Imagine expecting the guy who wrote an mpreg Homestuck song to have writing that's 100% serious all the time when his games have never been that.
I know it's probably because I'm older than the average vocal Deltarune fan, but it's so funny how opposite I feel about Deltarune when I see takes like this.
I actually prefer the lighthearted parts over the darker parts. I am so, so burnt out on the barrage of self-serious writing flooding the media landscape at the moment. Not everything has to be some deep humorless mysterybox about trauma 100% of the time. I mean, yeah, the game obviously has some pretty serious story elements but if it was only that it would be god awful. The humor balances it out.
If anything, the world needs this 2010s tumblr ass silliness at the moment and I find it to be a breath of fresh air against how performatively mature and dark a lot of writing for stuff is at the moment.
After finding the hidden boss, i fully agree.
What do you mean with that?
Maybe the weird route thing where
spoiler
It's implied Kris and Noelle painfully drown in the lakeHm, fair, that was terrifying and fucked up.
I’ll start off with, I am a huge lore-head. My very favorite games are games like Myst, Disco Elysium, Elden Ring, etc. Games in which in order to understand the deeper story they require you to dig into every corner of the world. Using the Bartle taxonomy I would be an “Explorer”.
Spoilers for weird route / Chapters 2-5 theories
Content warning: themes of death, self-harm, grooming?Ok so… I’ll start with I’m glad I finished the whole of Chapter 5 before I did the weird route, or as it should be called now “Side-B”.
This is a game, it’s fiction, that being said one of the themes in Undertale and Deltarune is the suspension of disbelief (in my view) being a diegetic component to the game world. The very first thing you see when you first boot up the game is “Are we connected?” That connection is the suspension of disbelief but in a kind of joke/meta way.
It starts out fairly innocent, I mean, the whole snow grave thing Berdly was terrible but in a more fantasy/game like way. sure some darkeners got frozen, but maybe that actually a way to preserve them in case the roaring happens? It’s only until you get back to the light world that you learn the truth. But it’s not like he’s dead, right? You can kind of help by putting a hot water bottle on him and turning the heat up to make some small amends.
Then you force Kris to put the ring back on Noelle, you get a melodramatic spooky song play along with the thorns sprite. Like yes it’s dark but it’s not like you did anything too wrong, right? You have fun interaction where Susie asks what the both of you were talking about and it glitches the game because the device layer tried prompting both Kris and Noelle at the same time.
You broke Kris, he uses the last bit of strength to stay in bed but you just keep pushing the controller and he starts walking like usual, or does it? If you try to prompt anything you get a single dot in response, for everything. He is essentially the vessel at this point.
Shenanigans happen with Susie/Sans and you can only progress by going to the lake.
She stands on the edge of the lake her hair is reminiscent of the “Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli. Noelle says that she feels like her life was happening around her instead of her living it. But it’s not Noelle, not anymore, I broke Noelle, taking someone who you learn in the other route was already in a dark/suicidal place, and used the characters just to sate your own curiosity? I tried to back out but it was too late, the prompts that say “No” do nothing. the music swells, it’s the same song that played whenever Ralsei gives a speech about the nature of their world but overlaid with the effect they used when he was crying in chapter 4 along with the drums from the Berdly fight all those years ago. And you are gripped and can’t let go, it’s almost like whatever you did is coming back to be forced back on you the player, you feel the loss of control via being locked in. And slowly you get dragged into the lake, and it only gets faster, you’re pressing the prompts at a breakneck pace hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe if you’re fast enough they won’t drown? It’s possible they are in “nowhere” now, but as we were told “… it's not a good idea to go nowhere with somebody else... Alone is better.”
I deleted all of my weird route saves shortly after. I’m glad I was able to get these thoughts out of my head. Maybe Gerson is right in a way: “Y’know, I’ve got a mighty hunch this ain’t the right way. ... Though, I do like goin’ the wrong way. You get better ideas that way. “ but are the ideas worth it?
Interesting take, thans for taking the time to write up all that. And yeah, that makes sense.
spoilers, cw: sui
I don't have a weird route safe file, so i have not experienced the last scene the same way you did and i think that has made it easier for me to see it more as them going "nowhere" instead of that being an actual double suicide.Ofc, when going "nowhere" alone is better, that makes me wonder what happens if you go there with somebody else. If that would lead to an amalgamate situation like in the UT final lab.
My explanation for the weird route has always been that it is a foil that contrasts the regular route, a kind of commentary on what would have happened without certain developments, and these are mostly character growth moments for Noelle and Susie. This is the core difference between their relationships in both routes - yes, they still crush on each other in the WR, that was hinted at in ch2 and is evident in ch5, so the "Weird Route is actually a violent enforcing of cishetnormativity, denying both Kris' gender identity and Noelle's lesbianism to mold them both into a JRPG lead couple" theory seems to be out the window now. But what we see with Suselle in the WR is that their relationship suddenly lacks the parts where they help each other self actualize and where they empower each other. And this is only logical, because WR Noelle is manipulated and then outright coerced and broken into surrendering into total instrumentality at just the moment were she would have normally found the strength to develop agency of her own. Most likely, that process is at least similar to what happened to Kris.
It's also worth keeping in mind that Toby Fox said that there would only be one ending. Yet we see that the regular and weird route are so clearly and brutally diverging. The announcement at the ending of ch5 WR makes me think that chapter 6 won't be playable on a weird route safe file at all and it will only pick up again in ch7, with 6 being strictly a regular route thing because something in the story would exclude this being a WR thing at all.
This is begging the question what happens on the B side of chapter 7 when it does not have a different ending. I have a hunch that WR does not lead to a viable solution at all and just loops back to the start. There is only the true ending, the B side does not end, it loops endlessly. Because it takes fully actualized main characters to break the cycle that is playing out under Hometown, the cycle of events that has already lead to fountains forming in the past, before this iteration of heroes was around. I do not think what we see is the first instance of these events playing out. I think this is recurring, with Dess possibly having been the Girl in the last instance, and the heroes need to break the prophecy and write their own story to end that cycle. And that just isn't possible with the lack of certain character arcs in the WR.
I like this a lot! This is very interesting as it parallels a concept in Gnosticism which I think is a big influence of homestuck (I’ve heard I’ve never read it) and I know that homestuck is a big influence to Toby Fox. That of the soul is stuck in material reality a need to relive cyclically to achieve a higher level of awareness to eventually achieve Gnosis. Perhaps the weird route represents the lowest level of awareness? I think too there are some theories that say it represents the original prophecy?
Yes, gonsticism is big in Homestuck. I'm no expert on Gnostic philosophy, but i happen to know a girl who is and am subtly nudging her towards downloading the free demo. Would be interesting to see her takes on that.
Regarding the weird route, in the sword route it is referred to as the forbidden path. yet it seems to be more in line with the prophecy in some ways than the normal route, if we go by extremely circumstantial evidence like the absence of traffic jams in WR Cyber City and the prophecy saying "the Queen's chariot cannot be stopped."
I will write a response when I have more time. Yes it is weird route related