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.
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."