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ratbefriender · 1 year

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disco was soooo good. such pain when it has to end. any fav or worst character decisions and/or quest stories that stuck with you??

Hi there!! God it WAS so good. I was gifted it by some friends who had only played through the first 20 minutes and who couldn't even explain the game to me, only citing it was "so weird" and that I would either "hate it or love it". Well I LOVED IT. So joke's on them for spending their money well. One of my first thoughts was, indeed, this game is so weird, but after a little while it really wasn't weird anymore. Nothing was. Loved the skills system, loved the everything about it, it was so packed with things that either made me think or made me laugh, and the narration. Such a treat to get taken on long, poetic narrative journeys. Occasionally some got a little bit boring but I recognize that that's on me for choosing that dialogue tree. Well played Disco Elysium...

My favourite character was without a question mr Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, I am in love with him and I hear everything in his voice now (a good thing). He has a new cozy place in the top ranks of my favourite characters list. Now things that stuck with me...

We went to look for Ruby and I made... The Wrong Decision and seeing what happened definitely stuck with me. I know I played a middle aged cop haunted by his past decisions the entire game, but I really was a middle aged cop haunted by his past decisions in that moment. Then the Big Scene That Followed- Kim and I nearly died and I CRIED, I DID. Oh, both the dream sequences I got (I don't know if there are more) stuck with me tremendously too. Dreams can be so beautifully done in videogames and they were. And just entering the church... also stuck with me... it looked very imposing and beautiful...

Also loved when I nearly died from sitting in a chair.

I need to go back to play more because I left things unfinished, since my little clown ass didn't realize I was nearing a point where I couldn't go back anymore, despite the repeated warnings that I was nearing a point where I couldn't go back anymore. But I loved it!! Thank you so much for asking. Any Disco Elysium chat is super welcome in my dm's <33

#vague spoilers under the cut...#every time I'm asked for opinions on stuff I get worried that I am saying Wrong Things and Nobody Thinks This About Disco Elysium You Idiot #That's Not What People Say About It #but anyway loved it soooo much #''such a pain'' is RIGHT. I didn't like it ending at all. you mean no more Kim Kitsuragi to talk to??#game is unyielding? game is incapable of love?#and also again bc I was a clown and had unfinished business...#re: that: I am not a videogame person at all. one of the few games I've played has been Undertale (+ Deltarune). I have been spoiled by #the fact that on Undertale it is made abundantly explicitly clear that you are about to end the game and you get to go on a little trip #saying bye to everybody. well I thought I'd get that. sorry for not catching on to the very clear repeated signs otherwise. smh.#also I think those two men should kiss #Kim and Harry I mean. obviously. forever into eternity.#is this a REAL Vidéo Game if there is no option to hold Kim Kitsuragi in my arms?#anyway thank you for asking!!!#ask

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badwatervideos2009 · 2 years

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every time i post about deltarune my notifications are obliterated for days

#i am forever haunted by that one deltarune screenshot post i made while playing chapter 2 that got over 13000 notes.#my activity feed has never recovered. i don't think it ever will #deltarune #i will be out doing something only 2 come back 2 the tumblr app informing me of the fact that i now apparently have over 400+ notifcations #and it's always the funniest thing in the world 2 me i do not know why #brody.txt

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inbarfink · 1 year

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It’s truly hard to overstate just how much Spamton’s mere existence is a nightmare for himself. Like, arguably the life of everyone in the Deltarune universe, and especially the Darkners, is an existential nightmare. Spamton’s just on a whole other level. This is Advanced Existential Nightmare.

Cause yeah, on some level it’s always kinda depressing to think about the idea that all Darkners are bound to the fact that they are created from inanimate objects and the emotions Lightners associate with them. That this forms some sort of irrevocable inner essence and Purpose they can never change, even if they truly wanted to be something else. No one can choose who they are in this world and so on.

But like, at least most of the other Darkners we met can get some sort of contentment from following the role they have been given. Tasque Manager loves managing things (and Tasques), Lancer is a playing card who ultimately just wants to play around and have fun, Queen seems to truly love being a useful computer who can supply Lightners with endless hours of entertainment and knowledge in her own egoist way. Even King’s initial angst was based around no longer being able to fulfill his purpose.

But Spamton… as the living embodiment of Spam Mail, he was created with the desires of your typical spam-mail; advertising and/or scamming people. And he was created to be obsessed with the things that your typical Spam Mail talks about; success, fortune, status and [[BIG SHOT]]. But he was also created to be utterly terrible at accomplishing these things.

He’s Spam Mail, Spam Mail is weird, obviously scammy and generally gets ignored or thrown away. And no matter how much Spamton wants or how hard he tries, by the basic nature of his being, he can never actually be good at this. And he also can’t, like, understand that maybe salesmanship isn’t his thing and take up macramé or something. Because that obsession is also part of his basic nature. Spamton’s basic nature is to be forever frustrated, desperate and miserable.

And that’s exactly why he’s the first Darkner we’ve seen who’s truly set on cutting his puppet-strings. I think that a lot of the ‘Freedom’ he wants is freedom from that utterly miserable lot in life. To longer be bound by the rules of Being Spamton. On some level it’s probably about breaking the Rule of Nature that means he has to be a failure, that he can’t truly become a [[BIG SHOT]] on his own. He wants to overthrow God so he can get the financial success that feels he deserves.

(I know some people are angry at the Mysterious Voice on the Phone for abandoning Spamton, but I do wonder if it wasn’t basically inevitable. That the Mysterious Voice, regardless of what they wanted, could simply not subvert Spamton’s Failure-ness forever)

And that’s kinda tragic cause it’s shows that even when trying to break away, he’s still doing so through the lenses of the existential curse that’s causing him so much suffering. To be free is to get [[BIG]], and the only way to get [[BIG]] is by scamming and tricking and manipulating. Because as long as he’s Spamton, those are really the only things he can do.

But on some level, I think, he might also want to be free of that. Maybe it started as wanting to break away from the ‘script’ that means he’s bound to be a failure - but with time, I think he also grew to want to want different things. It’s clear Spamton is very distressed about losing the friendship of the Addisons and Swatch. He considers his own loneliness as one of the most defining traits of his own existence (he always start projecting on Kris on the basis of both of them being lonely). But he literally can’t put his obsessive quest for success aside and focus on his relationships. He literally can’t.

Outside of, I guess, the Pacifist ending to his NEO fight. That’s the one point where Spamton was able to put his ambitions aside for the sake of friendships.

If only for a moment.

But however brief it was, it still feel like it meant something to Spamton.

#deltarune #spamton #spamton g spamton #spamton deltarune #deltarune meta

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zarla-s · 9 months

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Man it's been a long time since I've done an ask cluster! Let's see if I can get some down...

He's an extremely fun character to write for and play with! So in that sense I'm fond of him, haha. He's such a huge disaster of a person, there's always something fun to do with him. Well "fun" in a relative sense.

I don't have anything to forgive him for, he didn't hurt me. |D He hurt the brothers!

I do have an idea for a cute feature inspired by Six-Eared Macaque! I should really sit down and do that already... and finish the one I half started but never finished...

I don't think my opinion on any of them changed! I love them all, haha. Which ones I drew comics about just depends on which ones I get ideas for really. Sometimes I get Alphys ideas and sometimes I get Goatparents ideas! Inspiration is fickle!

I don't have any solid plans or anything. :B Just gonna keep chugging along with silly comics and art! Work on Defrag and such. I'd like to finish a Ladyverse comic I've had lying around forever, and I had vague plans for doing a doujin for them too I could work on... and also seeing if I could format Handplates into a book format... I've always got a bunch of projects, haha.

It works on that level! It wasn't intentional though. |D

I do enjoy speculation! I don't really have much of my own though, I didn't predict anything in chapter 2 so now I'm assuming I can't predict anything in the future chapters either, haha.

Emesis Blue is great! Some really beautiful visuals in there, very striking! Love the mood of it too and a lot of the surreal imagery. I think it helped spur me back into TF2 again, haha. Medic and Scout's relationship was so cute.

I have thought about this! It has its share of challenges though... I outlined them more in this post. A pdf would be more doable though... could even include some extra stuff as well! Hmm...

I can see that! He'd probably spend as much time out in the rain as he could just doing whatever to stay outside.

It was pretty much always going to end like that. I always wanted it to end on a hopeful note! Which might seem weird with how dark it is at the beginning. I DID for a brief period at the very beginning of Handplates think about stopping with the Pacifist run, but that was only because I thought going where I wanted to go would take too long and already the project seemed so dauntingly huge at the time, haha. But it was always going to end in a positive way!

Gaster talks about what he originally intended to create here, and he explains a bit about the physical experiments he runs on the brothers here. They aren't really a solution in and of themselves so much as tools to try and find a way to break the barrier. Really though, Gaster got stuck in the sunk-cost fallacy lol.

I don't really have opinions about what canon Gaster would be like. |D Handplates Gaster is his own thing really. Canon Gaster, who knows! Deltarune Gaster, who knows! I will say I hope Gaster stays a mystery in Deltarune and never actually shows up but I think the odds of that are really low at this point.

I thought about doing a script along those lines! I did a few rough drafts of one, but it never really went anywhere... it'd end up dead-ending or kind of meandering off. I might see if I can get an actual script down for a side-comic or something in the future... it might be better suited for a fic.

I was just thinking about this lately! I was picturing Gaster totally forgetting about that until he sees Papyrus squinting and is like OH GOD YOUR EYES THAT'S RIGHT D: and goes to get him looked at lol.

I couldn't come up with a good idea for Flowey which is a shame, I do like him, haha. If one comes to me though I might make a little side comic about it!

Gaster's LV is complicated... his stats in-game are ludicrous if I recall correctly. Did he carry the damage from his murders into the void, even if those murders weren't his in the new timeline? Deep thoughts.

He fed them anything he could find, haha. Which is why sometimes they just ended up with chocolate bars (which he intended as dinner for himself). He probably fed them more often than he fed himself lol. He did feed them fairly regularly though.

Not about skeletons, probably. |D

Man I know I had an explanation for this but it was so long ago... it's hard for me to remember. It could be that the Riverperson is just weird and has weird insight into elements of things, had a prophetic dream... I don't know! It bugs me now that I can't remember this, haha.

#undertale #handplates #asks and answers

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comicalfont · 2 months

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Undertale is for Everyone

Happy Valentine's Day! Yesterday marked five years since the day I first started playing Undertale. It's led me to dwell on what exactly I would say the game has meant to me, with how loaded a question that is. There's so much I owe to Undertale, and the joy it's brought me is something everyone is as deserving to be a part of. Despite some recent fandom events, all members of the fandom need to know that the game celebrates and welcomes them with open arms, which I'll get to more in a bit.

I first played Undertale at a period in my life with a lot of unanswered questions, both for present me and future me. I'd managed to not give it a try in the first few years it was around, but after running into enough Deltarune fan content in the wild when it came out, I played Chapter 1 and loved every bit of the atmosphere and characters, and I wanted to play Undertale right after. After accidentally killing Toriel and starting over, I was immediately drawn into the story it told and the friendships I was making. My appreciation of Sans was there from the start, and here I am, many reader fics with him later, and the rest of the main gang felt like buds I'd been hoping to meet some day. Even the minor characters meant so much to the journey, and by the time it was done and I'd seen what Frisk/the player's kindness and want for peace can do, I was completely hooked and the game rented a free condo in my brain.

What I wasn't expecting was the other ways Undertale's touched my life. I'm trans, and before I'd played, it had only really been associated with discomfort and a wish for things to be better, without much of a light at the end of the tunnel to look at. Undertale's queer-friendly themes and the characters' insistence on being themselves opened me up to thinking about a future where my own kindness and, well, determination can lead me to being the true me. While my trans story was far from done, it helped me see the future as something I can smile about, rather than needing to be afraid. The fics that I've written about Undertale, and especially the bone-friend, since I played have also led me to meet the people I consider my closest friends, as well as being a gateway to other fandoms that have captured my interest. These connections I've made through the game are ones I'll carry with me for the rest of my life.

So, where am I going with all this? Undertale has invited me into a better path than the one I'd been taking, and that's an opportunity I'll forever be grateful for. Unfortunately, there are some in the fandom space who have shared hateful views about people simply for who they are, and everyone should know how far those views are from the truth. Undertale is a game about love and growth, and it is the responsibility of those who participate in its community to follow its footsteps and celebrate everyone for their traits; not just tolerate, but celebrate. For fellow trans people in particular, I've been thinking about this the most; you are real men, real women, and real non-binary identities, and all of those things are represented in Undertale itself. Celebrating trans lives isn't just the right thing to do, it's a part of this wonderful game we're all enjoying together.

Maybe this reaches just two people, or twenty, or more if I'm lucky, but whoever does read this far, thank you for taking the time to see how much Undertale has meant to me over these five years, and I hope you know how much you mean to the community. We're all making it a better place by being ourselves, and I hope the game keeps lifting people up for many years to come. Now, go read that new volume of the Undertale/Deltarune Newsletter!

#undertale #deltarune #undertale fandom #sans #ao3 #sans x reader #trans positivity #trans rights #trans pride #ut characters are canon trans supporters #calcium cat #calcium-cat #iykyk

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gooselycharm · 9 months

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hi there! i'd just like to say that your kris and noelle "something else" comic has been driving me insane /pos and i'd love to hear more of your thoughts on those two!! their relationship is one of my favorite things in deltarune and your comic just got everything about them so right 🙏

thank you for reading "something else"! oh man, [more of] my thoughts on kris+noelle.... i sure got some of those.

this was one of the first tweets i made after finishing chapter 2 nearly... freaking 2 years ago. and basically i've just been saying that over and over again in different ways because i'm still not tired of the concept yet and probably wont ever be LOL. i'm obsessed with how badly the narrative wants to force them into an easily categorizable dynamic, especially the romantic one in snowgrave. the literal THORN RING, the more possessive dialogue options, spamton calling noelle a side chick LOL... it all creates this unnerving visual novel bad end atmosphere that feels manufactured by someone who's only ever learned about romance through secondhand sources. they're two queer teens trying to navigate their changing relationship with the only role models they know being their parents' own failed heterosexual marriages. they're so divorced² (divorced children of divorce).

i also like that for being so tragically doomed coded they can be funny! both in a dark humor way and also like, genuinely funny, like the stories of them as kids with kris covering themselves in ketchup and hiding under noelle's bed lmao. i mean there's even something funny about the romantic trappings of the snowgrave route, like trying to put wedding cake embellishments on a crime scene... you know, funny like kids trying on their parents clothes but they're too big and for some reason they're also crying and covered in blood? um.

i'm also SOOOO interested to see how snowgrave will continue in chapter 3! i really liked the hopeful note chapter 2 ended on (well. i took it as hopeful anyway). there's that bit where noelle is talking to herself and she says something like "recently kris has been acting so strange and no one else has noticed... i have to figure out why" and then kris jumpscares her LOL but i think i took that one line and really ran with it. noelle really is the one who knows kris best and despite how scared she is, she's still determined to help them... i like the little subversion of victim/hero going on, the implication that kris might be the one who needs rescuing.

the additional story/lore that came with the spamton sweepstakes made me CRAAAZYYYYY like my GOD... it's cute that noelle likes glitches/creepypasta when kris is kinda a walking creepypasta <3 also, god, noelle falling asleep listening to kris playing piano in the other room... there's so much like. wistfulness and nostalgia and this like... distant/detached intimacy packed into how noelle narrates that scene. it's kind of funny how much there is to dig into when like on a surface level they're just fairly regular childhood friends who grew apart LMAO they're extremely deep to me okay...

on another note i guess i do ship them? i like their dynamic whether it's platonic or romantic (the best is a weird mix of both 👍). it just can't be boring LOL like... this is one ship where trying to apply cookie cutter tropes to them really falls flat and the game is ahead of you on that anyway. in terms of romantically shipping them, i honestly don't think they're doomed to repeat patterns forever... i think they could actually be good for each other! but that's not really the aspect of their relationship that interests me akldjf;alk;sdg maybe i will make 60 page comic of kriselle going to couples counseling some other time

ANYWAY i'm going to cut myself off here, because i really could go on forever lol. i'll give you some links for further reading though

hellspawnmotel's deltarune art

lula pillowbug99's deltarune art

this art by raspbearis which features prominently in my internal kriselle bible

my own unfinished kriselle playlist

my own essay on gender & allegory in deltarune if for some reason u are not tired of hearing me talk yet

okay bye now & thanks again for reading my comic!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#deltarune #kriselle #im post #im really posting now. i be talking.

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ponett · 9 months

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Got a spoilery ask about SLARPG regarding Melody's character arc and, to a lesser extent, the ending, so I'll put this below a read more!

Anonymous asked:

Heya! I adore adore adore SLARPG, and have latched pretty hard onto Melody and Harmony's dichotomy for a while... I was wondering whether you saw Harmony more as an obstacle to Melody's growth, or something to be worked on and reconciled with more like Madeline and Badeline from Celeste? Unless it's spoilers of course. It's one of the few threads left open after the game, and as a plural woman myself I was just curious. X3

I'll say up front that I've generally avoided stepping in and telling people what The One Correct Interpretation is for a lot of things in SLARPG. I didn't intend for Melody to be read as plural, since in the story Harmony is a parasitic outside force, but I also understand where that interpretation comes from and won't tell folks they're wrong for relating to her like that. That's just the beauty of art. We can relate to things however we want. I just wanna make sure my personal framing is clear before I talk about the thought behind Melody and Harmony's relationship

Harmony is more of a literary device than a character. While she's not an alternate personality for Melody, she's also not really a full person in her own right. I don't think about Harmony having her own arc. She's a magical force that occasionally externalizes Melody's darker, more self-critical thoughts for the audience, where normally she would keep them to herself. She has her own design and name to make the dialogue boxes easier to follow. I also keep it intentionally vague whether or not other people would be able to see Harmony because I find that understated uncertainty more fun.

On a literal level, Harmony is a magical parasite, and therefore an obstacle to be overcome. She's not supposed to be there, straight up. But because she's just the embodiment of dark thoughts that Melody is already having, there isn't really much point in "defeating" Harmony to me - which is why things play out the way they do.

Even if Melody got rid of Harmony, she would still have to deal with those feelings. It would be a purely symbolic victory. And symbolic victories like that are often satisfying as hell in fiction, but in real life you can't defeat your shadow self to stop those 3am "what if my friends are only pretending to like me" thoughts. So instead, Harmony is something Melody needs to cope with and minimize. It's not about getting rid of bad thoughts forever, but rather learning how to deal with them better. And that's an active, life-long process. And so Harmony remains, but Melody is working on having healthier relationships with both her loved ones and herself.

I'll also say that, while I love Celeste, Madeline and Badeline's arc is mostly irrelevant to the way I write Melody and Harmony. (I don't think this ask is accusing me of plagiarizing Maddy Thorson or anything, to be clear. I'm just on a tangent since the comparison was brought up.) SLARPG began development in 2015, so the Harmony scenes, and Melody's arc as a whole, were already planned before Celeste came out. While I worried about getting compared to a much more popular game, I stuck to my guns, knowing that my story was different enough to stand on its own. If anything, I just avoided specific phrases like "reflection" or "I'm a part of you" to try and keep people from just pointing and going "Celeste reference!"

Unfortunately the "wow this is just like Celeste" comments were unavoidable, as were the newfound generalizations about what all indie games about trans girls with anxiety must be like because there are two (2) whole games that share some common story tropes, and it seems like the ending may have thrown some people off because of expectations created by Celeste. But what are you gonna do? I at least avoided my absolute nightmare scenario of Deltarune Ch.2 doing glitch aesthetics or giving Susie and Noelle a kiss mechanic lmao

#anon #ask #slarpg asks #slarpg spoilers

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pillowspace · 4 months

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My friend Aster just guided me through the Deltarune weird route today completely blind because they discovered that, despite having played the game, I had never once heard of the route in any way. They didn't even mention it to me themselves, I was just like "hey, curious, does anything happen if I ___? Clearly nothing significant, as I would have heard about it by now," and they responded with "WELL LMAO," then told me the basic requirements to it. After that, my messages slowly went from silly to increasingly frantic

So now I'm a changed individual forever

It was very fun, I'm going to sleep now

#deltarune spoilers #<- vague

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dysfunctional-doodle · 2 months

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as a neurodivergent kid who grew up around the same time as the mm turts did (what am i saying, we’re like the exact same age) donnie and mikey 100% poured all their free time into playing those games that were popular in 2017/18.

can’t tell me they didn’t spend hours playing baldi’s basics, ddlc, deltarune, stuff like that

ALSO played a lot of the papa louie games in like 2016 (you haven’t felt true happiness until you’ve played papa’s donuteria)

Yes, 100%. They were those kind of kids. Run 3, anyone? That was a big one for me during early high school (11 - 12 years old, I should specify because Americans call it something different I believe).

I have not ever played a papa Louie game though, did I miss out? Didn’t really have a computer until I was 18 so all I had was my school’s computer lab and a Wii.

(Yes, I fully believe that the mm boys have an old wii they found in the dump and use that to play games. My family still has ours, forever the superior console)

#tmnt #tmnt asks #asks and replies #tmnt hc #tmnt headcanons #tmnt mm #tmnt mikey #tmnt donnie #tmnt mutant mayhem #tottmnt

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patchwork-crow-writes · 4 days

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The RalsAlmanac, Volume I

Okay, here it is! A series of essays that will attempt to definitively explain just who or what Ralsei is, referring to scenes from the game as evidence, as well as external sources where appropriate.

There will be some conjecture, as there's just so much we don't know about him, and what little we are given isn't exactly the most revealing. However, I've done my best to cleave as closely to the source material as I can, and I believe there's a strong case to be had here.

Hopefully you'll be able to see where my points come from, or at the very least you'll learn something you didn't know before. Either way, thanks for your consideration!

Volume I - Ralsei Is A Character In A Role-Playing Game.

Self-indulgent reference out of the way, lemme ask you a question.

Who is Ralsei?

It's a question that seems like it should be easy to answer. He's the Prince From The Dark, the third of the three Delta Warriors, he exists to serve the lightners, and is the most precious little cinnamon roll that ever lived. He enjoys baking and crochet, can hold a tune, is a decent interior-decorator, and holds his friends Kris and Susie in very high regard.

Thing is, that's about all you can really say about him without veering into speculation and headcanons, and they're more surface-level observations than anything else. What exactly does "Prince From The Dark" mean, for instance? Prince in what sense, exactly? Ceremonial, or with the actual power that royalty conveys? Where does he rank in comparison to, say, King or Queen, both actual rulers of actual kingdoms? The title of "prince" would suggest that he answers to them, but while they rule their own municipalities, Ralsei's title implies he rules over ALL dark worlds. You could go on asking these questions forever, but I think you see what I'm getting at.

A more productive avenue of questioning might be: What role does Ralsei play in the story of Deltarune? Perhaps more of his underlying character and motivation could be gleaned by looking at what he does for the story and the game. And this would be correct... sort of.

We tend to think of him as the squishy healer of the party, the Heart and moral centre of the Fun Gang. And he absolutely is that, but he's also quite a bit more. He plays all sorts of different roles and character archetypes in the first two chapters of the game, including but not limited to:

the old man whose purpose is to wax poetic about the ancient prophecy...

the know-it-all tutorial fairy who walks you through the basic game mechanics...

the straight-man DM trying to keep everything on the rails...

the young sheltered noble experiencing the outside world for the first time...

the demure love-interest to the main protagonist...

the Polyanna determined to see the good in everybody...

the mysterious waif who knows things he shouldn't...

...eye candy…?

...and so on and so forth.

And so what, I hear you cry. Characters in video games can have more than one personality trait, after all. And yes, this is true! But usually, the different aspects of a character's roles, how they interact with, reinforce or contradict each other, can tell us more about their inner world - what motivates them, what they actively like and dislike... in short, it grants them depth and allows us to engage with them as actual people, rather than just a series of game functions and character traits dressed up in a pretty bow.

But that's not what we see with Ralsei. In fact, far from showing us any real, deep aspect of his character, each new guise he dons and part he plays in the narrative further obfuscates him from us. We learn no new meaningful information from any of these exchanges... except for one thing, but we'll come to that in a moment.

This vexes us, because we WANT to know more about him, but all we end up getting is stock JRPG tropes dressed up in a warm, fluffy coat. There HAS to be something deeper, we reason - he's hiding things from us, so he must be a secret villain. Or his backstory is so tragic, so traumatising, that he cannot properly articulate it to us right now. Or maybe what we see really IS what we get - a simpering, airheaded fool whose only desires in life are to be cute, please his betters and do what he's told. Yet even this explanation seems... unsatisfying, especially since we KNOW he harbours some angst about himself and his sense of identity.

And speaking of which, that one thing we learn? Right at the end of Chapter 2's Acid Tunnel sequence, he utters a single sentence:

This is arguably one of the most significant lines of dialogue in the entire game up to this point. But what does it mean, exactly? I believe most people assume it means he doesn't have a clear sense of who he is outside of his ordained purpose, which is certainly valid, and definitely something I believed for a long time. And yet, this explanation does not deepen our understanding of his character in any meaningful way; looking back over all his interactions with the cast, it does not allow us to glean any further information about him.

And you can say that's because he himself doesn't know what he's like... but again, this doesn't actually change anything, and we just end up with a circular logic trap. We don't know anything because he doesn't tell us anything, and he doesn't tell us anything because he doesn't know anything, so how can we be expected to know anything, except that no-one seems to know anything about him… which is very frustrating to us Ralsei scholars, and gets us no closer to truly understanding him.

But look at what he says again. Really look at it. It’s a very strange way of saying ��I don’t really know who I am”, isn’t it? After all, if that’s what he means, then why doesn’t he just say that? I’m certain you’ve realised by now, but it’s because that’s NOT what he’s saying at all. He literally has no clue what being “himself” is supposed to be, because he wasn’t even created with a sense of “Ralsei-ness” in the first place. Little wonder, then, that we can’t discern anything about his internal world, when there is nothing there to be discerned.

But before I elaborate any further, I want to talk about a couple of scenes in Deltarune that are just... puzzling. This is relevant, I promise. The first is during the dialogue with Rouxls Kaard before the rematch with K.Round. Ralsei says something interesting in the lead-up to the fight:

Note Susie’s baffled reaction to this. Then not long afterwards, he continues with:

Throwaway joke, right? We laugh because Susie's right - K. Round and its crown do look exactly the same to us, and so Ralsei's dramatic utterances are deflated and lose their impact. We laugh, beat the boss with Susie's help and forget all about it. But here's the thing - if K.Round looks the same to us, and it looks the same to Susie, and presumably by extension the rest of the in-game characters... when why exactly does Ralsei take the time to insist otherwise?

Is he... lying? Our most precious little boy, guilty of perjury? Say it ain't so! :O

The second scene is in chapter 2 - Queen has challenged us to a game of Punch-Out on her absurdly tall arcade machine, and we can talk to the characters before trying to interact with it. Talk to Ralsei, and if you answer "Gaming is my life" to his prompt, he says this:

Most people don't even come across this in their playthrough, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's new to you reading this. But again, note this strange discrepancy between what Ralsei reports is happening and what Susie says is actually happening. It becomes apparent to most people that Kris can affect the tone of their voice when saying what we tell them to, which affects how the response is taken by other characters and gives us a subtle clue about how they actually feel about certain characters or situations.

Are we to assume, then, that Ralsei isn't actually listening to how Kris says things, but only what they're saying? And if that's correct, then... what does that say about him?

Taken at face-value, within the context of the game, neither of these events really make much sense. It just looks like Ralsei is being overly-dramatic, or lying, or perhaps even insensitive to what their friend is trying to tell him, which doesn't quite track with his per-established shallow traits of kind, all-loving and moralistic. It's perplexing and seemingly out-of-character for him. So it might help to consider, in each of these scenarios, who exactly Ralsei is talking to.

Is it Kris and/or Susie? This would make the most sense, but it's actually not that likely, considering the aforementioned discrepencies between his descriptions and Susie's observations. So is it himself? Again, if he can see things the same as everyone else in-game, that wouldn't make much sense, because then he's just saying stuff that... isn't true? Or in the latter example's case, just completely ignoring what Kris is saying, which doesn't seem to entirely gel with what we know about him.

So, who does that leave? Well, the only other person - or should I say entity - who is present for both of those scenes is... us. The player of Deltarune. And that might seem even stranger than the previous options, until you realise what it is he's actually doing - providing flavour text, additional exposition informing us of details that we wouldn't - or shouldn't - be able to make out on a pixelated display with no voice-acting, attempting to give us a richer sense of these events in order to increase our sense of immersion in the game and world of Deltarune. In effect, he's playing the part of a character in a role playing game, doling out “flavour text” that contradicts another character’s experience of the same scenes, and he's doing it entirely for OUR benefit. Not Kris’s, not Susie's – ours.

He tells us that K.Round's crown is different, and that it is in pain from its forced control, to try and increase the stakes of the fight, and to give us a motivation that's not "here's the exact same boss again lul". He responds to Kris's words the way he does, not because he doesn't understand the nuances of their tone, but to try and amp us up for the upcoming challenge, and to validate our choice when we select the dialogue option "Gaming is my life". Because we cannot hear Kris's tone of voice - and Ralsei knows that. To him, Kris's tone literally doesn't matter, because he doesn't believe it matters to us in that exact moment.

And here’s the thing: if not for Susie’s asides immediately contradicting him, we’d likely take what he says here as what’s actually going on. To Ralsei, the reality he and his friends experience is not important – it’s the image of that reality that he’s trying to convey to the player. It’s like he knows he’s part of a game, meant just for us to experience and enjoy, as opposed to a real world filled with real people having real experiences.

And the reason I brought this up is to illustrate what I believe Ralsei to actually be - namely, that he a walking, talking, singing and dancing amalgam of stock JRPG characters and tropes that's trying very hard to present as an actual person, to the point of knowing absolutely nothing about who he even is outside of that. Put in even blunter terms, he's literally a fluffy goat-shaped vehicle to set the player on their journey through the game, to keep them playing and to keep them invested. People looking for deeper aspects of his character come up short and are disappointed because they're looking for something that does not currently exist.

And just so that I'm clear, I do not mean that Ralsei is "acting", or that he's "wearing a mask", because that would imply that there was actually something underneath his "facade" to begin with. No, this is who the Prince of the Dark is - a very convincing fascimile of a person, following his directive to ensure that the story of Deltarune is resolved, and that the game of Deltarune is played to completion. And once you realise that, a lot of things that Ralsei says and does that seemed strange before suddenly make a lot more sense.

As for the why... well, that'll have to wait for another time. But hopefully you can begin to see how my future essays in this series all tie in to this one, because I think you can only really understand those with the framework that this text provides. I hope that my reasoning made sense and wasn't too difficult to follow, but I'll be happy to provide additional information, clarification, or even just discussion on any aspect of this essay... even if we just wind up (respectfully) agreeing to disagree. Would love to hear what people thought about this!

Thanks for reading!

#Writing #essay #analysis #theory #Deltarune #Ralsei #character study #The RalsAlmanac #deltarune chapter 1 #deltarune chapter 2 #essay collection

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