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asterdex · 1 month ago

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i've seen people joke about it but... is there any kind of consensus within the community regarding the player and Gaster's relationship? is it something that everybody just naturally agrees on and doesn't talk about it because there's no point to it or am I just going crazy on my own??

like yeah sure, first and foremost, we have the tweets written by Gaster himself and addressing the player, either rejoicing in seeing us showing the same kind of interest and fascination in him that he does for us, or describing how wonderful and special that "connection" we have is, how it makes him feel to be connected with us and how specifically "beautiful" and "exciting" it is for him to enter in contact with us.

Or talking about HE and WE specifically feel about each other, and going on about creating something together, as partners- i mean as a team.

And then we have the Goner Maker sequence, during which he keeps going on and on about how "wonderful" our creation is, guiding us step by step towards the realization of the EMBODIMENT of a player's freedom in a video game : their own avatar. Gaster is the only one in this game who is actively giving the player that much freedom, who is trying so hard to accomodate the player, to fulfill their wants and needs.

(unsure if it still needs to be said nowaday but no, the person discarding our vessel isn't Gaster, they talk in a different typer (given the fact Gaster's typers are always 666 or 667, it seems important to note that this new person talk in typer 2), not using any upper-cases, and not remotely talking in the same way (in japanese even more obviously than in english : Gaster talks in broken katakana japanese with some kanji while the other voice talk in hiragana and complex kanji. they also don't use the same second person pronouns when talking to the player), so yes, Gaster is STILL the character who seems to (at least in appearance) want THE MOST the player to be the most confortable possible, out of every other character in this game)

This idea of Gaster giving the player AS MUCH freedom as he can, in a world that seemes to be DESIGNED for us not to have any freedom, is first obviously supported by the way he is takling about "CREATING A NEW FUTURE" with our help, suggesting that OUR power as a player should be able to change the future and that it is in his interests for us to find the freedom leading us to that "NEW FUTURE", but it is also implied with the fact it seems that it is Gaster who is giving us access to three different save files, as we can see him talk and comment each one of our actions in the menu of an incomplete Ch1.

Gaster is ON THE PLAYER'S SIDE. or at the very least, he's doing a very good job at pretending he is. And it makes sense for him to be the only character who seems to INCONDITIONALLY support the player : he's the only one who seems to truly understand WHAT is the player, at least more than every other characters in this game. (there's an argument to be made about Ralsei, who seems to also only want the player's happiness, but 1. he doesn't really have the power to accomodate the player like Gaster does, so each one of his attempt to please us either end in just giving us fake hope, or being cancelled out by Susie (who seems to naturally oppose the player whenever she does something), and 2. unlike Gaster, Ralsei is CLEARLY suffering from always trying to please everyone else, especially the player, for whom he believes he needs to play the role of a LITERAL background character who's only here to serve and make them happy. Ralsei suffers from trying to please the player, while it seems like Gaster only gets enjoyment out of it, repeatedly stating that being connected to us is as wonderful for him as it is for us)

And the way Gaster views the player has become a bit clearer with his Ch3 and 4 messages, that can be used on top of his usual Game Over dialogues to suggest that he is watching us play at all times, is rooting for us, knows things about how this world works that we don't and is willing to give hints when he feels like it is necessary, and can be genuinely impressed by "our power", supposedly our determination and/our our pure game skills.

His Game Over message could even be interpreted as him trying to emotionally manipulate us into trying again, even when we told him we've given up, telling us how our absence led the world to be "covered in darkness", before cueing a very sad rendition of his own theme before closing the game after 66 seconds. Bro is literally looking at us through the screen with the saddest look in his eyes trying to coax us into trying again by making us feel bad. Maybe he DOES really need us as much as he says he does.

And maybe the most interesting recent dialogues of them all, at the end of Ch4, he congratulates the player for making it this far, quickly mentions how long we will need to wait for the next chapter/connection... Before refering to Deltarune as "HIS" DELTARUNE??

Up until that very moment, Gaster has always talked about "the future", "this world" as a 'team effort', always including us in the realization of it all, making us feel like we WERE an important part of whatever scheme he has in mind... Hell, sometimes he even talks as if THE PLAYER'S actiosn were actually ALSO his ("SHALL WE HASTEN?" against the Knight, when in reality the player is doing all the hard work here), which didn't seem strange because as a TEAM, that kind of way to speak is pretty normal. but in this moment, it somewhat feels like Gaster is trying, or at least thinking about taking ownership over everything "we" have created together. Was it his intention since the beginning, or is he just stating to love this game/world so much he's subconsciously seeing it as "his" and having troubles sharing it with the other person who helped reaching its realization? or maybe are we not completely understanding our role in his plan yet?

And all of this, all of this weird undertone of codependant relationship between Gaster and the player, this mutual fascination and genuine feelings for one another, whatever those feelings can be, ALL OF THIS without even talking about the Demon/Angel parallels we could ALSO talk about regarding how the relationship between those two transdimensional entity could go.

Let's assume the player is the Angel. (The Angel is said to "light up the path" of believers, the player's soul's distinctive power is to produce light on its own. The Angel is said to be "watching over" the world and people, the player's pov seems to come from the sky, from "HEAVEN" some could say. The Angel is traditionally represented without facial features, as Noelle and Dess's doll's description at the hospital points out, and the we are unable to see how the Angel looks like in the prophecy, which would make a lot of sense if the Angel was supposed to be the player, someone who, inherently, has to be faceless to represent ALL of us. The player's soul gets trapped under an Angel doll at Noelle's house. The Titan we see in Ch4 uses a lot of the imagery typically associated with the Angel, and first appears with an image suggesting a "real human face". That is SOME of the reasons why it's easy to assume the player is the Angel, at least in SOME versions of DR's reality (for example it would be possible for Noelle to take the role of the Angel in a Weird Route or something, the same way the Angel was two people at the same time in UT ; one benevolent Angel, and one Angel of Death, depending on the run the player is doing)).

Gaster has always been associated with demonic symbolism, the most obvious of which being the repeated connection he has with the number "6" : the typer associated with him is 666, in both UT and DR, his hidden stats in UT are filled with 6s, each one of the funvalues directly calling him by name are all happening between 61 and 65 (which is also why it is so commonly accepted to say that the mystery man from the funvalue 66 is supposed to represent Gaster himself in some way), the theme DARKNESS FALLS, as previously mentionned, is 66s seconds long, etc...

Interestingly enough, supporting the interpretation of these "666" as being the Devil's number, Gaster also made an appearance in the "demon text" of UT during a very short period of time : alongside a text CLEARLY written by Chara, "the demon who comes when people call its name", another line appeared in PRECISELY the version 1.05A of the game, saying "HE IS". (for more information on the demon texts if you are interested here is a post by Underlore talking about it)

It makes sense for Chara to be present in the DEMON text, because they call themself a demon, and it makes sense for Gaster to be there as well, as he's so often associated with the number 6. and ironically enough, while Chara is the demon who comes when people call its name, when we first name them at the beginning of the game, we are UNABLE to write or hear the name of Gaster in most playthrough. In a way, it's as if he's specifically a foil to Chara, the demon who comes when people DOESN'T call its name, haha.

And this makes sense with WHAT Chara is supposed to be : Chara is the player's completionist will, what pushes them to conquer and consume every last bit of a game, leaving nothing left behind them, metaphorically "destroying" worlds for their own entertainment. But, because of his very special status in the game, Gaster just cannot be "consumed" like every other content can ; he is often the very last thing keeping people interested in UT, when everything else has been read and analyzed, only him stays "unsolved", everything one can know and believe to understand about him feeling like a bottomless pit of endless possibilities. Literally the one thing the player needs to satiate Chara. Endless content, because incomplete.

Gaster has always given the player what they wanted, ever since UT. He is in a way the opposite force opposing the player's will to SEE and DO everything, because he is the content they will never be able to SEE and TRULY interact with, but this is this exact force that makes the player feels so connected to the world ; if the content is seemingly endless because unreachable, then the illusion of a fictional world being infinite is achieved. and as a result, the player becomes obsessed with that world that seems oh so real.

Because of this duality between these two, it could be easy to suggest the possibility that Gaster isn't "just" a demon, but The Devil, acting as a counterpart to The Angel, the player. After all, it is Gaster with whom we made a suspicious deal at the very beginning of DR, giving him our SOUL regardless of what the consequences would be.

Who else would offer a deal with such absolute conditions than the Devil itself, the one who is represented by the number 666, the one who we are told to "beware" from the very first time we hear about him.

All of this to say i do not think it would be so wild to assume that, with everything that we know about how the player's and Gaster's goals, wants and ENTIRE EXISTENCES allign but also complete one another, it wouldn't be so out there to believe that maybe, similarly to how Flowey in UT became obsessed with the player because they were the only person existing at a similar plane of existence as him, the player and Gaster would develop very strong feelings for one another, because they are the only ones in this fictional world who see it as a fictional world, the only ones who understand one another, and who can help each other effortlessly, simply by following their own instincts.

TL;DR i ship the player and Gaster and i made it everybody else's problem

#was there a point to all of this #i might just be insane #deltarune #deltarune gaster #wd gaster #deltarune player #player deltarune #<- so cool we're all collectively acting as if they were a character in-game #never done a ship manifesto before... is this how you do it guys. am i doing it right.#if anyone reads all of this im genuinely so sorry for you #deltarune spoilers #deltarune chapter 3&4 spoilers #it is 3AM and im writing about gaster x player because that's the most meaningful thing i can do in my life #go to bed aster #<- theory/analysis/rambling tag ig

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