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[notesondeltarune]

Flowey’s last reset

I suppose that a lot of people (at least the ones I’ve discussed Undertale with) figure that by the time you meet Flowey at the beginning of the game, he was on one of his usual careless resets, in the middle of experimenting with people’s behaviour like usual. Hence his just-as-sudden attempt to kill you immediately.

Let me try to argue against that. I imagine that, far from being that usual and carefree moment that you found Flowey in, you actually found Flowey at his lowest point (and that’s saying a lot.) But to really get at how this looks like, let’s try and sketch out what his situation might have been like.

The key facts about Flowey’s resets are these:

When the player begins the game, the Underground is largely free of Flowey’s direct influence. This seems to indicate that Flowey has done nothing at all after his last reset, or at least very little to indicate his presence among the denizens of the Underground. With the exception of Alphys and Sans, no one seems to show awareness of his nature or existence until he reveals himself.

Flowey has explored every possibility, or at least enough to be tired of them. He claims that he’s read every book and burned every book. This might be literally true, or he might just be hyperbolic about it. The point is that there seems to be nothing new to do anymore. (An underlying premise here is that at this point, Flowey only really cares about novelty and things to entertain himself with.)

The story we know

Before the player character stumbles into the Underground, Flowey’s experiences take place. The story is familiar--Asriel wakes up one day as Flowey amidst the flowers in the throne room. He cannot feel love, whether from his mother or father. He attempts to leave the world, but his will to live overpowers and he finds himself back at the flower field, at the same place and time when he first awoke. This is Flowey’s save point, where everything resets to.

From that point on, Flowey begins his experimentation. He attempts to befriend everyone, but this does not save him nor does it fulfill him. So he resigns himself to toying with others’ fates, eventually reaching the conclusion that the characters in the game are nothing more than a collection of possible responses to given stimuli--control the stimuli and you control the person responding to them.

Through this experimentation, we’re led to believe that Flowey has RESET countless times. He has, to our knowledge, discovered every fact about the world he lives in--that he’s read and burned every book. Through the course of exhausting the possibilities that his environment offers him (Point 2 above) he isn’t looking for any fulfillment or joy, but mere entertainment.

The question is this: when does Undertale finally begin? At which point does Flowey simply lose control over the timeline? If it was during one of his many resets, like a chance occurence, then this would imply that Flowey was in the middle of experimenting still. But see Point 1 above; Flowey doesn’t seem to have meddled with the game itself in the timeline that the player finally arrives. Flowey wasn’t doing anything then.

Things will get a bit technical here.

Time shenanigans

To illustrate, let’s call the furthest point that Flowey reaches before resetting Point B. It could be any one of his experiments, but just one that entertained him for long enough before he decided to wipe the board clean and start again. From Point A (his reset point), to point B, any number of experiments could all take place at this time, but none of these last as long the time it takes to get to point B. If we said that Point A was the year 2000, and the longest time Flowey went with an experiment was 50 years, then Point B = 2050. If it was 75 years, then Point B = 2075.

If Undertale begins (the player falls into the Underground) when Flowey has not made any significant changes to the Underground, then it cannot begin any earlier than Point B. Otherwise, during one of his experiments the player would pop down, Undertale would begin, and we would see all the things Flowey has been doing up to that point, whether it be inciting a revolution against Asgore or reading one of many books. We would have caught Flowey when there was still something to be done. There wouldn’t have been that talk from Flowey about being bored or having read every book.

So Undertale must begin some time after Point B. But how long after Point B? It must have been a very long time where nothing seems to have changed, and no new development just “pops up” that would catch Flowey’s interest. If it did, he would probably start experimenting with that, and the furthest he goes with that would become another point B. So it must have been a very long time, so long that he can’t predict it, and so long that he can’t simply wait it out normally in eager anticipation. It could have even been a hundred years or a thousand, given the absurdly long lifespan of Asgore and Toriel, at least. But if Flowey really had no influence by the time the player character finally lands in the ruins, then it implies that Flowey did nothing for all that time.

What does that look like?

The last reset: a non-story

Our final story looks something like this: after many resets, many trials and many experiments, Flowey finally runs out of things to do. He’s seen the same routine everyone goes through, again and again. He knows what they will do and knows what would make them act otherwise. People have now finally become fully predictable and their daily lives completely trivial. The same birthdays, the same Christmases, the same New Years’ celebrations. Like the prisoner counting the number of cobblestones on his cell, and probably having done the same thing a few more times, he can’t even occupy himself with activity. The world grows cold and stale.

What difference would it have made if he was just trapped in an endless void now? He can’t bring himself to die, and he can’t bring himself to really live. And yet he continues to exist.

So one day, he just simply stops doing anything. And he doesn’t do anything for a long time, a time longer than he’s ever gone before. Time passes by and the world goes on, and he doesn’t do anything about it this time around. Maybe he just sleeps during that time. Maybe he just stops thinking at all, or stares at the wall just waiting for something else to happen. If he did think at all, he would know it would take nothing short of a miracle, something completely different from the Underground that he knows down to the tiniest speck of dust.

Would it make anything different if he was in the surface? Maybe he’d get more things to toy with and keep him busy for maybe a few thousand more years. Maybe this new miracle will at least provide him with one good bit of entertainment before it ends his pathetic life. That might give someone to hope for, but years upon years of waiting wear away at his anticipation until he doesn’t even have the thirst for the future anymore. So he doesn’t even wait. Just sits there, existing, while life goes through the same predictable show that it always has for all these years.

Then one day, someone does come. You come. And Undertale begins.

[notesondeltarune]

Notes on Undertale, and why I think Undertale is more than an ethical game

I’ve been watching some commentaries on Undertale in the spare time that I had while working on my Master’s Degree this winter. While watching the videos by hbomberguy and Architect of Games, I’ve been starting to realize that my own interpretation and overall opinion of Undertale seems to be very different from how a lot of people feel. Despite my enduring fascination with the game, as well as with Deltarune, I’m also deeply critical of many of its aspects and I don’t find that it’s actually successful in conveying its core themes. So I’ve figured that one of the things that I should talk about is also my own perspective on Undertale. There’s a lot of things that I believe are still worthy of discussion, even while most people believe that it’s already been analyzed to death. So, consider this maybe a coming series on a discussion about Undertale. The themes I’ll be covering might be literary, psychological, philosophical, maybe even religious.

Part of why I want to start talking about Undertale again is only partly because I suspect some parts of Undertale was misunderstood or overlooked. Now I’m not saying that I think I have the correct interpretation of the game. Far from it—it might be the biggest embarrassment since the whole “Sans is Ness” debacle. Then why talk about the game? I think that there might be something to be gained out of an alternate interpretation. Can we get a different message from Undertale if we give more importance to this part rather than another? That’s what I want to see from starting what might be a new set of discussions about a game most people have already left behind.

One way that I diverge from common opinion is that I don’t believe that Undertale is really an ethical game at its core. Architect of Games above mentions that it would have been a mistake to give the Genocide Route much credence in his discussion about what Undertale was even about. But I think that you have to come to terms with the fact that the genocide route even exists as such. Why not just have a route where you simply kill as many monsters as you can and just end up with a really bad neutral route or an “especially bad ending”? But the Genocide Route does more than just an “especially bad ending.” The Genocide route clearly isn’t some bonus content--it’s the game fully admitting your own freedom to do otherwise in a way that’s substantial. The game isn’t just saying “well I guess you can kill everyone you come across.” The game is saying “You have the option here to absolutely and totally wipe the Underground of life altogether.” The Genocide Route is unique and actively chosen rather than passively arrived at. It is not just an opposite of the True Pacifist Route. 

So I think it’s important to treat the Genocide Route as an integral part of the game’s narrative and themes. But I don’t think people should see its existence as a “necessary evil” that’s only there so you can choose between pacifism and non-pacifism. I think that the genocide route has a robust theme of its own to tell, and it’s not just about the player being evil or bad or any of that trite stuff. I believe that the Genocide Route is there to be played and that it represents the player’s will to finish or complete the game. The Genocide Route is a demand for absolute closure, to be completely “done with the game”. But herein lies a paradox: if players demand completion and total satisfaction from absolutely finishing Undertale, why would they want to come back to it again later? Why replay a game that has already been finished, that is, why does “soulless pacifist” even exist? If the True Pacifist route represented the player’s will to completely immerse themselves in the game’s story (and hence demand that its world go on), and the Genocide Route represented the player’s will to overcome the game (and hence demand that the world’s purpose be “fulfilled”), are we really comfortable with the separation between these two routes? Do we, in a sense, seek the virtues of both, to achieve completion but also live in its narrative? Does that say something about what we demand from games and why we play them?

If this isn’t something that could be called an “ethical” question, I think it’s something more like an existential question. If it really took the game to say “don’t kill people” then plenty of other games with better graphics and better gameplay have probably done that, and Undertale would hardly warrant its attention (not that attention and merit are necessarily connected anyway). But I think there’s something underneath that surface-level moral message that asks a painful question about what we want from a video game that we don’t get out of life.

Maybe that’s why Undertale AUs have been quite popular, even if a lot of it is just fluff. There’s a lot of fantasies about Toriel, for example, who fills the role of a mother that many of us wish we had. Actually, many things about Undertale seem to show us pictures of a happy life that we wish we could have. Undertale dangles the vision of a happy life in front of our eyes. But why aren’t at least some people satisfied with knowing that Frisk will be happy? Perhaps it indicates that the True Pacifist ending does not actually give us a sense of closure because we realize that we are ultimately excluded from that happy life.

When Asriel asks us if we don’t have anything better to do, as if to imply that we players had a real life to look forward to... I wonder if there were more than a few of us who would respond, “I would stay right here if I could.”

I’ll elaborate more on some of the things I’m saying here in the future.

[notesondeltarune]

A (dead) Undertale ask blog to pass some time

Since I don't think I'll be posting much for a while, I figure that I'll recommend you all a dead Undertale ask blog that I think is worth reading over for a more cynical take on the game. Spoilers ahead:

@your-best-frenemy

The blog takes place some time after the Soulless Pacifist ending. On the surface, the blog is a slice-of-life fluff of two (or three) children living an average life as kids on the surface. But intertwined with this setting is a not-so-fluffy theme of begrudging tolerance, façades of innocence, and the ennui of daily life. Chara and Asriel are both long past any semblance of innocence, manipulative (to different ends), and at each other's throats throughout their tormented friendship. The protagonist, Frisk, is morally ambiguous and seems to be no less of a danger than the other two.

While the blog didn't manage to go far enough to weave a story or develop these characters, what makes this blog worth reading is not just the unique take on the characters, nor the appropriate and good pixel art (not too elaborate, and very much in line with the feel of the game). The blog challenges the very themes of Undertale on its own terms: the freedom to choose and the simplistic pacifism of the game is not taken for granted at all.

I highly recommend this blog for people who were unsatisfied, even dissatisfied by the True Pacifist ending. They may find that they're in good company.

[notesondeltarune]

Are you okay? You haven't posted in a while.

I’m fine. Only problem is that my studies have taken a huge toll on me. Been spending 12 hours a day in school, so I’ve barely got any time to think of new ideas for this blog, let alone write anything.

I don’t know if I should call the blog dead or not. I’m the kind of person who leaves a project on the side for a year before suddenly resuming work on it, so maybe sometime later I’ll post something again.

[notesondeltarune]

PSA on the latest drama with Heartbound and Matpat

There's no need to comment too much on what happened. The injustice is pretty clear as is. I'm worried about the fact that the focus here has been on punishing the injustice (if not self-satisfied circlejerking over how awful matpat is, etc). The fact that matpat is trending on Twitter instead of the game is a testament to that. I don't believe any good will come from it.

Instead, if you'd like to make some good out of this situation, I believe it would be best to leave the drama behind and give the game the attention it missed out on.

It's bad enough that your work becomes reduced to a mere reference to another game that inspired you, refused the dignity of being played for what it is. But what would be worse is to have that work be associated with something that's not even a game, but a stupid drama that never should have happened in the first place. It would be a greater injustice to the creator that the name Heartbound should always be connected to the entity that cheated it rather than to be appreciated for what it was trying to do, whether it is in the spirit of Undertale or to defy it.

If you do play Heartbound I encourage you not to let the drama play any part in your judgment of it. If you like it or dislike it, let that happen from its own merits. I think it deserves that much.

[notesondeltarune]

I find this interpretation of Ralsei as having ulterior motives to be very plausible, and something that I’ll be looking out for as more clues are uncovered, as well as when the full game is out. Given that Ralsei doesn’t exactly develop all that much over the course of the story, it’s at least natural to suspect that there’s something more to the prince than purely good intentions.

Here are some things that might be worth considering, if we roll with this:

1. How much deception is Ralsei pulling off, that is, how much power does he have?

If we suppose that Ralsei is deceiving the player in some way, the deception he’s pulling off is something way beyond just lying. He’s also lying about his very identity and his very essence as a Darkner. As I’ve argued in a previous blog post, Ralsei doesn’t turn white when his hat comes off his head until he takes it off at the very end. When he is downed in battle, his whole body fades, leaving a pile of clothing. These things seem to indicate for the time being that Ralsei is what he appears to be: a creature of darkness who is just as dependent on the pillar of darkness for his corporeal being.

Here are some ways to answer if Ralsei is a Darkner or a Lightner.

a) OP seems to suggest that Ralsei never was a Darkner in the first place but that would mean that Ralsei is pulling a lot of magical strings in order to make himself seem like a Darkner until the very end. That would mean that he has some complex magic powers of illusion, which go beyond what the average monster is capable of. This is quite possible.

b) Another line of thinking is that Ralsei wasn’t lying about his being a Darkner, but has changed over the course of the journey. Whatever process led to his turning into a lightner might be connected to why he wanted to destroy the dark world in the first place--to escape it. This way he wouldn’t have died when the pillar was sealed. This lacks evidence, but might have promising explanatory power.

c) One more line of thinking is that Ralsei is a Lightner playing a Darkner. He exists outside of the Dark world, but insofar as he manifests himself inside it, he is a Darkner. The example I used to illustrate this in the above post refers to the “Dark World was a Dungeons and Dragons game” interpretation. If so, then at the ending, Ralsei was not speaking as a character inside the game, but speaking in his capacity as the host of the game, who exists outside of it. That would fit in quite nicely with the idea that Ralsei is a deceiver; the whole game is a deception.

2. Why is the King portrayed as unambiguously unkind, and Ralsei as unambiguously nice to the point of naivety?

This is probably the closest that will come to a counterargument, but it’s worth asking. As of now, Ralsei’s motivations If Ralsei was being deceptive, then why do we get no real positive evidence as to his having ulterior motives? While it is very likely that Ralsei is very good at hiding his tracks, there is still no hint that would make the player suspect him in the first place. No slip of the tongue, no gossip about Ralsei from other characters, nothing. If he was a deciever, the deception is perfect, since hardly any reason, if any, is given to the player to suspect he might not be sincere.

The only person who seems to have a stronger, deep-seated opposition to Ralsei is the King. The King is the only entity within the game who believes that the destruction of their pillar will result in the demise of the monsters, but it’s not easy to believe that his motives are compassionate at all. The King teeters between resentment and pity towards Lightners like Ralsei. The King terrorizes his people, his son in particular who he threatens to drop off of the castle walls at the climax of the story. What does this indicate?

If the King was aware of Ralsei’s deception or even remotely cared about the fate of the world beyond just hanging onto some bitterness towards the Lightners, then the King would have attempted to be more diplomatic to both his people and to his adversaries. It would have been more reasonable and effective to do so, since at that point Ralsei wouldn’t look like a Messiah next to a demon. The king’s tyranny inspires his subjects to ultimately rebel against him, even when Ralsei himself nearly jeopardizes their lives by healing the King. (Did Ralsei know in advance that the people would revolt?)

So why doesn’t the King act reasonably rather than trip out on power on brutality? Why doesn’t the King sow distrust in the Lightners instead of trying to keep his own people in fear that they’d be happy to be rid of?

The next three questions won’t have a satisfactory answer, at least not until the full game is released. So all I have are some possible questions to ask.

3. Why does he want to destroy everyone?

Self explanatory. What reason would he have to destroy the pillar? Was he bored? Was it merely a consequence of his actions that he never cared for?

4. What does the Dark World mean, and what does its destruction entail?

Is it a real world like the one the lightners live in, or is it a lesser fantasy realm, like in a Dungeons and Dragons game? If the Dark world is just an illusion, then who made the illusion? Did Ralsei create the world? How did he bring them into the world?

If the world is made by Ralsei as a fantasy, is it accurate to say that destroying a world of pretend characters is the same as killing them? Is to beat the game to fulfill the purpose of the Dark World, and hence the Dark World is no longer necessary and is discarded? Is it implying that sealing the pillar is like completing a game? To beat a game is to destroy it?

5. What about the loose ends?

Who is the Knight? Why do we never see him? Is Ralsei still alive? What’s Ralsei going to do if he is?

Deltarune Theory - Ralsei lied and tricked us into killing everyone

Alright some of you seemed to want to hear me talk about this:

Now, hear me rant:

Let’s talk about the Prophecy, or the Legend of the Delta Rune, and why it’s fishy. Ralsei says that the prophecy was ‘foretold by Time and Space’ and that it was ‘whispered among shadows’ but he is the only one that knows of it, it is never mentioned by any other citizen or character of the Dark World, the only exception being maybe Seam, to who we tell that we are legendary and we’re heroes and he says “So you’re the heroes that are going to seal our fountain?” but that’s about it, and we probably explained it to him (I doubt that all we said was “We’re legendary”).

Anyways, the prophecy says that another fountain of darkness has appeared and it’s shifting the balance and Ralsei adds on that if we were to return home, we must close it. (Another thing is that the prophecy makes it seem like all three heroes must close the fountain, but then he says that technically only Kris is the one that can do it soooo)

Closing the fountains takes us home, we know that. But it’s also stated in the prophecy that the fountain is “The geyser that gives this land form”, so basically, it’s the dark world’s power source. It’s also written in Ralsei’s unused manual that the manual is “Dedicated to the unending pillar of darkness that gives my body form”. Unending pillar of darkness, really sounds like the fountain, the important thing is that it gives his body form.

And it is implied that the little empty kingdom that Ralsei is in, is created by the fountain that’s in the castle, and it is said that the Card Castle is created by the other fountain, because the King goes all “you wanna close our fountain” and stuff.

And it begs the question, by closing the fountain, are we getting rid of everything that fountain has created? Nobody seems to know, when you ask Lancer he says he’s got no idea what closing the fountain will do. They all have no idea.

Except for maybe Seam, the one that we may or may not have told about the prophecy to. The Little coat hanger tells us that Seam didn’t want to come over after we defeated the King, unlike everyone else, who came to thank us. Maybe he knows what’s up, but because of his seemingly depressing outlook, he doesn’t care, or according to his condition, apparently neither Dark not Light hold a future for him.

Ok, so we may or may not have destroyed everyone’s forms by going home, more fishy stuff with Ralsei and the prophecy:

Ralsei calls himself a prince yet his ‘kingdom’ is empty and there’s no King or Queen to make him a prince. And it is never explained why.

The fountain that we are closing, may be actually the ORIGINAL fountain,

and Ralsei just made it look like it’s not, so that HIS fountain stays, and we close the other one, when in reality his fountain might be the rogue one.

Think about it, the only thing that says that the Card Castle’s fountain is the rogue one, is the prophecy, which nobody seems to know about except for Ralsei, meaning he could’ve made it up.

AND, if the Card Castle’s fountain is the rogue one, how come it has created SO much more Ralsei’s fountain? It created the entire game, all that the other fountain has is some tiny empty town and a single so called ‘prince’.

Another strange thing about the prophecy, since there’s no actual evidence that Ralsei is a Prince of Darkness (in fact by the end of the game he kinda looks more like a lightener),

the ‘Prince of Darkness’ from the prophecy might actually be Lancer.

Because unlike Ralsei, Lancer actually has a kingdom, a father who is a King, and everyone refers to him as the Prince.

AND another thing, his parallels to Asriel and Flowey:

Ralsei is no doubt connected to Asriel, he might even BE Asriel. Who else is also Asriel? Flowey. And just like Flowey, Ralsei is the first person we meet in this ‘new world’ (Dark World in Deltarune, Underground in Undertale), he uses similar language to Flowey (calling the soul the ‘culmination of your being’), he is overly nice just like Flowey was, and going along this pattern, just like Flowey, he will betray us.

He might’ve already did.

Anyways so TL;DR: Since the fountain is what gives the darkners their forms, by closing it we might’ve just killed the whole kingdom. Also there’s nothing to actually suggest that Ralsei is a prince, and that his fountain is the original one, except for his word. And Lancer might actually be the “Prince of Darkness” from the prophecy.

This theory and evidence stuff was also brought together with the help of @camodiel btw, 

Feel free to discuss/argue

[notesondeltarune]

Expect fewer updates over the month

Hitting crunch time in school. I haven’t forgotten you guys!

[notesondeltarune]

Another thing to note in "Why Does Ralsei Look So Weird Without His Hat?" is: Hatless Ralsei's horns curve in such a way they could never form the outline of the horns of his hat.

[notesondeltarune]

I didn't see your latest (delightfully lengthy) posts, and I go through the Undertale tag regularly. Do you know why this is? Were your posts affected by Tumblr's spambot purge preventing posts with links from showing up on tags?

I’m not sure at all. I don’t have any links on any of my blog posts, and Tumblr’s search function hasn’t been particularly reliable anyway, so I don’t think it’s something to worry about. At least not yet.

Still, I did hear about the collateral damage of that spambot purge. To all my readers, keep an eye out for any content creators who might’ve been affected by the purge, especially if they’re dependent on Patreon or commissions for their income.

[notesondeltarune]

I also forgot to mention another thing: When downed, Ralsei’s body seems to completely disappear, leaving only his clothes.

This seems to be further evidence that Ralsei, at least until the reveal, isn’t exactly corporeal or has the ability to endure physically, unlike Kris and Susie.

Why does Ralsei look so weird when he takes off his hat? Discussion and (Possible) Explanation

Most people have noticed by now that when Ralsei takes off his hat, there’s a jarring transition from when he has his hat on:

From when he doesn’t:

The differences between the two portraits don’t need to be stated in too much detail. Beyond the complete shift in physical shape, proportions, and style that throws out any sense of continuity between what’s essentially the same character, the two sprites look like they’re for completely different games. The latter sprite looks more faithful to the original Undertale sprites, but with more tonal variation than would have been allowed in its strict black-and-white palette.

The most noticable change, of course, is the fur colour. What it implies at first glance is that all this time, Ralsei’s true features were hidden by the shade of his hat. But other people have pointed out that there are instances within the game when the hat is not directly on Ralsei’s head, and his fur does not change colour:

Keep reading

[notesondeltarune]

Why does Ralsei look so weird when he takes off his hat? Discussion and (Possible) Explanation

Most people have noticed by now that when Ralsei takes off his hat, there’s a jarring transition from when he has his hat on:

From when he doesn’t:

The differences between the two portraits don’t need to be stated in too much detail. Beyond the complete shift in physical shape, proportions, and style that throws out any sense of continuity between what’s essentially the same character, the two sprites look like they’re for completely different games. The latter sprite looks more faithful to the original Undertale sprites, but with more tonal variation than would have been allowed in its strict black-and-white palette.

The most noticable change, of course, is the fur colour. What it implies at first glance is that all this time, Ralsei’s true features were hidden by the shade of his hat. But other people have pointed out that there are instances within the game when the hat is not directly on Ralsei’s head, and his fur does not change colour:

As well as the otherwise unreadable manual found within the sprite sheet where Ralsei mentions that his body is given form by darkness:

Unless these were strictly oversights, or suspensions of disbelief for the purpose of comedy/drama, the above sprites and Ralsei’s manual seem to imply that Ralsei’s body was indeed made of darkness until the very end.

This would fit in with the prophecy that Ralsei gives, where the Prince of Darkness is contrasted to the human (like Kris) and the monster (like Susie). Unless we suppose that the prince of darkness is Lancer (and that he is not a monster) we are led to believe that Ralsei is this Prince. This would imply that Ralsei is not then a monster, let alone one in disguise.

There are other notes that might be worth considering.

First, By the time that Ralsei reaches the king, the king does not differentiate Ralsei from the other Lightners that Lancer had befriended. This indicates that the King sees Ralsei as being a Lightner himself at that point.

Second, Unlike the other Darkners seen in the game, there is no “explanatory object” given for Ralsei. When Kris and Susie wake up in the abandoned classroom after the adventure, there are explanations for just about every entity in the dark world. Each monster, shopkeeper, map features after meeting Ralsei seems to be a manifestation of different objects in the classroom, but no clear reference seems to be there for Ralsei. (If Ralsei was an object, then perhaps it’d be Kris’ red horns that Toriel mentions. For whatever reason, we don’t find it within the classroom, however.)

So this implies that when Ralsei takes off his hat, there’s something more than a change of lighting going on. Maybe it’s symbolic, but even this symbolism must be referring to something more than just seeing Ralsei’s face clearly.

So, from here on out is speculation.

My explanation for this is that when Ralsei takes off his hat, it’s a transition between states or modes of being. That is, Ralsei is changing at some deep level beyond just his physical appearance. How this is happening is still ambiguous, but I think there are two further ways to explain how this is happening, neither of which I’m totally decided on:

A. Transformation/Realization: It could be a transformation from a creature of darkness to a flesh-and-blood creature (or dust-and-magic, in this case.) Somehow, the adventure that Ralsei has with Kris and Susie allows him to become real in some sense--to be “realized”. Whereas Ralsei was dependent on the pillar of darkness to be his “ground of being” before, we might consider that the adventure has allowed him to secure an independent existence. 

Just as playing the game through the Genocide Route is what manifests “Chara” in Undertale, participating in the dark world is what allows Ralsei to manifest as a being. It’s possible that doing just this might be one of his motives.

B. Shift in mode of being: It could be a change in the way we see him/the way he presents himself. When Ralsei takes off his hat, Ralsei is presenting a part of himself that is different from his everyday self. 

An example might make this clear. For instance, I’ve heard some people theorize that the whole adventure in the dark world was something like a game of Dungeons and Dragons, with Ralsei playing as the host. You could think of it like this: When Ralsei takes off his hat, he is no longer merely playing the character Ralsei, but speaking as the host.

If we roll with this explanation, there are about two consequences that follow that I can think of:

There is no true form of Ralsei. Simply, Ralsei is both a fluffy creature of darkness and a fluffy boss monster. Both are canonical, not merely a matter of preference. Not a huge deal in terms of literary analysis and theorizing, but it’s as good a justification as any for drawing Ralsei however you want. A boon to fanart.

There’s more to Ralsei than simply being a denizen of the dark world. If Ralsei had some other form just around the corner that he didn’t show until the end, then perhaps there’s something more to his character than what we see. Perhaps Ralsei is much more powerful than he lets on, or his very being extends beyond what we see of him in the game. If he had this power, why is he in the dark world? How did he get there?

At this point, the space for further speculation explodes, and he could very well become another Gaster or Sans. I personally don’t have an opinion if this indicates that Ralsei is actually Asriel, or that Ralsei was a monster disguised as an inhabitant of the dark world, or that Ralsei is responsible for the dark world. Perhaps that’s something that will be explained in a potential future chapter.

[notesondeltarune]

A commentary on innocence and the characters of Asriel, Ralsei, and Lancer.

The word “innocence” seems to have taken on a much broader and varied meaning in our judgment of characters. Whenever someone calls a character innocent outside of an immediate context of crime or sin, it usually invokes some notion of youthful naivety. 

Innocence generally relies on two properties:

Lack of moral direction (undeveloped moral judgment/corruptibility). A good way to distinguish between innocent and righteous (morally upstanding) characters is to ask, “Could this character serve as a guide or role model?”. Righteous characters usually have internal principles and a keen eye for situations that call for moral responses. Innocent characters generally struggle with recognizing when they are in a moral situation, and are vulnerable to corruption since they can be misled. This undeveloped moral judgment--a lack of moral direction-- is why people feel that innocent characters should be protected rather than looked up to.

Free of moral wrongdoing. Even innocent characters are still held to moral standards. A significant display of moral wrong, like an act of bullying or a murder, usually coincides with a loss of innocence.

Using this criteria, let’s first take an example of someone who’s not innocent despite being adorable: Asriel from Undertale.

Why do people portray Asriel as being innocent, even in some of the more serious depictions that try to develop him seriously as a character? Maybe they’re just that hopeful that Asriel could somehow return to a normal life that he was denied. Perhaps it’s an idealization of his cuteness, which risks reducing the character down to being cute and nothing more. Maybe there really wasn’t much to work with in Asriel to begin with (and one can definitely argue that his character development is rather spotty in the game as is). But even this is to have missed much of what characterizes hus time as Flowey.

Flowey from Undertale would not be innocent by any means. But this includes that game’s Asriel by extension, despite the fact that many people like to portray him as being innocent. Flowey is clearly a malevolent force for most of the game, with plenty of examples of moral wrongdoing. Flowey is also keenly aware of the moral boundaries that he oversteps and the ill will he displays towards others. Even during his redemption as Asriel, he harbours no illusions about the things he’s done. Now if Asriel is to atone for his evils, he must properly recognize them as evils (which he does). This requires moral direction. This completely cuts off the possibility of him becoming innocent again, even though it may make him worthy of being considered righteous.

This highlights something paradoxical about innocence. To avoid or atone for moral wrongs, you’d need the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. That is, a moral direction. If a character doesn’t get this moral direction, you can usually guess that they either won’t develop as a character or will become corrupted somewhere down the line, undermining their innocence anyway. Innocence as a character trait is necessarily a temporary trait that is meant to be lost for the sake of development.

So what kind of character would be innocent? It’d be a character that lacks moral experience--someone who is yet to develop. This is the reason why I believe that, between Lancer and Ralsei, Lancer is fundamentally more innocent.

Ralsei is a righteous character who is still morally inexperienced.

If we were going to compare Ralsei to a literary character, I think he is very much like, if not completely similar to, Alyosha from the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Ralsei has a great moral character. He upholds expectations of being a “good person” better than anyone else thus far in the series. He’s abnormally kind and nice to just about everyone that he comes across, and even when he does get frustrated or angry, it never lasts beyond a moment. He doesn’t hold grudges and is quick to forgive, or rather completely overlook previous hostilities, be it from Susie or Lancer. He seems to always do the right thing from the moment you meet him, and is always prepared to sacrifice his own well-being for others.

Unlike Lancer, Ralsei very much understands moral principles and morality. He has a strong sense of right-and-wrong and in fact imprints that moral standard over his friends. He implores Kris to spare enemies, and discourages Susie from attacking her enemies. Even when castigating her for her decisions, he is quick to encourage her, and even blames himself for having been too aggressive towards her when she reacts badly to it. 

If he can faulted for anything, it’s his naivety. His moral beliefs are only challenged during the final boss fight against the king, and he doesn’t go through the slightest bit of psychological struggle over it, but rather quickly accepts that the king was someone who must be fought. (Side comment: I’m not sure if this was rushed character development or a more intentional piece in a grander character development. But this is probably one of the less satisfying aspects of Deltarune’s story.).

Lancer is morally naive, but his misunderstanding of evil betrays his innocence.

Lancer’s something like Adam and Eve before eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That’s to say that he literally doesn’t seem to understand what the “evil” he so celebrates actually means. What he thinks of as being villainy seems to be mostly harmless mischief and aesthetics with none of the symbolism. To him, evil is like a subculture which he gleefully participates in, and he does it so long as he has no moral directive that would otherwise inform him that what he’s doing isn’t actually evil.

The fact that he believes that he is being evil, though, shows that Lancer is clearly vulnerable to moral corruption. His father, the King, has clearly made his influence felt on Lancer by the time you meet him. Lancer arrives as an adversary who is already eager to be the poster child for the bad guys of the game, albeit one that blunders so much that the protagonists soon no longer take him seriously.

In a more serious story, Susie should have been the concluding influence that would have fully culminated in Lancer’s corruption. She could believably had Lancer begin to feel the fear or anger necessary to finally make Lancer seriously consider what evil means. Perhaps Lancer would have been inspired to commit his first truly evil act, or realize that evil was not what he was looking for all along.

Instead, Lancer’s corruptibility “backfires” at that point. After thanking Susie for her “advice”, they quickly realize that both of them like each other for how they are, and stumble into a friendship based around Lancer’s idea of evil: bumbling mischief. (Why Susie is so willing to follow along Lancer’s stupidity, I’m not sure.) The two “corrupt” each other in this way, developing empathy that will allow Susie to have a change of heart. Neither does Lancer stay innocent. By the time the game ends, he comes to value his friendship in Susie too much to allow his father to kill her. He makes moral decisions--one to imprison the protagonists to avoid a struggle, and another to inspire rebellion against his father.

[notesondeltarune]

A brief note on Susie’s bullying (will be expanded later with screenshots)

Why is Susie a bully? We don’t get to explore much of Susie’s past (at least, not from what I could find yet) but hints to why she acts this way can be picked out from how she bullies the player.

Spoilers below.

What kind of bully is Susie?

Let’s start with a rough formula for a psychological profile of a general bully character, which goes something like this: Take a vulnerable person and put them in an environment where they are constantly reminded of their vulnerability. This results in an insecure person. If they aren’t totally crushed by the insecurity, then they try to deal with it by renewing their self-esteem, whether by validation from others (exhibition bullies, those who bully to impress others) or from themselves (individualistic bullies, those who want to impress themselves).

Since Susie doesn’t have friends at the beginning of the game, when her bullying is at its worst, she’s not in it to impress anyone. In fact, she seems to horrify most people around her. She even acknowledges that her actions (deliberately eating the chalk, threatening to mutilate the player) may get her expelled, further alienating her from society. She’s well aware that her bullying is not for societal prestige.

So the bullying must be for herself. But what kind of motive--what void is she trying to fill with it? This is a trickier question than it usually appears, since her bullying is not directed against a specific person, but to all of her classmates generally. Her attack on the player character isn’t for evidently racial or qualitative reasons that she targets. In fact, she doesn’t seem to be focused on any specific property about her victims. So what kind of insecurity is she compensating for?

Is she interested in power?

When she encounters enemies (and attempts to kill them) she tells the two other party members that the enemies were trying to kill them. Fair point--but her attitude isn’t pained necessity or tragedy, but glee. This sadism might make one guess that she does this to feel powerful, and she does seem to be chasing a kind of empowerment or thrill from acts of violence.

But this seems odd when you think that she seems to acknowledge the fact that her actions could potentially backfire on her (and undermine her power). Even the most power-hungry people try to avoid getting expelled or imprisoned. She simply doesn’t care at all.

If she was looking for power, then why is she so apathetic? If we take her response to the prophecy, told by Ralsei. A power-hungry person might start thinking about the potential gain to be had from being a hero, how much of a risk the quest entails, express factual skepticism, or refuse out of cowardice. Anything that would give them power, or at least a display of fear or doubt.

Susie doesn’t clearly display any of the above. Rather, she disinterestedly plays with the idea that she’d allow the world to be destroyed. It’s not obvious how serious she was about this statement, but in the very serious context she says it in, it’d be a display of callous mockery on one hand and abnormal apathy at another. She openly displays her lack of care for the world--which stems from a lack of care for herself.

What is Susie’s deal, then?

It’s that apathy, in fact, that describes Susie for the first half of the game. Throughout the game, Susie rebels against any kind of normally good things. She eschews duty, she rejects advice even in its humblest form, i.e., she doesn’t want to get better. This is unlike Lancer, who simply does not know how to properly relate to other people and need to be taught how one should behave or act. Susie is well aware that she is a terrible person. Not only is she skeptical that anyone would want to be her friend without some ulterior motive underneath it, she seems to take it as a kind of natural law that no one likes her.

Susie’s fundamental insecurity, if any, is with herself. At some time before the game, perhaps after a long period of sustained mistrust from others, she has embraced her depravity, and attempts to change that depravity would be an attack on her very person. By embracing her depravity, she also thinks that she renounces being worthy of friendship, and can only greet kindness with severe skepticism. There’s a quote from Soren Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death that captures something of this kind of despair that Susie has:

“Just as the weak, despairing person is unwilling to hear anything about any consolation eternity has for him, so a person in [demonic] despair does not want to hear anything about it, either, but for a different reason: this very consolation would be his undoing; as a denunciation of all existence. Figuratively speaking, it is as if an error slipped into an author's writing and the error became conscious of itself as an error; perhaps it actually was not a mistake but in a much higher sense an essential part of the whole production, and now this error wants to mutiny against the author, out of hatred toward him, forbidding him to correct it and in maniacal defiance saying to him: No! I refuse to be erased! I will stand as a witness against you; a witness that you are a second-rate author.”

How does she change?

Ralsei, despite his lovable demeanor, cannot convince someone as deep in despair as Susie is because he ultimately demands a change of attitude from someone like Susie, who has made her bullying a very part of her own identity. To tell her to avoid violence or to lecture her on what she ought to do is to deny her very nature, and naturally she rejects it completely like one rejects an insult.

Now, while I’ve made it seem like Susie is hardened, it’s not to say that Susie no longer feels fear. The fear she feels is instinctual rather than having any cognitive justification. She can brush off the thoughts of killing people or the world ending-- so long as it’s in conversation or in her head. But at the face of a pure, less definite feeling of danger like being in a dark or a strange new world, she is just as vulnerable to fear as anyone else.

On one hand this is a kind of weakness--her failing to live up to her own image of a callous villain. On the other hand, her ability to feel these primordial feelings of danger (and later, love) is what ends up redeeming her as a person.

It’s for this reason that, ironically, what gets her to change her ways is that she finds someone who accepts her for her depravity. When speaking of evil, Lancer thinks of some kind of coolness, charm, or something glorious with no strong sense of moral concern attached. Seeing elements of this “evil” in Susie, he takes her threats as advice on how to become truly “evil”. This ignorance (or perhaps innocence) shows, for Susie, that Lancer has no desire to change Susie at all, and this is what allows the two to become friends.

What allows her to finally become heroic is that, having experienced and knowing what friendship is like, she becomes interested in maintaining that friendship with Lancer, and later the other two party members. In a sense, she stumbles upon being a hero; As she begins to value her friends, her priorities must change to accomodate this new interest, namely, love.