this whole vessel thing.

... Which would make sense if the red SOUL is actually Frisk. Frisk is Chara’s friend, Chara wouldn’t let Gaster suddenly try to turn them into a whole different person. So... What if Chara was actually trying to say “Your name is Frisk”, but was cut off?

After all, in Undertale, there’s a scene that this is likely meant to be a parallel to...

... And, of course, after beating the game, we know the speaker of this line is Asriel, and he was saying, well, “My name is Asriel”.

Speaking of Chara... the voice of the narration in Deltarune is suspiciously similar to Undertale’s, and at some points, seems to almost intentionally call back to Undertale.

(In case you’re not convinced by the above one - it matches word-for-word in the official Japanese translations, as well.)

...Which would make sense if, not only are we playing as Frisk once again...

...But Chara is the narrator once again, as well.

Of course, Frisk themselves could just as easily be the narrator. It’s difficult to tell at this point. I’m personally leaning towards Chara, though.

Also, it’s probably just a bizarre joke, but this line would make a lot more sense if the person controlling Kris was actually a child: 

My favorite thing about this theory is that if it is true, Toby would have tricked us into thinking Frisk is actually an in-game representation of the player not once, but twice. 

Theory 3: Chara and Asriel’s Combined SOUL

This theory proposes that the SOUL is a combined human-monster soul - specifically, Chara and Asriel’s.

It’s said in Undertale that Asriel absorbed Chara’s SOUL, and then died. However, it’s never explicitly stated that the SOUL shattered. We know that a human SOUL can persist after death presumably indefinitely if preserved properly, and a boss monster SOUL can survive outside the body for a few seconds... But we don’t know how long a combined human-monster SOUL could last outside its body. 

Evidence against Combined SOUL Theory

There’s no evidence in the game that the SOUL belongs to two people. In Undertale, Asriel states that when he and Chara were sharing a SOUL, control was split between them, and they were both actively fighting for control over their body.

There isn’t any instance of any sort of “internal argument” within the SOUL. Unless you interpret the differing dialogue choices as such, but even so, you’d think there’d be more of a hint that there’s actually two people fighting for control. But who knows, maybe it’ll only become more obvious in later chapters...?

Support for Combined SOUL Theory

The red SOUL is... odd. And I don’t mean their personality, I mean the SOUL itself.

(screenshot and gif from this post, which is what inspired this theory!)

When Kris removes the SOUL from their body... It glows red and white. White, of course, is the color of a monster SOUL. 

While it could just be a visual effect... It’s at least one more thing to be suspicious about.

And, like I touched on before, we never know what exactly happened to Chara and Asriel’s combined SOUL. Some people think it could even be the red heart in this machine in Undertale’s True Lab:

... and, with this theory... perhaps that machine might be somehow connected to the Deltarune universe.

Theory 4: Suzy

No, not Susie, Suzy! The one from Undertale. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, read this post.

This is my personal favorite theory, even though it’s quite unlikely. The premise of this theory is that Suzy is actually a human, and the red SOUL belongs to her.

Of course, a lot of people think “Suzy” is simply the Undertale universe version of “Susie”. That’s fair, and that theory certainly fits in with “fast approaching”. But I’m going to assume they’re completely different people for the sake of this theory. (Plus, why would Susie be the only character with a different name from their Undertale counterpart..?)

Evidence against Suzy Theory

This theory doesn’t have an explanation as to why the red SOUL knows about Alphys and Undyne’s relationship. (If you can come up with one, please tell me.) I mean, even though she exists in the Undertale universe, they only get together at the very end, and Suzy almost certainly wasn’t there. But who knows. Maybe she’s been shipping them the whole time. /s

Also, as much as I love the concept, it is quite unlikely that Suzy is a human. I do have a couple of explanations for it as you’ll see below, but I will admit that it’s still kind of a stretch. Still, what’s theory-making without a little fun?

Support for Suzy Theory

No matter whether or not Suzy ends up being the red SOUL, or even a human, she has to be in the full version of Deltarune. And, considering what we know... It’s not a stretch at all to think she might be in the very first chapter.

“Don’t Forget.” The title of the main theme of Deltarune is a phrase that is specifically associated with Suzy. In Undertale, you can only see the “don’t forget” note in Sans’ lab after speaking with Clamgirl and, consequently, learning about the existence of “Suzy”. Therefore, the phrase “don’t forget” is intrinsically linked to her.

This note also gives us another hint about who Suzy is: She knows Sans.

... Hm.

And, of course, her knowing Sans in combination with the fact that you only learn about her when you have certain “fun” values... it’s likely she knows Gaster, or at least of him.

Okay, I think you see where I’m going with this...

Now, for the “Suzy is a human” part. I’ve actually had this theory since before Deltarune, but I never made a post about it or anything.

In Undertale’s No Mercy route, Sans says something quite... interesting.

This line of dialogue implies that Sans knows or knew someone with Determination. A lot of people theorize that this line is referring to Gaster, who may have injected himself with Determination, which is a valid theory... However, I think Sans knew a human. Specifically, a human girl named Suzy.

Sans also knows a lot about concepts such as “LOVE” and “EXP”, and has secret passwords for “time travelers”. This implies that not only did he know someone with Determination, but likely with someone with the ability to “saving”, “loading”, and “resetting”... and, combined with what he talks about in his fight about “knowing our type”... it’s likely this person did a “no mercy run” in the past, or at least killed a significant amount of people.

Wait. If Suzy is a human, and she’s still alive in Undertale... How does she manage to survive in a world of monsters who need just one more human SOUL to break the barrier?

Well.

I have a few theories...

Sub-theory 1: LOVE

I mentioned before that if Suzy is a human, it’s possible, even likely, she has high LOVE.

And, well..

Apparently, once you reach 20 LOVE, you become completely unrecognizable as a human being. Even to the king of all monsters, who would otherwise even compare Frisk to his own dead human child.

Sub-theory 2: “Goner” form

Clamgirl’s “fast approaching” line shows us that, apparently, some people can switch between their “normal” forms and their “goner” (grey) forms at will.

If a human had this ability... perhaps their SOUL would also turn grey? Then it would appear more like a monster SOUL than a human one. Sure, it would still be upside-down, but it’s an interesting thing to think about.

Speaking of “goner” forms...

In the files, Deltarune’s vessel creation sequence is called “GONERMAKER”.

Sub-theory 3: She’s not fully human

Remember earlier how I mentioned how the red SOUL glows red and white in the ending sequence, and how that could possibly be a hint towards the SOUL being not fully human? Well, that could apply here, as well. It’s possible Suzy could be half-monster, but we don’t even know if that’s a possible thing. I’m thinking that perhaps she could have had her SOUL infused with monster magic or dust or something of the like, since it’s likely Gaster experimented with SOULs at some point.

Sub-theory 4: Someone is hiding her/concealing her identity as human

Since Clamgirl talks about Suzy being her neighbor’s daughter, it’s possible her parent is protecting her or even hiding her. I’m not sure how exactly this would work, but it’s a possiblity.

There’s also a few other things I’d like to mention about this theory that I couldn’t fit in:

1. Clamgirl tells Frisk that “In life’s grand scheme, [Suzy] might be why [they] came here in the first place”. This could be implying that Frisk knows Suzy from the surface, which would support the theory that she’s a human. However, it could just as easily be Clamgirl going on about how Frisk and Suzy are fated to meet, especially considering Clamgirl’s phrasing makes it seem like Frisk and Suzy haven’t met before.

2. Clamgirl’s “Fast approaching” line only appears in the Switch version of Undertale, which was released less than two months before chapter one of Deltarune came out. There are 3 possibilities you could take from this:

a. Clamgirl was lying (unlikely)

b. Deltarune’s release was a distraction from some more content coming soon that will actually feature Suzy

c. Suzy is in chapter one of Deltarune.

Conclusion

Anyway, those are the four theories I could come up with on who the red SOUL could be. It could also be a completely new character. Who knows. 

Well, now that you’ve read this far... I’d actually like to gather some data. I’m curious what people think the most likely outcome is after reading this. If you could take a few seconds to vote on this poll, I’d really appreciate it!