#I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT GASTER BEING ASSOCIATED WITH MUSIC
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The Man in the Motif: A Character Analysis of W.D. Gaster via Music
“Sing us a song, you’re the mystery man… sing us a song if you please… ‘cause we’re all in the mood for a broken chord, and you’ve got us feeling unease…”
here’s the Big Dumb Music Post lmao
A couple things:
Most of what comes after the cut is written like an actual essay and not a shitpost i promise
This is more Synthesis and Subjective Reading of Extant Material than speculative theorycraft
I mostly wrote this for fun & because I’d never seen anyone lay out an analysis for our boy G like this before. I don’t think it’s like Revolutionary it’s mostly just me talking a lot about a special interest lol
I get the sense that a lot of people may have already picked up on a lot of this stuff and it might just be my alexithymic ass that needs heady analysis like this to understand subtle emotional cues. That’s to say: IDK how much New Stuff is being presented here for any given reader but it might still add value to that existing understanding I Guess
I’m not trying to assert that Toby Fox consciously intended to convey everything that I’m pulling out of this stuff lol
OK HERE WE GO!!!!!
Contents
To quickly access a given section, just search for it by its leading flag ([#XXX])
[#001] mus_st_him.ogg (Gaster’s Theme)
[#002] ANOTHER HIM
[#002-A] A Brief Tangent on Giygas
[#003] File Select & Game Over ambience
[#004] Darkness Falls
[#005] man.ogg (Tree Room)
[#005-A] A Brief Tangent on Seccom Masada-sensei
[#006] Takeaways
Undertale and Deltarune use leitmotif to a wide variety of ends in shaping players’ experience of their stories. Because music is understood emotionally and interpretively, a single song can function to convey several simultaneous ideas about characters, places, and/or themes, and may be understood to have multiple layers of meaning.
Gaster’s leitmotif in particular is notorious for its tendency to be heard by fans everywhere in Undertale and Deltarune’s soundtracks, regardless of the actual intentionality of its use. Due to the brief and generic nature of the sequence, there’s a distinct possibility that this ambiguity was engineered into it, possibly as a way to influence players’ perceptions by implying that he’s secretly ever-present and ever-watching, and/or to convey something about Gaster himself, such as dispersion of his consciousness or memories.
Aside from the previous point, there are a few instances in Deltarune’s soundtrack in which its use is either explicit or, at the very least, somewhat less ambiguous. This discussion will focus on the former cases, specifically tracks that play in the scenes in which we interact with the man himself. I’ll cover this in roughly the order that I believe a typical player would experience them for the first time.
Most of these sections will be Very Roughly divided into:
Informal analysis (I Do Not Know Music Theory I Am Just A Guy With Abled Ears) of choices made in the song itself
Subjective analysis of what emotions or associations the song might be evoking
Interpretation of what any of that could mean about Gaster Our Good Friend Gaster
Discussion of in-game context wherever I think it's interesting lol
Because my formal knowledge on music composition is very limited, and also because I’m no longer hearing these songs fresh and untainted by Lore Obsession Disease, I had my partner (a musician who knows nothing about UTDR or this character) give his opinions on these songs as well. While I don’t think a formal background is a prerequisite for this kind of subjective analysis (as these soundtracks are designed to communicate with a broad audience, not just with musicians), it of course allows for further insight. I’ll refer to him from here on as my “research assistant” because I think it’s funny.
I first had him listen to the tracks listed here out-of-context and give me his thoughts on what they communicated to him about the character or scene. I then gave him some context for each song, the story, and the character, and we discussed whether that context brought further interpretation. It turned out his basic interpretations closely aligned with mine, with the addition of some really cool observations that would’ve never occurred to me on my own. This discussion will reflect his opinions & observations as well. Huge thanks to him!
With that in mind, I’m going to use the word “melody” and other such Music Words pretty loosely throughout this sorry. I tried my best to respect the Terminology but im just a fucking dude ok
[#001] mus_st_him.ogg (Gaster’s Theme)
We must, of course, begin with mus_st_him.ogg (Gaster’s Theme), which establishes his leitmotif (or at least, the only confirmed part of it; whether or not there’s a B part to the leitmotif is currently unknown, though I‘ve seen some interesting speculation about that). Assuming that Deltarune players experienced Undertale first (as Toby Fox seems to have intended), this will have been the first instance of Gaster’s leitmotif ever encountered, and it’s the front line for evaluating his character.
Found only through a Fun event, in Undertale’s “Sound Test” room, this is presented as less of a song and more of a demo or reference sequence. As we move on to other tracks, I’ll consider this track the platonic ideal and use it as a point of comparison.
One brief note is that the filename itself does not explicitly assign this track to Gaster, but rather to “him.” It’s the Sound Test UI that puts his name on it. Whether or not there’s significance to this is currently unclear.
(I think there may be something in common between the friendly “voice” that thanks us for our feedback in the Sound Test room and Deltarune’s out-of-universe UI text after closing the fountain in Deltarune chapter 1, but I don’t have any idea what, if anything, that means right now.)
Precedents established
Since this is the base motif, I think it’s worthwhile to mention how the song is structured on paper. Since I’m no Theory Guy, I’ll refer you to Tumblr user notesanddreams’s technical analysis of what he calls the “Gaster Sequence,” which is a name I like a lot and am going to use moving forward.
To quote him:
It’s a pretty simple four bar loop. The melody, which everyone I know has taken to calling “the Gaster motif,” is a four note sequence that goes “starting note -> up a minor second (half step) -> up a perfect fifth -> back down a perfect fifth.” This is played four times before modulating down a half step and looping….
There’s simply not enough musical information in the track to discern a tonal center, and therefore any attempts to give it a key signature are futile. This gives the sequence a very mysterious and unsettling nature, but its vagueness allows it to be applied to certain tracks in the Deltarune OST very subtly at times.
While it’s distorted, this song seems to be played on an unaccompanied piano. This establishes an association between Gaster and that instrumentation (as we’ll see reinforced later), as well as with sounds of distortion & modulation, dissonance, and “noise.”
These two factors combined may be things to consider alongside the leitmotif when determining whether a song or part of a song should be considered to offer direct descriptions of Gaster (as opposed to containing a more abstract reference to him, or instead being referential to or descriptive of another character associated with piano, such as Kris).
Emotional perspective
Gaster’s Theme is anxiety-inducing. It builds up endlessly but never resolves. It is not musical; it lacks anything recognizable as motion or melody, which in turn causes it to lack anything immediately recognizable as personality, or emotion, or backstory. It’s a song that betrays no motivations or values, leaving us to fill in the blanks on our own.
The minor key and dissonance could easily be experienced as sinister, playing on our fear and mistrust of the unknown. If the truth is out there, it doesn’t seem to be pleasant. If we continue to seek it out, who knows what could become of us, or what we could unleash upon the world?
The Sound Test UI itself is bizarre and mysterious. Why does it thank us for our “feedback” after hearing Gaster’s Theme? What input or feedback did we provide?
Characterization perspective
We could take this theme on its own to suggest that Gaster is characterized by duality, tension, and emotional detachment and/or reservation.
The rising tones in each bar evoke thought and ideation, approaching a point before dropping down to approach another. The endless, moderately-paced loop of shifting, yet internally consistent, sets resembles a careful dialectic that never reaches resolution.
We could interpret this as the sound of an analytical mind aware of many options and possibilities, but never ultimately delineating the truth between them (my research assistant specifically described this track as being “locked into itself”). We could also take it less literally to signify a reversal of opinion or understanding in general – not necessarily that decisions are never made, but they’re reached through heady deliberation and obsessively re-examined after they’re made.
While the motif betrays internal tension, it’s also highly ordered and consistent, lacking any spontaneity. This can be taken to mean that Gaster is cautious, deliberate, and reserved. For all the neurosis it conveys, it still comes off as fairly confident, as though Gaster is simply used to this and doesn’t tend to question it.
We could also possibly infer that other characters experienced Gaster in much the same way as we do – they may have found him unsettling and hard to read.
As mentioned before, it’s unknown whether other parts to this motif exist or are planned to exist. If they do exist, then the fact that only the A(?) part has been presented as “Gaster’s Theme” would underscore the one-sidedness of his presentation in Undertale, as well as a possible tendency of Gaster’s to hide parts of himself.
(EXTREMELY speculative, so please don’t take this too seriously, but: I’ve seen at least a handful of fans raise the possibility that at least some part of the Secret Boss (“Freedom”) motif may be a B/C part of Gaster’s motif. If Gaster is trying to obfuscate any involvement with Secret Boss characters, using his metaphysical resources to hide obvious musical associations with them (i.e., by labeling only this part of the motif as his “theme” in the Sound Test) would certainly be a clever way to do so.)
[#002] ANOTHER HIM
The first true application of the Gaster Sequence a player will experience is also the very first song heard in Deltarune: ANOTHER HIM, which plays during the Introduction (also known as the Survey or “GONERMAKER”).
This is another instance of Gaster being referred to as “him” in the metadata rather than by name. The specific phrasing of “ANOTHER HIM” seems referential to Undertale Players’ knowledge of him, and could be taken to suggest that this is a separate instance or at least “piece” of the character described in that game. Alternatively, this could indicate the same character being presented from another perspective, and/or the same continuity of that character who’s no longer recognizable as the same person for one reason or another.
Musical analysis
This track is, of course, a direct quote of the entire Gaster Sequence isolated from any other motifs. Its main developments are a slight modification to the rhythm of the Sequence and the addition of other instruments and background ambience – this is actually the only song in the scope of this document in which the motif itself is heard accompanied (while Darkness Falls also contains other instrumentation, it occurs during an instance of a different motif). We again hear the Sequence played on piano.
When my research assistant first heard this song without context he paused it after about 5 seconds and proceeded to tell me all about Paul stretching and how it can be used to create the type of ethereal ambience heard in this track. One thing he noted is that this algorithm allows for stretching a sample while keeping it in-key, without adding dissonance. I should be clear that I have no idea if this exact technique was used here, only that it seems to have achieved a very similar effect.
So, what is the sample being stretched (in some way or another) to create that ambient noise? When we reversed the stretch, we found it to be none other than one of Giygas’s instruments from EarthBound. This has been identified by other fans as a sample of the track Giygas’s Intimidation.
[#001-A] A Brief Tangent on Giygas
I want to be careful about suggesting too much from musical samples & references, since UTDR are known to make extensive use of samples and soundfonts from other works, especially from EarthBound (as well as reworked versions of Toby Fox’s own music from other projects). Like, I don’t think Toby was trying to Say Anything in particular when he used the “WOW!” from Earthbound’s intro sequence in Spamton’s battle themes except “EarthBound is very special to me and that sound design choice they made was really memorable and I think it sounds really fun here.”
That in mind, UTDR fans have been intuitively connecting Gaster and Giygas for years based on superficial similarities and the known influence of EarthBound alone. Given Gaster’s unique existence in metanarrative, the specificity and consistency of the references associated with him, as well as the potential thematic relevance of this reference (and the one to follow in section [#005-A]), I do think it may be fair game to consider them in these cases. I’m going to throw out a couple of things:
The use of samples from Earthbound, specifically ones related to Giygas, draws yet another thematic connection between Gaster and Undertale’s True Lab and possible parallels to Alphys, suggesting this connection is relevant to Deltarune. Memoryhead itself bears resemblance to Giygas. (also wait what there’s parallel harmony in Amalgam?? holy shit???)
Giygas is a character who, when encountered in Earthbound, has been driven to a state of eldritch, cosmic horror by trauma & grief. His backstory as Giegue, told in the previous game Mother, includes themes of pursuing knowledge despite knowing of the dangers, of betrayal, and of guilt over well-intentioned harm, specifically harm done while under some form of external influence. The Giygas of EarthBound, in his madness, exerts violent influence over animals and people, including Porky, a troubled child who Giygas compels to serve him.
Throughout the fight, Giygas expresses his internal conflict, lashing out seemingly not due to malice but rather uncontrolled emotion. Defeating Giygas requires first that the character Paula “Pray,” or call out for strength from the party’s families and the people they’ve helped along their journey, until there are no more characters left to reach; Paula’s “call” becomes unheard, “absorbed by the darkness.” Then, finally, she begs the player themself to “PRAY” for the party – the “kids” they’ve never met before – dealing the final necessary blows in the process.
Gaster & Giygas are both unpleasant sounding two-syllable G names LOL this is stupid sorry
Obviously, I don’t anticipate a 1:1 resemblance between Gaster’s and Giygas’s stories, but there could be thematic parallels worth considering. There is one thing, however, that I find interesting in the context of this song in particular: in inviting us to this “Survey,” Gaster seems to have called out to us in the same way that Paula did, praying to us for help – perhaps, more specifically, to help the kids of Deltarune who we have yet (at this point in the game) to meet.
Emotional perspective
ANOTHER HIM opens with a distorted ambience, evocative of murmuring, choral voice, rolling thunder, and perhaps the crackling whips of a Tesla coil. This ambience ebbs and flows in intensity, occasionally seeming to thrash and writhe. Just before the Sequence itself starts, and then throughout it, we hear what seem to be longing strings, and underlying the piano is a steady, understated percussion.
In contrast to the distorted fuzz of mus_st_him.ogg, the piano used here is crisp, with only a limited echo applied to it. While not unaccompanied, this piano still feels exposed and small, especially against the faint instrumentation and ambience churning below it. The high, bell-like keys feel bright and hopeful. At the same time, the slow, halting tempo suggests trepidation.
Where the base Sequence marches steadily through its dialectic without deviation or hesitation, ANOTHER HIM’s arrangement pauses at the height of each thought, as if considering it more carefully, before dropping back down to the next. After the first two sets switch off normally, the melody then proceeds to rise steadily, as though finally grasping at a revelation; after reaching an apex, it then pauses, collecting itself, before looping over again. Isolated from the ambience, this arrangement sounds contemplative and searching, in contrast to the neurotic dialogue of the base Sequence.
The backing ambience sounds ethereal and spacey, but not noticeably dissonant. It doesn’t necessarily lend the same eeriness of mus_st_him.ogg’s distortion, but the low, slow murmuring and even occasional lashing of the “voices” in the background still betray an undercurrent of unease & tension.
When my research assistant heard the songs mus_st_him.ogg, ANOTHER HIM, and Darkness Falls without context, in the order presented here, he read them as a developing narrative. He felt that this piece, compared to the base theme, added “motion” in the form of a steady rise and fall. He then said, “What I would want next, if this were one piece, is melody. I’m still waiting for that next part.” While it takes more time to breathe, ANOTHER HIM still never approaches resolution.
He also likened the emotional experience of this song to Gregorian or hymnal chanting – less so the literal style of music, but rather the use of reverberation in that musical form to create a full, choral sound from only a few individual voices.
Characterization perspective
The overwhelming sense I get from ANOTHER HIM is one of vulnerability, introspection, and dishevelment, as well as cautious deliberation. It also conveys a certain amount of hope and possibly curiosity, though these are muted in comparison to the hesitance and turmoil.
Compared to what we “see” of him in mus_st_him.ogg, Gaster seems to be far less self-assured in his dialectical thinking. He’s breaking from his traditional pattern of rumination and attempting to reach for some form of personal truth. The cautiousness could also be taken to convey unease or skepticism about the situation at hand, about the probability of success in achieving the “NEW FUTURE,” or even about the Player themself.
As far as the background ambience, its most obvious function is to convey the ethereality of incorporeal, out-of-universe existence, its ebbing and twisting reflecting the shapelessness of a disembodied consciousness. It could even be considered diegetic – as if it is the sound of his state of being, or of this strange, extraplanar space beyond the event horizon.
The ambience could also be taken to convey emotional information, though its separation from the “conscious thought” of the motif could imply many things (as we’ll discuss later in [#004], we have an example within the same chapter of the motif conveying quite a bit of emotionality in itself).
If we take this angle, then it could suggest that Gaster is not integrating emotionality with rational thought, but is at least possibly acknowledging that emotionality — or it’s built up to a point where it can no longer be fully contained or ignored. We could interpret the pauses in the motif as Gaster listening to or meditating on these “voices” – or becoming momentarily overwhelmed by them.
From this perspective, it’s clear that this emotional state is confusing and volatile; the dialogue happening on this level is not nearly as orderly or civil as that heard in the motif. The “lashing” sounds could be taken as flashes of pain; their violence could suggest bad memories, self-criticism, shame, or regret, among other possibilities.
I also think the choice of a percussive “heartbeat” is quite interesting. While not rapid, it could possibly suggest anxiety, as though his heart is pounding. It also suggests intimacy, which in turn requires a certain level of trust – he has allowed us close enough to hear that heartbeat at all, whether or not it’s comfortable for him, or he feels confident that it’s a good idea for him to do so.
Despite this piling on of confusion and unease, the relative clarity and brightness of the motif’s piano seems to twinkle faintly in the dark. This sense of hope gives us something to latch onto amidst the tumult, and that may be true of the character as well. We could read this as a hope that is worth enduring the doubt, the humbling, and the possibility of pain.
The song in context
ANOTHER HIM’s hesitation and vulnerability strikes an interesting contrast with Gaster’s dialogue throughout the Survey sequence. Aside from a very small number of seemingly spontaneous reactions, Gaster in his dialogue – in his intended self-presentation – comes off as unfailingly polite, professional, confident, and generally neutral.
While we needn’t assume that this self-presentation, or the opinions he does express, are insincere, we can still infer that whatever the reality is of his internal state, Gaster is making a concerted effort to keep that information hidden from us. There are obvious practical reasons for this: to maintain the integrity of his study, he needs to minimize his biasing of our behavior.
That said, we could certainly read personal factors into this as well. From Gaster’s POV, the Player possesses a tremendous amount of metaphysical knowledge and ability. Whether or not he has difficulties with trust in general, Gaster certainly has reasons to be very wary of us, something I’ll discuss further in the next section.
The content of the sequence itself (text, background, etc.) warrants its own analysis. I’ll probably do one at like, idk some point probably
[#003] File Select (& Game Over) ambience
While it doesn’t really constitute a “song,” I think it’s worthwhile to look briefly at the sound design in the File Select and Game Over UIs, since they’re still among the very few instances of “face-to-face” interaction we have with the man of the hour. Note that this doesn’t include Darkness Falls, which plays after a certain choice is made at a game over – the next section will discuss that. Because this section covers sound design choices moreso than musical ones, I’ll eschew the format of the other sections and simply analyze these choices in-context.
This is the one section of audio I didn’t review with my research assistant, so you’re just getting my unmoderated opinions here, unfortunately.
For the better part of the game (so far), the File Select screen generally looks and feels the way a Player would expect from an RPG UI, with illustrations, friendly help text, and narrative music:
Post-completion Chapter 1 File Select (Before the Story)
Chapter 2 File Select (Faint Glow)
Similarly, the chapter 2 (or, rather, the post-ch1-completion) Game Over screen displays a genre-appropriate graphic, includes a message of encouragement (or, perhaps more accurately, a plea for Kris to survive) from Kris’s party members, and plays the song Faint Courage.
These File Select & Game Over screens are potentially extremely lore-rich in and of themselves (some of this will come up in the next section), but with regard to this particular discussion, I’m mostly interested in the stark contrast they present when compared to the pre-completion Chapter 1 screens.
Before chapter 1’s completion, when Gaster is strongly implied to be narrating (and possibly facilitating) the Player’s SAVE data manipulation and game over choices, the soundtrack for both screens is profoundly barren.
There’s no “song,” no melody, only an identical low, looping drone for both screens. We know that there can be music here, even very emotional music, and we feel like there probably should be. And yet, there isn’t. This makes these screens feel empty, ominous, and cold, underscoring their dark, ascetic visuals.
I think the fact that so little is being said here is in itself very, very interesting. We know that we aren’t actually alone on these screens; our friendly facilitator is here with us. We also know from the other examples in this document that Deltarune’s Gaster is not inherently associated with a lack of music, nor (as we’ll see in the next song) a lack of emotion in melody. Why is it only in this particular context – when the Player approaches these existential crossroads – that the music disappears entirely?
The File Select screen on its own doesn’t give us a whole lot to work with. While the dialogue here is certainly unsettling (even compared to Gaster’s clinical speech in other scenes) and warrants its own discussion, it still isn’t entirely clear why file manipulation should sound like this.
In the Game Over screen, however, we can start to make inferences. Game Overs are when Gaster’s plans are at the most risk – they’re when a Player is most likely to opt out of the study and never return, leaving Deltarune’s future as-is and any hope of a “NEW FUTURE” unfulfilled.
With that in mind, I think this drone conveys emotional shutdown. Gaster is still there – the drone is his presence, as though he’s trying to keep his breathing slow and measured as he speaks with us – but whatever is happening with him internally, he’s either working hard enough to succeed in hiding it from us, or it’s so overwhelming that he himself can’t even acknowledge it.
What that internal experience could be is anyone’s guess. Personally, I think he’s deeply afraid.
When Gaster seems to panic upon seeing his own name in the Survey, he can simply exit the situation and prevent the Player from making that choice. He can’t, however, prevent us from exiting the game – whether or not he had the power to do so (and he of course doesn’t), doing so would be meddling in the experiment, it’d be a breach of participant consent, and it’d potentially undermine whatever uneasy trust the Player has developed with him. In these moments, he’s entirely at the Player’s mercy.
(Note: this last video shows the game exiting after the creator is named “GASTER.” As of Chapter 2’s release, naming either vessel or creator “GASTER” causes the game to return to the chapter select, rather than exiting.)
Since the same drone plays on the File Select screen, we can infer he’s shut down there as well. It still isn’t as clear what about SAVE manipulation would cause such a strong response, and there are many ways this could be interpreted. It’s worth noting that we don’t currently know whether Gaster is the one executing those actions, or if he’s simply giving us guidance and warnings as we execute them ourselves. More broadly, we don’t know whether Gaster is capable of executing these actions at all.
For right now, my best guess – and I want to be clear that I don’t feel confident this is correct – is that SAVE manipulation is the first obvious indication to both us and to Gaster that he’s willing to accept some amount of “necessary evil” in pursuit of his plans. Based on the seemingly unprecedented gravity of his tone and diction on this screen (especially around erasing SAVEs), this may be when Gaster first recognizes, fully, just how much power he’s entrusted to a Player, how irresponsible it may have been for him to do so, and he is again deeply afraid – this time, not just of us, but of himself.
[#004] Darkness Falls
(This is the song I wrote that post about, that a lot of people seemed to like, which was very cool! But also it was meant more as a throwaway vent post than an actual analysis and was worded kind of strongly/reductively in part because I didn’t expect anyone to actually see it lol. anyway this will reiterate a lot of those thoughts but with A LOT more detail and nuance, possibly more than is necessary lol)
(Quick kudos again to the user who pointed out details about Faint Courage and its relationship to Kris on the Post People Liked. I hadn’t even begun to think through that part of the song when I made the post. It helped a lot with this!)
(Wait one more note: I’d previously thought this sequence only happened in pre-completion Chapter 1, when Gaster was actively present in the UI, but apparently this still happens as of Chapter 2?? The guy just crawls out of the woodwork specifically to narrate our ending and see us off I Guess. I do not have any particularly strong opinions at the moment about what this could Mean because I don’t generally have strong opinions about why he disappeared in the first place except IDK We Got The Hang Of The Game So He Switched On The Normal UI And Now He’s Just Observing Quietly And Taking Notes And Also Waving From Cars And Egg I GUess but anyway I thought I’d point it out because I got it wrong before)
(Oh btw if God kills you it just bypasses the normal screens entirely and returns you to a checkpoint. this detail doesnt mean anything it was obviously implemented for mechanical/joke reasons I just think it’s funny. like even Gaster is just sitting there like ?????? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. sorry moving on now)
Darkness Falls is only heard after saying “No” at a Game Over. As previously discussed, Game Overs in chapter 1 (pre-completion) feature the Emotional Shutdown Drone™, while post-ch1-completion Game Overs feature the song Faint Courage. Upon refusing to continue, whatever audio is present cuts out entirely, leaving complete silence as Gaster narrates our ending. Immediately after that text cuts out, Darkness Falls begins to play.
While a Player could encounter this before the File Select or after seeing the Tree Room, it felt most logical to me to order it like this for Reasons. Based on both my own experience and that of some other people who responded to the Post People Liked, it seems like a lot of Players, even ones who know about the Tree Rooms, just end up never saying “No” and seeing it at all.
This is the only track in this document’s scope in which the Gaster Sequence occurs alongside another leitmotif: the one found in Faint Courage, the song played in the aforementioned post-ch1-completion Game Over screen (I’ll simply refer to this second motif as Faint Courage from here on).
For the sake of this analysis, I’m only considering the Gaster Sequence part of the song (roughly 0:00 - 0:33) to be directly descriptive of the man himself, as we have good reasons to believe the second motif is specifically saying something about Kris. That’s to say: any character traits being suggested by Faint Courage will be assumed to describe Kris, not Gaster.
However, I’ll still discuss the song as a whole where it makes sense to do so, including consideration of what it could be saying about Gaster’s perspective on Kris, on the moment in which it’s found, or on the broader narrative.
Musical analysis
In an unusual break from precedent, the Gaster Sequence isn’t hidden by or within the other leitmotif featured in this track. Instead, we hear an unaccompanied piano arrangement of the Sequence that then leads into Faint Courage, played on the same piano but now accompanied, and with more instruments gradually added. Each motif takes up roughly half the song’s length, though the latter is slightly longer.
Much like the piano heard in ANOTHER HIM, the keys played during the Sequence have a moderate reverberation applied to them, but are otherwise fairly clear & crisp. Notably, this reverberation still continues after the shift into Faint Courage, as if the previous motif has shifted into a background, supporting role for the next one.
The arrangement of the Gaster Sequence heard here deviates the most by far from the original mold, to the degree that it’d be easy to miss it as an instance of that theme at all. Viewed side by side, the difference is stark. Someone who actually Knows Theory could probably describe it more eloquently than I can, but I’ll do my best to fumble through this with my untrained ear and the input of my research assistant.
This arrangement of the Sequence doesn’t do away with the back-and-forth of the base theme, but the dialogue heard here begs, grasps, and searches, seeming to have no pretense of self-assuredness or strict, rational confidence. It seems more grounded in the fact that this internal conversation really has only one, contiguous “speaker,” as each even-numbered set of bars picks up directly from the set before it, rather than there being a sharp drop between them.
The “speaker’s” opening comment, which begins on a chord, rises like a choking cry or plea, before they seem to attempt rationalization. Unable to answer in kind, searching for something to say but having nothing to meaningfully offer, they volley back on a higher note, as though presenting themself another question. The “speaker” then repeats the same sorrowful, confused entreaty from before – but this time, they continue from that cry to reach toward something, pause as though approaching rest, and then decide there’s something more to say – something entirely different.
Referring back to the “narrative development” reading proposed by my research assistant (first brought up in section [#002]): when my assistant first heard this song without context, he almost immediately stopped the track and said “that, right there, is melody!” He described the addition of a tonal center as making the difference between “color” and “meaning” – ANOTHER HIM adds interest to the base Sequence, but it’s still difficult to find an emotional foothold in it. It’s difficult to parse. Darkness Falls, on the other hand, has obvious musicality. It’s immediately relatable. It’s generally pleasant.
He spent some time discussing the chords found in this arrangement of the Sequence, describing the very deliberate placement of these chords as being its own melodic line of sorts, “going through its own motion, its own process.” He described the pattern as being roughly “harmony, then dissonance, then a stretch of time, then dissonance.” He noted that the one tonic he could identify in this Sequence was just before the turn into Faint Courage.
With this in mind, we could say that the instance of the Sequence heard in Darkness Falls, in contrast to that heard in every other song covered in this document, reaches its own internal resolution. That tonic, leading into the turn, could be read as a choice finally being made.
My research assistant also pulled out a “hero’s journey” narrative from this song. The first half, the Gaster Sequence, continues its push and pull of dialogue and tension, establishing the sense of a problem needing to be solved; while the second half, Faint Courage, approaches that problem with playful curiosity, possibility, and hope, before developing into a heroism heralded by nostalgic, Zelda-like synths, and ending on a literal high note. He noted that this type of narrative is common in ending themes for games, serving as a reflection of the story just completed.
Emotional perspective
The immediate motivator for me to write the Post People Liked was because I’d pulled up Darkness Falls on YouTube (for this analysis lol) and among the video’s top comments was someone saying, more or less, “Boy! It sure is weird that Gaster’s Theme shows up so obviously in this beautiful, moving song!” This was one among many, many comments I’d seen over time across various platforms expressing the same thought.
This confusion is perfectly understandable. As I’ve expressed in several ways in this document and elsewhere, the idea of the Gaster Sequence being arranged in a way that is, in itself, obviously moving – immediately, viscerally moving without any need for the kind of reaching overanalysis I’m doing here – is wholly unprecedented in either Undertale or Deltarune. As I mentioned in the Post People Liked, we’ve been conditioned to view Gaster as anything but another character, and that may be its own form of characterization. And, like I said before, the degree of deviation heard here is so great that many players will likely miss it entirely if they aren’t paying attention or don’t know what to listen for.
That said, it’s very obvious that this arrangement of the motif sounds distinctly loose and emotional. The first half is sorrowful, but its internal development also conveys curiosity and open-heartedness. The heroism of the second half conveys a distinct sense of hope, or at least, satisfaction.
I think it’s worth noting here that, when I initially showed my research assistant the scene in which this song is found, after he’d previously heard the song out of context, his immediate impression was that it felt ironic and mocking, as though the game – maybe even Gaster himself – was deriding the Player for not persisting further. I think this impression makes sense. It’s one that I’ve experienced myself, and based on comments I’ve seen, it certainly seems to be the impression many Players walk away from the first two chapters with.
After a little more discussion, specifically after I presented the idea of Deltarune’s One Ending, and the idea that this ending is likely the “default” ending – the one Gaster knows will happen and seems to be hoping to change – my research assistant felt the song conveyed sincere acceptance. In his words: “whatever ending the player gets, it was heroic that they even tried.”
Characterization perspective
In reference to the idea of this ending theme being ironic or cynical, I think there’s something to be said for the possibility that Gaster’s habitual masking and/or intrinsic propensity for interpersonal oddness leads to others disregarding his sincerity or misinterpreting it as malice. We could argue that this is a trait indicated in a number of other ways beyond this song.
The reverberation of the keys during the Sequence of course recalls the ethereality of Gaster’s extraplanar existence. The fact that the reverberation continues into Faint Courage, combined with the placement of the tonic just before the shift, could be taken to represent a decision by Gaster to take a background role in Kris’s narrative.
Something interesting to consider from that: if the choice was made to take a background role, then what other options were being weighed in the previous dialectics? Does this imply that Gaster has considered more active roles in the past? (Could it be the case that he’s previously taken them, and the outcomes of those past decisions have influenced this latest choice? Is passivity really the best choice he could make here, or is he actually just transferring responsibility? Does he simply not trust himself to do the right thing if given the chance? Sorry this is getting really speculative LOL moving on)
As a number of users mentioned, the inclusion of Faint Courage could be an indication that Gaster is not only mourning the potential loss of the Player and with them, the “NEW FUTURE,” but the potential permanence of Kris’s death in particular. This reading suggests that Gaster feels a great deal of tenderness toward Kris themself; given what we’ve seen of Gaster thus far in this document, it wouldn’t be hard to infer reasons for why he might be especially fond of a misfit kid with self-esteem issues and interpersonal difficulties. (Assuming, of course, that these troubles aren’t directly related to their situation with the Player. Personally, I like to think that the more troubled aspects of Kris’s character are, for the most part, just as true to their real personality as their more “acceptable” or likable aspects are – attributing too much of their struggle to outside influences feels like an undermining of their agency. But I do feel it’s still worthwhile to acknowledge other possibilities, or at least the potential nuance they offer.)
The relationship between Gaster and Kris is absolutely something that warrants further examination as the story continues. While this song (and to a certain degree, the next one) seem to suggest a fair amount of good intent and even tenderness on the part of Gaster toward Kris, there’s certainly still room for complexity and tension on Kris’s part.
The song in context
In a typical game, we’d expect to be returned to a title screen or menu right after choosing not to continue. Deltarune instead gives us Gaster’s narration, then leaves us on a black screen for the roughly one-minute duration of Darkness Falls, before it closes the game window on its own. That begs the question of why the game lingers here on this song in the way it does.
In a metanarrative sense, I think there’s validity to the idea that this choice was made to reinforce that we reached “an end” – not just a game over, but the “default” ending or One Ending to the game, in which the world is covered in darkness. As mentioned before, Darkness Falls sounds to a degree like an end credits song. The game closes because that’s what typically happens after the end – we leave the game.
As far as narrative or character interpretation goes, we do know that (pre-ch1-completion, at least) Gaster is our facilitator out-of-universe in Deltarune from its start to its finish. We have reason to believe that he has control over the screens we’re on (given that he can exit us back to title). We can infer that he would be the one to redirect us to the menu.
We have no reason to think that, just because Gaster’s narration has left the screen, he’s suddenly ceased to be present when Darkness Falls plays. The fact that it starts with his Sequence seems to imply his continued presence. We can infer that he’s the one keeping us here through the song, and the one who finally closes the game.
Maybe he keeps us here because he feels he owes us our ending song – and maybe this song is an expression of what he’s thinking and feeling in that moment.
To reiterate my reading from the Post People Liked: Gaster describes our ending, and then he has nothing left to say. We said “no,” and he can’t violate our consent as participants, but he can’t bear to let us go just yet. His “NEW FUTURE” is in the balance, Kris’s life is in the balance, and on top of that, we can’t deny that the man is probably just lonely.
So, we’re left alone in the dark with him, and for the first time, we “see” him entirely exposed – no confident, clinical dialogue, no choices to make, no spr_mysteryman, no True Lab fog or trees for him to hide behind. We sit there with him as he works quietly through the situation – perhaps even entreating us to come back and try again later – and when Darkness Falls ends, when he finally reaches some form of acceptance, he decides he can’t keep us there any longer, and closes the game.
[#005] man.ogg (Tree Room)
man.ogg is the track that plays in the secret Tree Room, and is notably not found on the original Deltarune OSTs thus far. While a first-time player could technically experience this track before the previous two discussed, most players going in blind won’t learn about the secret room until after their first playthrough, or potentially until chapter 2.
I know there’s some debate in the fanbase over whether or not Gaster is the unseen (at least to the Player) man encountered in the Tree Room and elsewhere. Aside from the arguable use of his motif in this song, which I’ll get to in a moment, I think there are other context clues indicating that he’s intended to be representative of Gaster in some way:
Gaster, in particular, seems to never be referred to by name except when being referred to by the “followers” or the Sound Test UI. The reasons for this could be metanarrative (to maintain the mystery around him) or narrative (to indicate that Gaster has distanced himself from his name, for whatever reason).
Precedent from Undertale associates Gaster with the word “man,” specifically unmodified instances.
Aside from spr_mysteryman and the possible relevance of Memoryhead and its attacks, UTDR never represent Gaster as a sprite visible to players. After all, as far as we’re aware, he no longer has a physical form for us to see. The fact that Deltarune’s Man is always hidden from our view feels like a clear nod to this.
Musical analysis
man.ogg is a brief, unaccompanied piano piece, seemingly a waltz (fan-arranged sheet music for reference – I’m a big fan of the tone descriptor “surreptitious yet jocular”).
While it’s subtle, it can arguably be read as a variation of the Gaster Sequence. Gaster Theme Everywhere Skeptic Matthew Sandstrom describes this variation as a “Garbled Gaster”:
The melody and rhythm are somewhat garbled, but the right notes are there, even if the order is wrong.
He identifies two other tracks in chapter 1 that seem to use this same Garbled Gaster motif: April 2012 and, VERY, VERY INTERESTINGLY, THE HOLY. I won’t be getting into those tracks here, but I think it’s worth pointing out that a distinct “Man” motif might be an ongoing thing to look out for.
For what it’s worth, my research assistant also felt that man.ogg was likely an intentional variation on the Gaster Sequence. His justification included the thought that the motif could largely be boiled down to the “top two notes.” Make of that what you will.
I won’t worry too much about comparing this directly to mus_st_him.ogg as I have with other tracks in this document, since it seems to be almost a new motif in itself. The fact that “the right notes are there” but the “order is wrong” is worth considering, though – it’s the same Sequence in an almost unrecognizable form. It’s no longer a dialectic, but a partnered dance. Keeping with precedent, there’s also a very subtle, almost imperceptible echo applied to it.
As a final note, man.ogg is actually not an entirely new track – it’s been identified as a rework of a fan song (“Waltz of Seccom Masada”) made by Toby Fox for the game Yume Nikki (“Dream Diary”). Specifically, it’s a theme he wrote for the character known to Yume Nikki fans as Seccom Masada-sensei.
[#005-A] A Brief Tangent on Seccom Masada-sensei
As I mentioned in the previous tangent ([#001-A]), I want to be careful about suggesting too much from reworked tracks that were meant for or made in reference to other projects. After all, MEGALOVANIA isn’t meant to suggest that Sans is ascending to God Tier or likes saying swears. (It’s worth noting that the aforementioned April 2012, which seems to use the Man motif, is also a rework of an unreleased Homestuck track.)
However, much like with Giygas, the connections between Gaster and Uboa have been intuitively obvious since the first Fun event investigations on Starmen.net. (Toby Fox literally used a slightly edited Uboa for Dr. Andonuts’s final boss overworld sprite. The dude likes Uboa, OK?)
So, again, I don’t think it’s unreasonable in this case to take a closer look at a very pointed reference to Yume Nikki as we gather information.
Masada-sensei’s appearance in Yume Nikki is very brief; demonstrations of the segment may be found on YouTube. While the connections between spr_mysteryman’s design and Uboa are well-known, the idea that Masada-sensei and Gaster may also be comparable in some ways is far more obscure, but worth considering.
Some things of possible note from the segment itself:
Reaching Masada-sensei’s spaceship requires descending a long flight of stairs into what appears to be some type of basement. At one point, Madotsuki must equip the Umbrella Effect (which causes her to hold an umbrella while rain falls) in order to extinguish a fire blocking her way.
Masada-sensei’s sprite is in black-and-white – white face, black clothes and hair. His only discernible facial feature is a set of googly eyes that make him look a little neurotic. He also has a non-standard reaction to the Knife Effect – approaching him with it equipped will cause him to back away in fright.
When first encountered, he turns in place steadily and fairly slowly in front of some kind of piano or organ, as though playing the instrument and/or operating it as a type of control panel. Interacting with him causes him to beep at us.
The next room to the right contains a bed. If the player has Madotsuki sleep in the bed, she will wake up later to the sound of the ship’s alarm system. At this point, Masada-sensei can be seen turning rapidly and erratically, as though panicked.
The spaceship will then be seen to crash onto a planet. It is raining when they land. Masada-sensei stands still, looking out the window.
Masada-sensei and Madotsuki seem to be alone on the planet, which stretches for several screens, desolate, until it culminates in a hole in the ground, atop a mound, leading to another long flight of stairs that descend into darkness and an even stranger, more inscrutable setpiece.
Possible character parallels worth noting:
Masada-sensei’s location in a spaceship suggests associations with scientific activity.
Yume Nikki fans commonly interpret Masada-sensei as a music teacher, hence the honorific. As Royal Scientist, Dr. Gaster would have been an authority in his field. We also know that at least one of Undertale’s Royal Scientists (Alphys) is a schoolteacher in Deltarune.
Masada-sensei certainly bears some physical resemblance to the widely accepted image of Gaster; and similarly to Gaster, the small amount of subtle characterization he was given made him a very popular object of fans’ affections and speculations. It’s worth noting, however, that Masada-sensei seems to be pretty universally understood as a sympathetic and very “human” figure – something that can’t necessarily be said for Gaster among the fanbase historically and at large.
I won’t extrapolate on this information too much here, but for this section, the “teacher” thing is worth keeping in mind.
Emotional perspective
I would certainly say “surreptitious yet jocular” feels like an accurate description of this song. To me it feels playful, but out-of-step. It seems like it should be a more cheerful piece, but there’s an underlying sadness or confusion leaking through.
What stands out to me most about this track is how rough it sounds, like the piano player is new to the instrument. For being such a simple piece, there’s a clumsiness to it, a lack of confidence – it sounds like it’s being played just a little too slowly, like the piano player is practicing the muscle memory needed to play it at full speed, and the rhythm stutters momentarily between bars, as if they’ve tripped over their own fingers. A few of the notes sound dissonant, like they were played wrong.
To me, this conveys a sense of imperfect but earnest effort. The piano player is not particularly good at this yet, they don’t feel confident about it, but they’re continuing to play. While the song isn’t exactly succeeding at evoking cheer or comfort, it still conveys sincere curiosity.
Characterization perspective
The way this song deviates from the base Sequence, combined with its rough, unrefined sound, could suggest that Gaster is breaking form in these scenes, perhaps stepping out of a comfort zone and attempting a new form of learning.
Aside from the traffic easter egg in chapter 2 (only seen if he was met in chapter 1), these are the only scenes in which Deltarune’s Gaster manifests in-universe and interacts directly with another character. Given that Gaster seems to prefer staying hidden as much as possible, and is also literally an extraplanar being, it isn’t difficult to see why he might be out of practice for this kind of interaction.
The playfulness suggests a drop in facade, and may reflect an innocent and almost childlike curiosity about the Player and/or Kris. The use of a waltz suggests a desire for connection, as though it’s an invitation to dance.
(Setting aside any specific Gaster relevance, I feel there’s a more general trend developing in Deltarune of waltzes being used to convey themes around connection, such as loneliness, the awkwardness and growing pains of a new relationship, the vulnerability and comfort of trusting a new friend, and the despair of a valued connection unexpectedly severed.)
The evocation of a novice sound could also suggest a more general relationship to teaching or nurturing. Recalling the tangent on Seccom Masada-sensei, we could read this song abstractly as a teacher’s perspective of a student’s development.
While Egg could have any number of worthwhile meanings as a symbol in Deltarune, we shouldn’t disregard the obvious: Egg is a young, fragile life in need of gentle handling and incubation. By giving Kris Egg, Gaster seems to be asking them (and/or the Player) to protect it — the future of Egg is in their (our) hands now.
We also have Lancer telling Kris they “won’t get through [their] teen years without at least one Egg” (itself a reference to EarthBound). With this perspective, we could read the act of giving Egg to be itself a gesture of nurturing on Gaster’s part, if admittedly a very bizarre and confusing one from Kris’s/our POV.
The fact that Players on a Snowgrave route will be locked out of chapter 2’s Tree Room could suggest that this behavior causes Gaster to second guess his trust in the Player and their ability to handle such a fragile responsibility.
[#006] Takeaways
While Gaster’s dialogue projects an air of unwavering, confident professionalism and emotional neutrality, the musical information presented alongside him hints toward a complex emotionality lying beneath his mask. Gaster is far from unfeeling – he’s simply hard to read, and that may be, to some degree, his intent.
In general, Gaster may have difficulty trusting his own judgment, whether as a response to past mistakes, and/or as a natural result of his tendencies toward hyper-analytical rumination and emotional repression.
The Gaster of Deltarune seems to be engaging in a great deal of reflection and introspection. He may be proceeding with this study despite having serious reservations about it. He seems disheveled and, to a certain degree, desperate. Whatever reasons Gaster has for being so interested in the future of Deltarune’s world, these reasons are powerful enough that they are, in many ways, breaking him down.
Despite his spoken eagerness to connect with the Player, close observation may suggest that he’s quietly uneasy with the arrangement and may be more skeptical and/or fearful of us than he lets on.
For whatever reasons, Gaster also seems to have a particular fondness for and sentimentality toward Kris, who he seems to want to nurture and protect, while also viewing them as a potential savior and source of hope. The association of both characters with piano seems to underscore a connection between them.
OK im tired of writing about this now. THE END !!!Q!
#deltarune#deltarune theory#wd gaster#$ waltz of a shattered man#$ chadley deltaruminations original lorepost corner#long post
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it's the day before christmas... you know what that means?
it's dess deltarune day!!!
presenting, at long last, the dess holiday that lives in my head:
more drawings plus detailed design notes below the cut!! please click on the images for better quality viewing (they also all have alt text)
dess design notes:
- her fur and hair colors are picked from rudy's sprite, though i toned her fur color down slightly (and then even more so for her ??? form).
- her freckles, like how i draw noelle's, form triangles as a not-so-subtle reference to the delta rune. that being said, i draw noelle's freckles as oriented the other way, one of a few small ways in which i have their designs mirror but differ from each other (the others being: both having bangs but swept in opposite directions; and dess having buck teeth like noelle but rectangular instead of rounded)
- i didn't give dess antlers because of that line from sans in ut where he refers to "the antlered girl and her big sis" rather than "the antlered girls/sisters". instead, i gave her those hair tufts that are meant to look like horns, as both a parallel to kris's horn headband that they wear to try and fit in with their family, and as a bit of devil symbolism to contrast noelle's whole angel thing.
- i messed around with dess's light world outfit color pallet for a while. for example, i had her jacket be green for a bit so that between that and the skirt we'd get the main christmas colors. i eventually went with having her jacket be red too to make the design as a whole more cohesive. i wanted her to be wearing mainly warm, firey colors cause that feels like it matches her personality from what little we know about her so far.
- the jacket was conceptualized as a hand-me-down from rudy, but in the coloring process i had the idea that it would be neat if azzy had a matching green one (recycling that discarded element of dess's design). perhaps his could be a hand-me-down from asgore?
- the jacket turns that dark purple color in her ??? form because...
look, there's a few things i could say, like how it would probably make more sense gonerfication-wise for it to have turned pure black but then that wouldn't stand out as much in dark environments, or how purple is red+blue with the blue coming from water/ocean theory (don't ask (or do)), or how the general use of purple is a callback to the ??? dark world...
but in truth, it's because i like purple and i thought it looked cool. the main intended meaning is that she's in a cold, dark place now, so the warmth has, mostly, left her pallet.
oh, also, because susie's purple, and it def feels like there are gonna be parallels between dess and susie. jevil too, by extension.
- i gave dess's shirt five stripes, even though by the age she is here she's probably outgrown striped shirts (not that that's stopped kris), as a visual reference to a music staff! cause, ya know, she seems to be a musician. the reference is a lot more obvious in her ??? form with the black and white shirt, as that's where it originated.
- i gave her the skirt with the shorts underneath them because i already had in mind that in her ??? form she'd wear that half-skirt half-shorts piece. the idea is that when she falls into the code or whatever, that element of her design gets mistranslated and the two clothing items are scrambled together.
i also already knew from an older version of her design that i wanted it to have a chessboard-like pattern cause of chess's potential as a motif in dr - and also cause black white and grey as a color scheme is associated with gaster and the goners - so having the light world version of it be flannel/plaid just, fit.
- on a similar note, the darker and grey patches in dess's fur in her ??? form are meant to both contribute to a somewhat glitchy aesthetic and hint towards her ongoing gonerfication. i then had the idea as i was messing around with them that there should be grey specifically around her facial features to mimic skull face paint!
- the whites of her eyes going dark in this form ties into the idea that "only eyes blinded by darkness can see the way", as well as referencing jevil specifically, and her pupils are shaped like save points because they're the light that breaks through the dark. it unintentionally works pretty well as a metaphor for where dess is at: being trapped in the dark for so long has caused her to lose a lot of her hope and fire, but there's still a speck of light that she holds on to. eyes really are the window to the soul ;)
- back to dess's outfit(s), cause i skipped over the scarf. in my older version of her design, i had her wearing an unraveled bowtie or ribbon around her neck, a clothing item that had been part of her mom-approved formal attire. i switched it out with the scarf because a) winter vibes, and, b) more importantly, because i could have it do this in her ??? form:
that's right, wings! only under Certain Conditions, but, wings! cause, uh, angel stuff, and, i mean, come on. wings!!!
the split diamond pattern is again, though less obviously, derived from the triangles featured in the delta rune. the added dots in her ??? form are meant to make the diamonds look like eyes, especially if you turn them on their side. just to add another touch of spookiness.
and the scarf is purple in both her designs mostly as an extra justification for where the purple in her ??? form comes from, like it's the one color she got to keep, and to strengthen the continuity between the two versions of her.
- while we're here, it took me a while to figure out what symbol should go on the back of dess's jacket. what i eventually decided on is a slightly modified version of the black symbol to the right in that drawing, which is apparently used in sheet music for piano to denote when the player should release the sustain pedal. i chose it less for its specific meaning and more so just because it's a music thing that kind of looks like a snowflake (or, perhaps, a star).
- then there's the other major addition with dess's ??? form: the halo! it's meant to be another music staff reference, with constantly changing notes traveling along it, but contorted into a guitar-like shape. i'm not 100% set on the colors i used for it tbh, i might change those in future drawings of her.
here's the fun part: when dess wants to make music, she's learned how to take her halo and temporarily turn it into, essentially, a hologram version of her guitar that she can actually play songs on! good thing she has a couple of picks in her coat pockets. i wonder what else is in there...?
lastly, for comparison's sake, i drew dess with kris and noelle, back when they were all together... and where they're at now.
(reminder that kris uses they/them pronouns!)
that should be everything covered! if you enjoyed my dess thoughts, may i also take this opportunity to recommend: my playlist for her! it's a little shy of four hours long, featuring 69 songs in a long-deliberated order meant to go through the story of her life - including how i hope her story resolves.
happy dess day everyone! no matter what holiday you celebrate :)
#deltarune#deltacember#december holiday#dess holiday#i have put so much thought into my version of dess both visually and otherwise. if you love her half as much as i do pls let me know#for the record all the drawings featured here were made (at least digitally) in the past week#but the oldest elements of her design that carried through to now are from doodles i did during class back in september#for knight!dess fans: you know how i mentioned she carries guitar picks on her?#well if queen's pin had a sharp enough point to be used as a blade for making dark fountains... why not those?#(if i fully subscribed to knight!dess then i would've drawn an alt to her ??? design that's more... knighty and hides her true identity#but. just throwing that out there.)
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Was just thinking about how in C2 DELTARUNE theres a door in queens palace that leads to a room queen designed for asriel but kris wont let us, the player, see it. And that got me thinking, so I thought I'd share the fan theory that came out of it. I'm not fully convinced by this since we'd need more information but I think it logically follows and I'd like to share. So, stop reading past this point for major spoilers of secret stuff and easter eggs.
In chapter 1, theres a lot of talk around town about asriel, his friends who haven't gone to college yet, or aren't going to, miss him and tell us a lot about him. About how he was helpful, kind, supportive, he easily made friends with everyone. Kris doesnt have many friends their age because they were always following Asriel around. We know that Asriel is supposed to be coming home from college soon in a week, and each chapter is roughly a day so we're counting down to Asriel coming home.
I'd like to also preface with the observation that Gaster, or atleast the goners seem very present in the light world around hometown. Temmie has an egg which they say is their partner, which seems like a call back to the hard boiled egg in undertale, but what if instead, it's the man behind the tree seen later in the dark world which is the only source of eggs as an item. Theres also the striped bird in the library, which greatly resembles a goner from undertale.
And lastly, near the bunker that you cant enter, if kris stands near it in chapter 1, it begins playing ominous music which has been associated with Gaster.
Now that we've got all that out of the way, I'd like to pose a question: what if something happened to Asriel?
What if something happened to asriel when they last came back from college, leading to asriel dying, potentially near the bunker? And kris, so distraught was willing to do everything in their power to undo it? We can see gasters tendrils through the light world, especially concentrating around the bunker. If he reached out to kris or vice versa, and kris begged them to fix it, gaster could have made a faustian bargain with them, and taught them how to open dark worlds that are manipulated by his desire when he opens them, and he could create a vessel for Asriel. But in the meantime, Kris needed to incubate asriel, or the cost of plucking asriels soul from the aether was kris's soul, and we're playing as Asriel possessing kris. And Ralsei is the intended vessel, extra indicated by the heart on ralseis robes. Kris might be avoiding developing feelings for ralsei as an individual knowing what the outcome will be, but needs Asriel to love Ralsei to cement the connection later, assuming love of the vessel, something mentioned very early into the vessel creation, could be what ties a soul to a new body. It also makes ralseis name make more sense.
I feel like kris and Ralsei are indeed up to something that we dont know about, considering Ralsei talked to kris in the cutscene without us knowing what they said. And from spamton we know that lightner souls are powerful, and if [heaven] is the light world, then a lightner soul could make a darkner into a lightner.
It could also add an extra level of horror to the genocide and snowgrave situations, considering that kris didn't know his brother was capable of that kind of evil, and that maybe subverting the natural law was a mistake, asriel becoming a vengeful wraith, lashing out at being denied peace and destroying kris' life, not remembering who they were.
If pacifist it also makes sense how easily we the player befriend everyone. It's incredibly out of character for kris, but not for asriel. And why kris' room in the dark world looks more like asriels side of the room which makes me think that if true, Ralsei may be in on his own annihilation. Because darkners are meant to serve a purpose and cant deviate beyond reasonable limitations. And to come full circle, maybe the reason kris is hiding things about asriel from the player is that the player is asriel, and if that realization comes to early, we'd be lost as we completely disassociate from kris.
And it would also tie into the themes of overcoming loss present in undertale. In undertale it was Asriel who couldnt accept charas death and everything was set in motion by his inability to accept her death or harm others, and everything ended when she possessed frisk and led him to help asriel overcome his grief. This time it would be charas counterpart, kris, unable to accept his brothers death, and brought him back, willing to sacrifice as many other people as it takes to regain what was lost.
Like I said I'm not completely sold on this yet but I thought it was interesting and would fill in some holes left by the story so far. We'll need more information to verify but it definitely seems like something toby would do, based on undertale. We'll have to see how it shakes out.
#deltarune#theory#kris dreemurr#kris deltarune#deltarune chapter two#what if something is wrong with asriel
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I made more for asriel+chara+gaster At The College (headcanon..? AU??) because I want it and I need it, and I have feelings.
They’re so….. they’re so. Ya know?
#deltarune#undertale#asriel#chara#gaster#this is so chaotic sorry#papyrus is there too bc I said so#I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT GASTER BEING ASSOCIATED WITH MUSIC#I miss them but we never really truly knew these three did we 😳#even so…….. 🥺#why is this not showing up in tags for me. what bad word did I say.#idk man#love and light
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deltarune megapost
I wanted to make a Deltarune post about the lore and the things that aren’t obvious. And once I do that I wanna focus on why Mettaton is incredibly important to this setting
And also why he poses a problem
Why did Toriel and Asgore get divorced?
Without the setting of Undertale, Asgore and Toriel’s marriage still broke up after they had Asriel. There needs to be a reason though. In UT it was Asgore’s ‘worst of both worlds’ decision regarding killing anybody that fell from the human world, including children. We saw how close they were before this happened. Only something deep and serious caused that rift. In Deltarune, what on earth did Asgore do?
What happened to Dess?
Mentioned a handful of times by Noelle, Dess was her older sister and is mentioned In Undertale.... in that Xbox exclusing casino thing. The way Noelle talks about her, the conspicuous way Noelle gets locked out of her big house - it implies Dess is gone or deceased. Berdly recalls a spelling bee when he and Noelle were younger where she, despite being smarter than him, misspelled ‘December’, allowing him to win.
In the two-player spelling puzzle, it also spells out ‘December’ as Noelle recalls the past and her silhouette regresses to a child while she does so. Being distracted by her sister’s disappearance, rather than pure shyness, could account for her misspelling her name on stage, and it clearly left a big psychological mark for her to have this visual regression in the Dark World.
However, there’s a graveyard in Hometown with no Dess. I heard another theory that she has been missing for years, because where each character’s personal room is made by Queen to reflect their tastes via their search results, Noelle has a calendar where every day is December 25th. This could imply that Noelle continually searches the internet for ‘December Holiday’, her sister’s name, to see if there are clues to her disappearance, but of course the only result you would get is the date of Christmas.
Who is the Knight?
It’s now implied to be Kris, who has been forcibly removing the player’s influence to act on their own. By all accounts the Knight is the game’s main antagonist. Spade King and Queen both mention the Knight as someone who influenced their position - they brought Spade King to absolute power, and showed Queen that creation of new worlds was possible.
We’re led to believe that Kris was doing this, because they’ve been acting outside of the player’s control. Eating the entire pie between chapter 1 and 2 might have been a red herring to cover that they also went to the library and used that knife to slash open a dark fountain there.
However. This has issues. How would they even manage to shuffle slowly all the way to the library and get in the computer lab? The Knight is also the one creating the hidden bosses. They talked to Jevil until he realised he was in a game and he lost his mind; they ruined Spamton’s life by elevating him to success and then crushing him. Whatever the Knight is doing seems to be deliberately planned with key players in mind.
Kris opening the fountain at home at the end of ch.2 can be explained in that you just figured out in Cyber World that anyone determined enough can do this, and so, Kris decided to. So a better question might even be...
What does Kris want?
We have no idea. They are capable of removing the SOUL, ‘us’, temporarily, and putting things in motion we cannot influence. But they also keep putting us back in control afterward. This is hinted at right when ch.2 starts, where if you inspect the cage in Kris’s bedroom they threw us into, the description says it’s inescapable. Meaning Kris came back and took us out, willingly.
They allow us to pilot them through the game. Why? Because they cannot live without the SOUL for long for some reason? Because they’re bad at bullet hell? Why did they slash Toriel’s tyres before opening the fountain, making sure nobody could drive away?? Why did they specifically open the door?
You can find out details about Kris through the creepy way you interact with the townsfolk, who think you are Kris. They play the piano at the hospital waiting room - better than you. They used to go to church just to get the special church juice. It’s all normal, relatable things, not like someone who’s trying to plunge the world into darkness. Judging by their search history portrayed in their Queen’s castle room, they really want to see their brother again. However the castle has a room based on Asriel’s search history too, and Kris (not you) closes their eyes and won’t look at it.
What is Ralsei?
His name is an anagram of Asriel. Is he an extension of Asriel? The slightly flirtier dialogue in ch.2 would point to no. Is he an extension of Kris themselves, given the link between Kris’s childhood habit of wearing a headband with red horns on it, to pretend to be a monster like their family?
Ralsei knows exactly where the Dark World in the school is located, and unlike regular Darkners, knows the world is folded up inside the ‘real world’. There’s a certain whiplash to Ralsei telling you to hop out of his reality into yours and go down the hallway to retrieve all the board game items.
How does he jump from one Dark World to another, without assistance? How does he not get petrified like Lancer and Rouxls? Is this a power level thing because he’s a prince or something else? We definitely do not know enough about Ralsei.
He also says this incredibly suspicious thing after you spare Spamton NEO. Susie was also curious but accepts that maybe it ‘didn’t mean anything’, which is a sure tell that these optional bosses do mean something.
Someone is orchestrating what’s happening, opening fountains, manipulating the rulers, and influencing NPCs to become the optional bosses. Why? I suspect Ralsei for both knowing too much, and pretending something doesn’t matter when it clearly does. Until Asriel actually comes home from college I’m going to suspect he’s involved in this too.
How much does Seam know?
Seam on the other hand knows a lot about what’s going on but is openly withholding information while helping you. He’s nihilistic. He says things like:
One day soon... You too, will begin to realize the futility of your actions. Ha ha ha... At that time, feel free to come back here. I'll make you tea... And we can toast... to the end of the world!
Either this ‘end of the world’ is a reference to The Roaring, where opening too many dark fountains dooms the Dark World and the real one... or, I can’t get out of my head the idea that Deltarune takes place in a fake, or weird reconstruction of Undertale where things don’t match up, and eventually it will have to disappear. After all, powers of determination and creating and manipulating universes are Undertale’s basic bread and butter. How can we look at an Alternate Universe containing the characters we already know and not suspect that? Seam also uses Gaster’s key words, ‘darker, yet darker’, seemingly to clue us in that he’s not off track here.
Why haven’t we seen Papyrus?
This is a bright neon flashing ‘something’s not right’ sign. It’s not like Papyrus’s voice actor was too busy or anything. His absence is noticable and for a reason. Nice of Sans to promise we could meet him despite being aware we’re piloting a child’s body around, though, even if he didn’t follow through.
What locations in town could be used for dark fountains in the next 4 chapters?
If the sequence continues, we have chapter 1 in the school games room, chapter 2 in a computer lab, and chapter 3 in front of Kris’s television, where the aesthetic of each setting influences the world, characters, and enemies in the Dark World created there. Future possibilities include the church, the hospital, sans’s grocery store, Noelle’s house, and the closed bunker.
What the hell’s in the closed bunker
This one’s too obvious, honestly. I think it’ll open for no reason in chapter 7 and a little white dog will bounce out and steal one of your key items and nothing else happens.
Why does Asgore have these
Unlike the bunker feeling like a joke teaser, I gotta believe this is foreshadowing something weird. For example, what does opening a dark fountain in here with the seven flowers do? Does it just take you into Undertale?
Each chapter will have a hidden boss with a ‘soul mode’ from Undertale
Chapter 1 let you stay red, but I think each subsequent chapter is going to change your soul mode to one of the seven colours and design the encounter around that. Purple, yellow, green and blue were used in Undertale, leaving the light blue and orange modes yet to be revealed.
How does Spamton emulate Mettaton Neo’s name, body, and incorporate his battle theme, and the ‘Dummy!’ theme, with no actual connection between them ingame?
This is a really fun one that’s explained over in this post here. Swatch is the Dark World creation from the paint program on the library computers, so he’s able to explain that a Lightner made the robot body decaying in the castle basement that way.
Mettaton went to the library and drew his ideal form, Mettaton NEO, in MS Paint, and the Dark World formed that into a puppet body which Spamton was able to hijack temporarily. So by doing that Spamton was able to channel Mettaton’s appearance, attacks, music, and SOUL mode for the fight.
This might mean that the future hidden bosses, each with their own SOUL mode, might be based on the associated character for that mode (Muffet, Undyne, and Sans or Papyrus), and the boss will take on some aspect of them from their world to leech their fight mechanics.
The Problem With Mettaton
We don’t exactly know what Deltarune is about. It’s an alternate universe where the characters from Undertale already live on the surface, have completely normal lives, but diverge from the storyline of Undertale and, crucially, have not lived through the changes Frisk brought to their lives.
Remember how Undertale had a dozen different ending routes depending on who you befriended? The constant reinforcement in Undertale was that your choices mattered. Through Frisk, you chose to bring Alphys closure about her mistakes, you chose to befriend papyrus instead of attacking him, you chose to help Alphys and Undyne realise their feelings for each other and it’s only doing that that leads to the golden ending and escape to the surface.
Deltarune is the opposite, your choices do not matter. The only thing you can do to force the route of the game to change is to force Noelle into a No Mercy run, which is indirect, and also, a total desperation to mess with an otherwise set course. This version of the characters have not been helped by Frisk - Undyne and Alphys are not together, Papyrus has no friends, Asgore cannot get over himself, and they’re clearly the worse for it, but potentially, you COULD still do these things. In fact it’s hinted that you already are.
But there’s Mettaton.
He’s still a ghost and does not leave his house. In Frisk’s world, Gaster deleted himself, promoting Alphys to royal scientist by bluffing with Mettaton, and she then build him his ideal body. In Kris’s world... Alphys is a school teacher. There’s no barrier to break, no reason to experiment on souls, no Flowey mistake, and no body for Mettaton.
It was sad in Ch.1, but now with the Spamton NEO fight in ch.2, it’s unmissable. Mettaton wants that body and he cannot get it. Alphys in this universe is not going to leave her teaching job and suddenly be able to build a robot. Mettaton is just... screwed out of his happy ending and cannot get it.
So what resolution could this have? If it wasn’t for Mettaton I might believe in the vaildity of Deltarune and Hometown. But. How can you doom this character? If Undertale was the only way Mettaton could be befriended, then Undertale is Primary Universe A and Seam is right - the world of Deltarune is doomed as some kind of aberration. It all relies on how this gets explained in the future, but the core mystery of Deltarune is how exactly this universe intersects with Undertale and whether one is an offshoot of the other. How the Dark World links into that is another complication. But even as we get more fun characters and neat stuff in the Dark Worlds, let’s not forget we have absolutely no idea why Undertale’s characters are living here with no mention of underground or why there are no other humans beside Kris.
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Okay so I have a Lot of Thoughts about Deltarune. So! Here goes my best attempt at explaining my Big Chapter 2 brain blast. Here there be dragons etc etc this stuff gets spoiler heavy.
With most of the cast of Deltarune’s Light World being counterparts to Undertale characters (even relatively minor ones), it seems odd that Kris has no immediate direct counterpart in the same way Toriel or Bratty do. At first, one might think they’re either a counterpart of Frisk or Chara, but some of the material in Chapter 2 leads me to another conclusion that I personally think would be fun to think out!
Kris isn’t a counterpart to either Frisk, Chara, or even some combination of the two.
Kris is a counterpart to Flowey.
What’s the evidence? Well, let’s start with Kris’ general position in the story. Kris is the adoptive child of the Dreemurs and Asriel’s sibling. Kris is human in some (ambiguous) fashion, and notably does not have a Soul of their own – instead having the player’s soul puppet them throughout the game, an act they’re clearly not fond of. Perhaps most interestingly, they wear a green-and-yellow shirt, a lot like Asriel’s in Undertale, although with only one stripe to Asriel’s two.
Kris seems to have been acting strangely following Asriel leaving for college – they seem dejected and without purpose.
The secret boss of Chapter 2 is a broken doll in an underground facility of some sort ensnared in vine-like strings, desperately yelling at Kris about not wanting to be a puppet piloted by other people; the dialogue following this where Kris clearly has a distressed, upset reaction to the whole thing suggests this struck more of a nerve than it seems at first. The facility itself is overgrown and tangled in vines, and even the puppet is left tangled in them following the fight. Further to this, until the fight starts, Kris can only explore this area on their own.
If you head to the bunker south of town after leaving the Library in Chapter 2, you get a brief exchange between a couple of the schoolkids, Kris, and Susie, wherein it’s implied that Kris knows what’s in the bunker and evidently doesn’t like it – getting called a coward by Monster Kid and Snowdrake, and Susie not wanting to push them to talk about it. Again, notably, if you stand near the door, you can quietly hear mus_smile; an audio file associated with Gaster (and in turn with the True Lab in Undertale).
Kris repeatedly takes control away from the player to act independently – and does so violently, as if desperately resisting.
The final scene of Chapter 2 involves Kris violently creating a new Dark Fountain, turning on the TV to static – and in the darkness, the static TV gives a familiar smile. The credits music skips, looping back on itself over and over.
Ultimately, Kris is a Soulless shell left feeling vacant and apathetic after Asriel left, seeding chaos where they can and trying to seize control from the player – an outside force interrupting their ability to engage with their life as they want. They have some history with a place implied to be related to the True Lab and have an association with snaring vines and plants.
Flowey is the Soulless shell left behind after Asriel’s Soul left. He seeds chaos and resists the player’s attempts to control the game, wanting to go back to playing how he wants. He was born through experiments related to the True Lab. He uses snaring vines to fight, puppet-mastering the plot.
He smiles through the television static.
He loops over and over.
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Undertale/Deltarune Theory: The Two Angels of The Prophecy
Since I’ve been playing Deltarune as of late, I thought I would share some very compelling details I’ve noticed in game that have been rolling around in my mind lately...
This is a theory pertaining both Undertale AND Deltarune, because I found connections between both of them interestingly enough. To start my theory off: I will begin with the very prominent theme in Deltarune of religion. There appears to be a strange emphasis on how religious the home town of Deltarune is, with everyone worshipping some deity called “The Angel.”
It seems to be done in such a manner, that it is building up that the town is worshipping some false God of sorts. The town itself feels very…off. A very ominous vibe to it, especially with the very creepy bunker to the south of town as well.
The question is.. who is this Angel..? To answer this question, we will have to dig deeper. Another notable theme in Deltarune, is that many items found in the Light World—represent places and people in the Dark World. It mirrors it, essentially.
In the light world school closet, the cards on the floor represent the card suite inhabitants/card castle. The plush doll represents Seam, etc. Additionally, the red horns in Kris’s house could symbolically represent Ralsei’s presence, with his little red horns.
However... even more interesting enough, is that in the town hospital can be found two angel dolls. One— that was made by Kris and Asriel, where they “wasted the whole time making big wings for it.”
And the other, which was made by Noelle and her friend—looked like a typical angel doll, only “it’s lack of facial features was unsettling.”
This appears to be clear symbolism for two different characters/angels... but whom? The first one, I believe matches the description of Asriel’s final form in Undertale perfectly: it has a rather disproportionate body, with huge over-sized, magnificent wings.
Additionally, Asriel’s final form matches up with the Deltarune of Gerson’s prophecy, with each part of his angel body aligning with the runes. Gerson also mentions an Angel in his prophecy, saying that it will free everyone from the underground—which Asriel does at the end of Undertale, with the power of the seven souls.
Then... who is the second angel, who is symbolically represented in the hospital? An angel we haven’t seen yet, but likely will at the end of Deltarune. Based off the evidence/implications given, I believe it is Gaster.
To begin, the second angel doll is described with a lack of features that makes it unsettling—which is very reminiscent of Gaster.
To build upon this, the angel of Undertale—Asriel— plays a focal point in Undertale’s story. He is not shown until the very end of the game, with the true ending, and is very mysterious at first. On top of this, many.. many songs in Undertale have the leitmotifs of Asriel’s theme: HIS theme.
Meanwhile, Deltarunes soundtrack is heavily focused around Lietmotifs of Gasters theme, with the intro song being called ANOTHER HIM... Another angel, if you will. This implies that he is going to play a heavy role in the story, which is very much seen on the surface level of Deltarune—with the involvement of the “strange knight” as well as the subtext with Jevils backstory, having met a man that made his vision of the world grow “Darker, yet darker” and made him go insane, as told by the tale Seam the shopkeeper tells the protagonist.
Additionally, the very first castle we see in the game--(not card castle, mind you) has wings on it... much akin to an angel’s, and is spewing a dark fountain forth from it.
At the end of the chapter of Deltarune, Susie shows clear concern that they did not get rid of the right fountain. One fountain—the original, brought the dark world its life. The other, an unnatural source of darkness to upset the balance. And Ralsei, strangely enough, eagerly directed Kris to get rid of the Card Castle fountain—not the one coming from the Angel’s castle. The Angel’s Castle is also an empty kingdom, with no subjects.. except Ralsei.
But who is the king? Nobody knows… And a very foreboding music plays in the castle town, adding to the mystery of it. Ralsei, who is quite suspicious enough as it is, (might go into this further in another theory later) will not let Kris inside the castle, stating that Kris must save the world/complete the prophecy first... and then they can come back. Ralsei acts very nervous and distraught when Kris keeps trying to enter the castle, and blocks him from going in. He then shuts Kris out of the kingdom gates, barring him off from going back inside--sinisterly enough.
Additionally, the plot of Deltarune is based off the prophecy, to “banish the Angels heaven”. This makes the Angel seem like a very malicious figure...but why? What are the Angels motives, and what is the “Angels heaven..?” Well, if you talk to Gerson in Undertale, he says an interesting bit of dialogue that could be interpreted a bit differently with my context/point of view. One could argue that he is talking about “the angel of hyper death”, Asriel, when he says the Angel of death, but I believe it not to be the case.
Gerson states the following:
“Lately, the people have been taking a bleaker outlook…callin that winged circle the “Angel of Death”.
A harbringer of destruction, and waitin to “free” us from this mortal realm…”
This seems like a much more sinister view of the Angel, and not like Asriel. Even though Asriel is very threatening, he is still pure of heart, and ends up saving all of Monsterkind in the end. The second angel however? Wants to “free” every one, and brings destruction in his wake. In Deltarune, we see much destruction and chaos being brought about by a strange “knight”, who appeared one day to take over the card kingdom and beyond, using the Chaos King to help him assert control.
Seam also mentions that he hasn’t seen this much chaos, since the incident that occurred with Jevil—which implies that the stranger and the strange mysterious knight are one and the same. So, what then is the meaning of “free us from this mortal realm…?”, from Gerson’s prophecy of the second angel? Well, interestingly enough: in Deltarune Jevil mentions this line of dialogue in his boss fight, which lines up perfectly with Gerson’s dark prophecy:
“I AM INNOCENT, INNOCENT. I JUST WANTED TO PLAY A GAME, GAME. BUT THE BORING KINGS FOUND SUCH FUN TO BE A TROUBLE. AS PUNISHMENT, THEY CRAVED TO IMPRISION MY BODY. THEY LOST THE CHASE, AND LOCKED UP THEIR ENTIRE RACE, BUILDING A PRISON AROUND THE WHOLE WORLD. NOW I’M THE ONLY FREE ONE”.
This is extremely significant, because Jevil was made aware by the Knight that the world is only a game, and that he can become “free” by ignoring the rules of the game, if you will—to become sentient of the game itself. This matches up perfectly with Gaster: who after being shattered across time and space by falling into his creation, became aware that the world was all just a game.
So why usurp the Dark World? Presumably, to make everyone aware that it is all just a game: to save them, from being stuck forever without choice. To make them free…done in a very twisted way of course, taking over the kingdom, locking up the rulers and all.
So why do this? After all he was a former scientist of Asgore’s in Undertale. This is where the symbolism comes in, that I noticed. Gaster seems to be a “fallen angel” of sorts. He was driven into madness after “falling” into his creation— after messing with the balance of things. What that is exactly, is unknown at this time. But it is implied that he discovered the presence of timelines, and tried to figure out how to manipulate them.
This in a sense, was an act against nature/trying to defy god by trying to figure out the interworking’s of the world’s universe.
Additionally, in Deltarune there is a repeated theme of a “shining light” that guides you—where you save your Soul at. In the bible, the fallen angel Lucifer, who defied God, is likewise represented with a “shining light”. In the files, Gaster is also associated with the number 666—which aligns with the prophecy of him being a dark, fallen angel.
One could even argue his font/name Wingdings is symbolic, from the wing in the name. It isn’t a stretch to say that Toby got some inspiration from the Bible--he has gotten many inspirations from Undertale from various sources, including Asriel’s symbolism from a Hebrew god/demon named Azrael.
To add unto this theory that links both Asriel and Gaster together as being both angels, is that both were striken by tragedy. Asriel was killed at a very young age, and is forever stuck in an endless purgatory in the body of a flower. Meanwhile, Gaster was forgotten by everyone, including the ones he held closest, and was shattered across time and space. Both characters are implied to have been driven to madness because of this, but with Asriel having a bit more heart/sympathy to him in the very end, (due to having the power of the human Souls to feel compassion again) and freeing all of monsterkind out of a deep care for Frisk.
Gaster on the other hand…? Seems to be a lot more unforgiving, and much more threatening, seen by his heavily implied actions in Deltarune, taking over kingdoms without mercy, and establishing his power in the Dark World.
Another notable feature between the two characters, is that they both have black markings on their faces, stretching down from their eyes—(Asriel’s markings are seen during his final boss fight.) What are these? Well…one datamined detail (sourced from the Deltarune reddit) from Deltarune might be the answer to this question.
Both Asriel and Gaster have gone through incredible suffering, so this ���pain” could have essentially manifested into the black markings, similar to tears. In the beginning of Deltarune, with the player’s encounter with the narrator/ Gaster, (or at the very least heavily implied...he speaks in the exact same manner) he asks the player what their favorite food is. Two answers, that immediately stand out as strange and bizarre—are pain, and cold—which at first glance is just an off the wall comment/dialogue option, but upon second glance gives us a window into what he has gone through—painful suffering, much like Asriel did, on a plane of existence where they could do nothing. Both characters also have committed horrible actions, due to their fall into madness, (Asriel as Flowey, being stuck in a soulless vessel for ages,) and Gaster, due to existential madness from realizing the entire world is just a game, presumably overthrew an entire kingdom to “free” everyone.
(Almost forgot--) Additionally, another piece of dialogue which links together the Knight and the Angel being one and the same—is a dialogue seen from the Chaos King/Spade King himself. During the battle with him—he mentions multiple times how he obeys the word of the Knight, and with him he shall make a “new world out of Holy Shadows”, which backs up my theory even more, that the folks of the Light world are worshiping a false idol, a dark angel to destroy them all.
Sound familiar...?
I believe this is made all the more likely with Undertale being a mirror to Deltarune and vice versa—it would make all the more sense that each game would have an Angel character, considering each deals with a prophecy containing the Deltarune. One Angel of Light, and one of Dark.
EDIT: Here are some additional findings that make this come all together even more.
*In Undertale, every zone’s monsters reflect the boss monster of the area. (The monsters in Alphys zone are all anime related. The ones in Undyne’s zone are all muscular/into piano like her, etc...) the only area in the game that doesn’t make sense is Mettaton’s zone in the Core. The mobs don’t suit him at all: except when you realize that he wasn’t meant to be the true boss of the Core in the first place, since Alphys made him. If Gaster hadn’t died/become shattered across time and space, he would have been the likely boss monster of that area. What is notable, is that all of the enemies of the Core are primarily knights, mad, some of them use crosses as attacks, have wings, one of them uses a “Morningstar” as a weapon, (possible reference to Lucifer Morningstar) and you have to defeat some of the monsters by “praying”. Not symbolizing Mettaton at all—but rather Gaster, showing that the foreshadowing seen in Deltarune is indeed likely correct.
*The egg in Deltarune is a possible reference to the tale of Adam and Eve, as it aligns very well. A mysterious figure tempts someone behind a tree with a “fruit of knowledge”. Kris is offered the egg by “him”, presumably Gaster. Taking the egg to the Light-World doesn’t change it like all the other items in the game—it still exists in the Light-World—showing the forbidden knowledge that the world is all just a game. Even though it is a secret/not accessed by usual means, the egg is additionally a key item—that might prove more important by the end of the game.
#deltarune#undertale#undertale theory#deltarune theory#asriel#asriel dreemurr#gaster#theories#theory#game theory#heree we go again#my incoherent rambles#but at least with more evidence this time!#warning long post
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(( Hey guys. Mun here. I know, I know, I’ve been relatively quiet lately. For... a while now. I should probably give a life update. A bit more of a comprehensive one.
After a simultaneously wild and dull 10 years of my life beginning with university, which included a lot of online and a little offline drama, the end of a 7 year relationship that I’m still kind of reeling over several months onward, and a whole lot of paranoia and health problems both mental and physical... My life situation IRL took a drastic turn and almost brought my online presence to a screeching halt. Around May-June of this year, I moved back in with my parents, got a job at a major UK toy store chain, and have no longer been able to sustain my wild-ass 10am-5am living due to changes in schedule and having major responsibility for the first time in my life. One such responsibility being not keeping my parents awake til fuck knows in the morning, ahaha. And, y’know, actually getting decent sleep before work... (something I’m failing a little at right now,,,)
I’ve got mixed feelings about it, but overall... it’s actually been a pretty positive experience. Being definitively useful, wanted and moreover needed does a lot for one’s self-esteem. Knowing I’m good enough at doing something that people will take my advice, and that I will get called into work for more hours instead of having my hours cut, is kind of a good buzz, even if it’s taken a lot of getting used to and been stressful for my RP life. Not having any friends IRL sucks hard when I can’t talk to my online ones as much but... I’m trying to deal as best I can.
But right now, let’s forget all that. It’s time for me to be sappy, because it’s late at night, I’m sick, and it’s almost Thanksgiving. ))
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(( Now, I know I’m not American, so when it comes to Thanksgiving, I don’t go there. I might have humoured a “turkey” dinner of my own for a couple of years just so I wouldn’t be left out. Which I guess might be kinda sad but I prefer to think of it as an act of sentimentality.
And, what can I say? I’m a very sentimental person.
That sentimentality is what leads me to make this post. There’s so many important people I’ve met that I’m grateful for. I’d like to talk about some of them, because I don’t think I should be particularly shy about this. I might not get all of them, because I’m kinda scatterbrained (and at least as of making alterations to this part of the post mid-way through typing it it’s 11:30 and I have to get up at 8).
First off: if you’re in the Sunny Day Café server? You fucking rock! Even if you don’t talk too much in there, your continued support of my first real attempt to run a relatively public RP server is really appreciated. In particular on this front I’d like to thank Rose (blogs: @kxndncss @grxxnheart @hopxlcss), Shad (blog: @flapsinhands) and Ozi (blog: @magicbyhalves) for helping me with moderating the place. I’ll be the first to admit that my moderation skills are a bit... well, 👋. I’m often not a good judge of situations, and find it difficult to trust my own judgements. It’s something I’m having to learn. So the help is really important to me.
Of course, these three (who I will dedicate more time to in this post later for sure) have also been really helpful with plot stuff. There’s a particular group of people who’ve been helpful with plot stuff, actually, aside from these three, and I’d like to mention them too.
Let’s start with Ziz! (blogs: @unseenbutnotgone @seenbutgone @unheardanduncaring @distastefulblossom @setebcs)
My memory is trash, but I think Ziz and I started talking over Wings wanting to get to know Fin back when he was Sleazy? Because he was getting involved with his son, and of course a good dad would want to make sure his son is in good company. He wasn’t, but Fin grew from that, and I’m thankful for that too, but also I’m thankful for what happened when Fin ended up applying this relearned kindness when Wings’ son was forcibly fused with a corrupt fragment of his.
And then it all went really gay from there, and now they’re married and have spread the gay even further. It’s not even over yet, there’s so much potential for Reset and Fin still and I’m eager to explore it and fit them into this intricate new world that I’ve never really touched on in RP before. And to write with someone as caring, empathetic, funny and smart as Ziz? I’m really honoured. They’re really inspiring to me and I adore RPing with them. They put so much work into their muses, visually and historically and meaningfully and I just... 💋👌 Mwah. Ziz as a writer, and an artist, and as a person too - I look up to them so damn much.
And I definitely cannot mention inspiring people without coming to talk about Rose. She and Ziz were ultimately the reason I started to invest so much in my Gasters, they’ve provided constant encouragement with my writing, I’ve been able to bounce ideas off of them not just for my stories but for theirs too. They’ve been emotionally supportive and emotionally constructive too, which is honestly fantastic. I know I’m someone who has a lot of growing to do. I appreciate that there’s people who’ll stick by me while I’m doing it and help me along.
Rose is such a pleasure to write with. Her prose is utterly gorgeous to read, it feels like seeing the individual threads coming together in a tapestry. Her talent for finding mood music is fantastic and something I honestly aspire to, because mood music for writing or setting a scene is so so important. Her characters are always really well researched and have so much depth to them, and it’s really great seeing her influences because damn she has good taste too. And what’s more, I honestly do look up to Rose, because while her life experiences may not be perfect she’s accomplished a lot of things I would love to accomplish myself. She’s really inspiring to me.
While these are the two folks I talk to most, particularly about RP stuff, there’s a whole gang of bastards I’m thankful for... I’ll have to bullet point these guys because there’s a good few blogs associated with them and I want to try and include all the active/main ones?
Rav - @imbreaking-sans @imdespondent-sans @mraudio-the-audacious
Bets - @fellythealphaskeleton @xa-eviterx
Situ - @shadowbirdsitu @sourtrout
Del - @skellie-bean @pocketpunk666
Collectively these are people I know I can come to when I need help with things, RP or otherwise, people I can vent to, people I can share experiences with, and people I can laugh with and listen to and just generally hang around and be myself with. Which is kind of really important, especially when I don’t entirely feel like I can be myself IRL still.
Rav honestly has such a good way with words, both when it comes to people and when it comes to prose, and seems wise way beyond her years at times. Her level-headedness has sometimes been a little intimidating to me, but possibly because it’d been a rare quality in people I’d known prior, and something I’m often lacking in myself. I look up to pretty much everyone for different reasons, or sometimes similar ones. Rav is one of these people I look up to, in part because of this level-headedness. (And also because holy shit she’s dealt with so much and still come out on top!!) She’s a lot of fun to write with and a very trustworthy person I’m honoured to call a friend.
I think, if my memory serves me right, when I was really starting to talk to this group as a group - not as it is now, but as it had been, with a few different people there or not there - it was Bets I’d first encountered. And, well, I didn’t make the best first impression, I don’t think... but I like to think it got way better afterwards. Bets is honestly a really fun and wild character whilst simultaneously having that level-headedness I really admire in people? And like, she has wack plotlines (I’m looking at all the Felly stuff especially with fuckin BIRDSCAPE), but it’s so much fun to see them unfold and be a part of them! I consider her one of the comic masters of the group alongside Ziz, and though their styles are fairly different I have a high respect for both of them. And what’s more, I’ve always found Bets super easy to approach, which is invaluable to me as someone who is very shy and unsure of themselves.
While I say Bets was one of the first people in this group that I encountered, but as the group stands now it was actually Situ. Prickly and Fin had this thing going between them that grew into joke-flirting that became actual flirting, because when you do something like that it’s almost certainly going to stop being a joke if you keep doing it. If there’s one thing I’m a sucker for it’s slow burn and these two delivered so wonderfully. Situ has always been super friendly, super eager and super full of enthusiasm! And while I regretfully haven’t always been able to match that, I have always had fun RPing with her. I love her art, her muse designs, and - honestly this might seem out of left field one day could you gimme a hand with my hair? Yours always looks so good!! ... Er, that aside, you’re another really approachable person who I appreciate a lot. (I also admire your muse dedication like holy shit how many blogs do I have now)
I absolutely have to open with the Del paragraph by stating she is fucking hilarious. There’s a reason she’s using the Jevil icon on Discord at the moment; she’s definitely our Joker. I’m legally obligated to state she’s full of beans (it’s funny because the beans are her muses), and I respect her so much for sticking with child muses and RPing them so well when it must be really damn difficult at times. There’s a lot of challenges that come with child muses for sure. Del is also a great listener, an enthusiastic plotter, and an incredibly sweet person. Fun fact: she sent me a plush jackalope a while back and he’s sat by my bedside ever since, receiving cuddles when I needed them most! Another fun fact: she’s usually the person who initiates the “hewwo??” in voice calls. Chaotic alignment as hell.
I’ve talked a lot about a particular group of friends but they aren’t really the only people I interact with... and while the people I interact with regularly has dwindled a little, there’s two people not in this specific group who are still super important to me, who I mentioned earlier, actually.
I’ll mention Shad first - blog linked further up - as someone who I’m really glad I grew closer to? We’d shared a few friend groups but it took a bit for us to really start interacting, and I’m so glad we did. She has a fucking killer sense of humour and it bleeds into her RPing in the best way. Being involved in her plots in any way is freaking awesome, and she’s been super great about getting involved in mine in a way that’s really fleshed them out and given them direction and form. Not to mention she was one of the reasons I got back into Guild Wars 2 and we have such a good time playing together and talking.
I think at least for now the last person and absofuckinlutely not least I’ll talk about is Ozi... whose friendship with me long pre-dates my current blogs, as we started RPing together in the League of Legends community. She’s a really positive influence in my life, and I’m honestly really grateful that she’s stuck by me through our changes in fandom. Seeing her grow and improve as an artist has been an absolute pleasure, and her writing has always delighted me. The development turns she takes are fantastic and really well thought out, and that she can work with so little and make so much is inspiring as all hell. (I’m mostly talking about the amount of work she managed to put into fleshing out Thresh back when we were in the LoL fandom but damn she’s doing such a good job with Shantae in this regard too?? Thresh was just a lot more... bare-bones. Ba dum tsch.)
It’s about now that I’ve run out of steam and it’s past my bed time but I would like to say that this list is by no means exhaustive. There’s a lot of people who have put me on the path I’m on today, some who I may not talk to as much, some I talk to more, some who I don’t talk to anymore at all. Maybe they left my life on a good note, maybe on a bad. But each and every person we meet leaves some kind of mark, however big, however small.
I’m grateful for all the people who’ve not only left kind marks on me, but stayed, too. ))
#{}{} OOC#long post ))#(( sorry if this came out dumb or if there's any missing or incorrect details ))#(( i'm sick and very tired which is not helping my usually poor memory in any way ))#(( but pls know that i love u ))
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Backstory Ask meme, numbers 1-6?
BACKSTORY ASK MEME
1. How did you first come up with your muse’s backstory, if you did at all?
I'm going to put this answer at the end because it's going to get long.
2. If your muse is from a particular show/movie/comic/etc. , how did you first react when you first found out about your muse’s backstory?
Haaa, I honestly wish I remember. I honestly can't even explain why I find Gaster fascinating or even why I chose to write him. I just do. I literally don't have an explanation and... it's kinda weird, tbh.
3. Is your muse’s backstory relatable to you?
Honestly? Not really! I mean, I can find bits and pieces that are similar but, honestly? He's had a rough life. To put it mildly. He experiences and has been through a lot that I haven't. I can sympathize, but it's honestly not something that's relatable to me, as I've thankfully had a fairly good life.
4. Would you rewrite your muse’s backstory? If so, how?
There's been a few parts that I've considered rewriting, mainly because I feel Inferior to other portrayals of Gaster, but as it stands I've held my ground and there's nothing I'm particularly dying to change.
5. What song reminds you of your muse’s backstory?
Echo, probably. It's cliché as fuck but I'm really terrible at associating music to things. Or associating anything, really.
6. Does anything fit your muse’s backstory aesthetically?
I usually use a lot of black vs white vs grey to represent Gaster. Not only because it's his own color scheme, but Symbolically of the good he wants to do, the evil he ends up doing, plus the battle of Determination vs Void, etc. What Gaster used to be, what he wants to be, what he's becoming, what he currently is.
1. How did you first come up with your muse’s backstory, if you did at all?
Hold onto your butts.
The thing with Dr. Gaster is that we get a few key points in canon, and that's about it. We know he was the Royal Scientist before Alphys, that he was incredibly intelligent, that he was destroyed by his own creation, that he created the CORE, and that he's 'scattered through space and time,' whatever that's supposed to mean.
I think as far as canon goes, that's all we get. Entry No. 17 is in Wingdings and assumed to be related to Dr. Gaster, because his initials are W.D. and people assume it stands for Wingdings, due to the precedence of Sans and Papyrus. Plus the MysteryMan, who most people assume is Dr. Gaster, but there's no real evidence either way.
The portrayals I were really interested in were the ones that portrayed this being as some eldritch creature beyond understanding, outside reality, that can toy with the world; sometimes appearing against Genocide Frisk / Chara, sometimes maliciously attacking whatever else in sight.
Restoring Dr. Gaster from his predicament is common in a lot of different fanon, so that was actually the starting point for development of this version.
In the original roleplay where I developed this character, Gaster had isolated some superpowered humans, tricking them into thinking the world was ending so he could nab their souls, steal their Determination, ???, profit.
It was a pretty natural extension of what we see from Flowey that something that’s Soulless, or in Gaster’s case, missing most of his Soul, doesn’t exactly act... friendly. He’s acting irrationally, acting in his own self interest, and not really caring about the impacts of his actions so long as he gets what he wants. This remains the foundation of Unbound Form.
In this original RP, he also tricked one of the human protagonists into absorbing his soul and merging their minds. Upon doing so, he regained most of his clarity and I got a much better first look at who Dr. Gaster actually was. The first thing that stood out to me was a lot of fear.
It’s a pretty common headcanon that Gaster was among those who was on the surface originally. And given that he’s a scientist, the idea of him being a fighter--at least back then, didn’t really want to fight, didn’t really understand what was happening--why are they killing us? why can’t we live in peace? why is this happening to me?
We see most monsters desperately wanting to return to the surface, but then you think about what Sans talks about to the human--good food, good friends, good laughs; is leaving really worth it?
So I started to think about a monster that didn’t want to leave the Underground. Who so desperately just wanted to be safe, who wanted to build a paradise for monsters without humanity being involved.
Someone who was so deeply terrified of humans, so deeply terrified of the war.
This proved to be convenient, too--as it allowed Alphys’s discoveries to be her own, and allowed Gaster’s to be his own. I’m all for reinserting Gaster into the timeline, but that doesn’t mean he needs to take credit for things other characters did.
The exact details for this would come later.
For now I was working on his fall and shattering. I know a lot of people portray the CORE as a really dangerous place, where one wrong step will send you careening over the edge, but it never made sense to me. Gaster is smart, Gaster knows the power of his own inventions. I couldn’t imagine him ever exposing something that dangerous.
So then I added in this idea that the CORE shifts around on its own. Of course, it’s meant to just be another puzzle. But the idea that it could double as a means to reduce stress from the intense heat of the CORE gave me a unique opening: It meant that there was a brief time when the CORE’s... core was exposed and Gaster could fall.
Gaster may be meticulous and careful, but he can also be distracted and impatient, which lead to the accident of him disregarding the safety features and falling anyways.
As for his survival, the obvious culprit is Determination. In fact, it was so obvious that my roleplay partner figured it out before I even revealed it. The very thing that Gaster was trying to get in the roleplay all along, ... he already had!
Rather than make up some reason why Gaster would have Determination, either naturally or through experimentation, I chose to take inspiration from the Undyne fight and essentially say that Monsters are capable of producing Determination through willpower if their soul is falling apart but they’re managing to live on.
...
Of course, Monsters and Determination don’t get along. So that implied to me that something ... was missing.
The answer then was the Void.
Despite being an almost universal concept in the Undertale fandom, I’ve never really seen an explanation for what it is. Since the Void is so commonly associated with nothingness, emptiness, darkness, etc., I made the decision to make it the counter-force of Determination. Where Determination is the force that allows a soul to live past its demise, Void is the force that tries to push a soul to death.
And I decided to push it bigger.
We know that enough Determination allows one to alter fate and time. Obviously. It’s the entire premise of Undertale. But... why?
So I decided that Determination is not only the force that pushes Souls to exist, but the very force that pushes time forward. Ergo, when a soul possesses more Determination than the timeline itself, they become capable of seizing control of the flow of time and can manipulate time itself to their will.
In that case, Void would then become the force that seeks to end timelines, the controlling force, the force that prevents timelines from growing indefinitely and colliding into one another. It’s a buffer, the space that exists ambiently between timelines. The junkyard where anything that doesn’t belong to time gets yeeted.
And suddenly it sounded a lot like the general fandom’s interpretation.
Now, it’s easy to think, oh, the Void wants to destroy everything, it’s bad and Determination is good. But, just as the Genocide route shows us the evil power of Determination, the Void does good as well. As any gardener or oncologist knows, things growing indefinitely is not good.
And if a timeline remains stable by the ongoing push and pull of Determination and Void, I had my solution for how Gaster remains stable. Each piece of him produces Determination that’s kept in chack by Void that’s integrated into his soul.
So I had that explanation.
But how did his soul end up in pieces?
...Is anyone actually reading this? It’s ... pretty long. I’m going to cut it off here. If anyone wants to hear the rest of it send in an ask and I’ll finish typing it up lmao.
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In a classical music mood at the moment. So, this isn’t a comprehensive list but here’s some classical UT.
If i had to recommend a classical song for Undyne, it would HAVE to be 1812 Overture. For people who don’t understand... the guy literally included FULL ARTILLERY CANNONS TO BE BLOWN IN THE FINALE HE WANTED IT TO BE THAT PASSIONATELY LOUD AND AGGRESSIVE (Most versions have these annoying bells playing over the finale aswell but meh)
Papyrus is all i think of listening to a good upbeat version of Swan Lake’s Danse de cygnes Allegro moderato It’s even got the Nyeh heh heh quality about it (wow typing out the long title makes me sound like such a music nerd which i’m not lol)
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is pretty good at creating that tense feeling even though the thing sounds light and innocent. Which I think works well for Flowey. At the same time i like thinking about it as the background music of the forest area in Snowdin because of the wintery feel it gives off.
Waltz of the Flowers is a pleasant fit for Toriel’s character when you first meet and just the Ruins entirely. You can hear the regality in it, but it’s subtle. The whole thing’s just so pleasant to experience, just like at the start of the game. You’re curious. The ruins is this fun and interesting place and there aren’t really any stakes just yet.
Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu Op. 66 sums up some pretty immense emotional conflict, which interestingly enough I think goes well with how Frisk must feel with those first times facing Toriel. Like, imagine the moments where it suddenly calms down in the middle being when they’ve had to reload after dying/killing Toriel and just waking up in this contrastingly loving environment. Then they thrust straight back into it again going down those stairs.
In the Hall of the Mountain King I like to think as all the running away from Undyne you do in Waterfall. Like, you have to try and sneak away from her and once she catches sight of you it’s dammit dammit dammit RUNNNNN.
...The amount of bass going on there combined with the high stakes of the finale bit also gives off some Megalovania vibes but it’s a bit of a stretch in my opinion.
So this one’s not perfect (I might be projecting a lot) but the whole play with Alphys and Mettaton I’d associate with Can Can from Orpheus in the Underworld. Let me explain... see, the upbeat-ness and trill i think of not as enthusiasm but anxiety from Alphys. And the loud trumpets and everything become Mettaton’s flamboyancy out-shining her inputs with his shows. I mean, reflecting on the experience, the whole game Alphys put you through just to be part of your story was a pandemonium of nonsense.
So I can picture how Flowey’s trick at the end of a true pacifist, capturing everyone at their most vulnerable and becoming the Absolute God Of Hyperdeath then Frisk overcoming him by reaching out into the depths of his soul and trying to SAVE your friends tying in really well with the Swan Lake Finale. The only problem with it is that i don’t think it includes what I’d want for Asriel’s speech at the end with Frisk after he’s been saved himself. Those softer references to Asriel I’d link with the start of Swan theme instead.
For the Frisk uncovering the amalgamates, Aquarium (from Carnival of the Animals) is just the right levels of creepy. Or... if you’re feeling in the mood for it... Gaster references would be pretty cool with it aswell.
Chopin’s Ballade Op. 23 No. 1 (the sad one you might know Shigatsu Wa Kimi no Uso aka Your Lie in April ) I simply have to add on this list because it’s still pretty high up there as one of my fav piano pieces of all time. So this is the one I’m going to use for Sans coming to terms with the fact that Papyrus is dead in genocide runs.
But in all honesty, I think that Ballade Op. 38 No. 2 is actually a better fit for the whole thing. So I’ll suggest this one as how Sans would deal with it in a neutral run, where he’s just left to reflect on how everything played out with bitter hindsight, now being unable to do anything about it. (I really think that the feels for Sans losing his bro in neutral runs must be so much different than genocide for him. Watching the human bother to act kindly with other people... so why not him??? Still keeping an eye out, still remaining passive. Just mourning his brother left feeling empty without any explanation of why)
Night on Bald Mountain gave me serious nightmares as a kid (it’s the music in the freaky demon scene from Disney Fantasia). This one has to be given to truly the scariest character in the game. You. Here’s an ode to all those players that partnered up with Chara and gave those monsters a bad time.
And mannn I wish i could go on. But I’m falling asleep right now as i type. So I’ll stop. Maybe i’ll make some part 2 some day. Also, i wanted to add music reference links but the problem with classical music is that each version’s different which makes picking one really annoying
#classical music#undertale#undertale trash#head canons#music concepts#disneytale#using the tag wrong#but meh#it's still songs n stuff
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After careful preparations are made, Sans and Papyrus get their hand plates removed.
BOY that took longer than it should have. Between the insane number of edit markers I had after the first pass of editing, and my own pickiness with how this came together, I am several days later on this than I wanted to be. But here we are! The video’s up there, and here it is on Ao3 if you’d prefer to read it. Links to download the chapters as MP3s or listen on Soundcloud are in the video description on YouTube. And in case you’re lost, here’s where the series started and here’s the first chapter of this part.
Thanks yet again to @hatori1181 for performing Gaster and Asgore, and to @zarla-s for making this wonderful story, and being so generous in letting us fans put in our two cents on how different timelines might go.
As I’ve said before I have a few more ideas on future events for this, but they’ll probably come out as little single-scenes and one-shots rather than big honking things like this. I’ll build up a few before recording them though, lol.
Also, there’s a lot I want to talk about with what’s going on in this chapter, but it’s best that you read or listen before reading that. So it’s under the fold to avoid spoilers. EVEN MORE SELF-INDULGENT RAMBLING AHOY!
Whaddya know, it's a "Gaster survives" timeline! Just look at this big ol' happy screwed-up family. I thought about putting in a line directly pointing out that all 3 of them were now physically scarred by all this, but I couldn't find a good place to fit it in. So I trusted the reader would put that together, lol. Of course this wasn't going to go perfectly, nothing about this situation is ideal. Papyrus's reaction to it came directly from his understated reaction to getting killed in the genocide run, which Zarla has previously discussed. (wow until I found that link just now I didn't realize I copied her use of the word blase in describing that, rofl).
I worked in as many throwbacks as I could, given this is basically additional vetting to Gaster's horrible deeds. Sans and Papyrus have been slowly sharing with Alphys (and to a lesser extent Asgore) what Gaster did to them, and Alphys has been reading Gaster's notes. The mention of the handrail was by far the latest addition to the story, even after my betas had read it and given their feedback. One of them had been a bit confused that the end was meant to establish that Gaster wasn't going to fall into the core in this timeline. And until that one comic about the core, I really had no way of setting that up without making it stupidly blatant. Now it should be a lot clearer without being clunky (I hope)
Even though the scarf was sort of the unifying element in this one (like the light motifs in Revealed), it was actually the second latest addition to the story. The first ending I wrote had Papyrus asking about Gaster's name, since "W.D. Gaster" is most likely what would have been posted outside his office door. Buuuut I couldn't think of a good origin story for his name, and the whole exchange just didn't feel right. Then I remembered Zarla's adorable sketches of kid Gaster and the hint that Papyrus finds the scarf in the lab after Gaster is erased, and it hit me. So then I had to go back into the first part and retcon it into there, haha.
Also it's kind of funny, Zarla literally just gave a few thoughts on possible "Gaster gets arrested" timelines, saying depending on how it goes it may make him MORE emotionally shut-down inside. I think in this timeline Gaster would definitely prefer that, and actually tried to make that happen in Released. But it all fell apart when Asgore blamed himself and showed mercy instead. So now he tries to be as stoic as possible when it comes to the boys, but between his dad instincts and those pesky brats' shenanigans it's just not a hurdle he can totally clear. He'll never accept forgiveness, but he also can't stop indulging in those paternal thoughts from time to time. So he's stuck in this sort of emotional limbo.
Very similar to the limbo Sans is now trapped in. Another fun thing about doing this was exploring Sans and Papyrus's characters, and showing how they come into their adult selves. They haven't met too many people in the castle at this point, but I figured the chef would have been one of the first. At first they wouldn't really know their likes and dislikes as far as food, and Asgore wouldn't want them to go hungry. So he'd just show them where the kitchens are and introduce them to the chef. Gaster never used food as a punishment, or hurt them while they were eating, so whenever he brought it Papyrus knew instinctively that he wasn’t going to hurt them just then. So naturally, Papyrus quickly became attached to both eating and making food, associating it with mercy. His tastes are still questionable though, probably a side-effect of growing up on junk food, haha.
As far as Sans, I've always loved the almost diametrically opposed ideas of him being this "final judge" the player has to answer to, but also being a sort of apathetic nihilist. In the game it was his awareness of the resets but his inability to do anything about them which (presumably) brought that apathy on. Since Sans is still pretty young here, I thought he’d still have a bit of that fire in him, especially at the beginning when they were first rescued. I think at his core Sans really does have a strong sense of justice, which is why he still shows up in that final corridor every time even though he knows it’s pointless. He knows he can't stop you, but he also knows he's the only one who can speak to you about the timelines "on your level," so to speak. So he throws himself in there to be the last voice of reason, or the last stumbling block, on your journey.
But now in this timeline, Sans is getting worn down by Gaster not getting proper retribution for his crimes. He eventually shuts up about it because he's making no progress, and taking any more drastic measures would make Papyrus unhappy. So he's also stuck in emotional limbo, unhappy with the way things are but powerless to change them. Good thing that's not going to get any worse anytime soon… Oh speaking of that, I chose Snowy for the ending music because it just sounds so bittersweet to me. It was quaint my first time playing the game, but on my second runthrough I couldn’t help but think about the monsters being trapped underground, but also Sans being aware of how they’re doubly trapped in this time loop. So while it’s pretty and nice and an overall benign area of the game (at least on pacifist), it became a bit more melancholy to me.
And PERSONALLY I think the "running around looking like a CLONE of..." line is the greatest thing I have ever written. Not gonna lie, I had the worst shit-eating grin on my face for like an hour after that line hit me. YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, GASTER. You emotionally constipated twig.
Anyway, given Gaster isn't going to disappear, that leaves the future for this story a bit more open. I have a few ideas rolling around in my head for a few more moments as they're growing up in the castle. Also some speculation on how different UT timelines would play out (including a pacifist timeline that's just...MMPH. SO GOOD). But they will all be much shorter than this, so I'll wait until I've got a few written and put them out as little one-shots. Sort of like those short story collections I keep saying I'll get back to, lol. Anyway thanks for reading! If you have questions or want to talk or speculate about stuff my ask box is always open <3 Obviously I am totally down with nerding out about this stuff, lol.
#undertale#handplates#Handplates: Released#zarla#gaster#sans#papyrus#asgore#alphys#fanfiction#fanfic#narration#part 2 of 2#what could possibly go wrong *cartoon whistle*#this one has what I think is the greatest line I've ever written thus far#in which Sans generates an ocean of salt#in which Gaster feels like the unwanted relative at Christmas#in which Asgore is referee#in which Alphys is a trooper#in which Papyrus does the thing
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