#reflection motif

[parroset]

"elf sad" Clip Analysis!!!

(I don't know what else to call it, that is literally the caption for the video T_T)

TDP finally posted the clip from s6e1 where Aaravos sobs into the water, so let's analyze it!!

The first thing I want to point out is the reflection symbolism and ripples symbolism. In Ripples (the short story), we get the following line:

In other words, ripples ruin the reflection of the stars. (Tangentially related, but we have also seen many occasions of Aaravos himself ruining reflections, which I've written about here). However, in this scene, we first have view of the water, and the tears hitting the water. Aaravos then appears on the screen, first as a reflection that is blurred by the ripples created by his tears. The camera only pans up to the reflection's caster later in the scene.

AKA, the ripples are CREATING the reflection of a star.

I also love the way that he looks at his reflection, and then looks away towards the stars when he finds that he's not glowing. It appears to me to be a mix of guilt and anguish. The fact that he can't bear to look at his own reflection and looks to the stars instead is... interesting.

Another thing that I think is worth pointing out in this clip is the Rayllum parallels with Aaravos and the Merciful One. This scene is so similar to the scene in The Midnight Desert when Rayla was self deprecating and looking at the water, and Callum was telling her to shut up.

Rayla and Aaravos are both crying into their reflections, and Callum and The Merciful One are trying to pull them out of it. We don't have much info on what is going on in the new scene, but to me it seems to be around the time of the formation of the Sea of Castout/when Aaravos lost his powers. So, in this case, Rayla and Aaravos are both learning that they are "ghosted" or "cast out"--pretty much, exiled from their community. Callum and The Merciful One are both shocking them out of the tears. (I do think Callum was more effective than The Merciful One's weird cryptic words, though ;)).

I'm so excited for this season! The imagery and visual motifs are already excellent, can't wait to see what else season 6 brings!!

[raayllum]

1x04 / 5x07

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Up High!

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[its-malarkey]

A couple of weeks ago I bothered to spend the time to write out Wukong and Macaque’s leitmotifs because I noticed that they were very similar, differing primarily in that they weren’t identical, but up to a certain point were almost major vs minor versions of each other’s themes (pictured below)

Again, you can tell they’re not identical on paper, but to the ear they sound very similar, and it’s obviously not a coincidence that they start off with the same rhythm. You apparently can’t add more than one video to a post, so I’ll put the Macaque bit that I clipped and just say that I got Wukong’s from the end credits.

The similarities are notable, again, featuring Wukong in a major key and Macaque in minor key. (The version I wrote out is not in the same key as the clip; it was easier to compare them on paper when I wrote them in the sameish key.)

I’m no music analyst, I just took a year of the required colleges courses for music and switched away from it and still have everything ingrained in my head, so there’s not anything in particular I’m trying to say here, I just go bananas for it every time I hear either theme :))

Edit: I drew this out on FireAlpaca and forgot to mention that earlier. It’s not particularly relevant but I do think it’s funny

[puppyeared]

i feel like. theres designing a character with certain themes and motifs in mind, and then theres making a gijinka for the water bottle on my nightstand

[bravadoting]

OG Nagi Sketches

I challenged myself to draw the NEO TWEWY cast during the time of the original game starting with Nagi 💜

[dailypearldoodles]

Day 356

More doodles! Reusing an old concept where she has vines that usually curl around her head. I was thinking that perhaps the vines grow plants or mushrooms depending on who she's with. With Gem she grows yellow flowers and cherry blossoms, with Grian she grows red mushrooms and moss, with Impulse she grows bluets and lilys of the valley

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

romangerri + windows and mirrors

[mirror-ralsei]

THEORY: The Ink Blot Test & Symmetry in UTDR

This isn't as much of a typical theory as it is pointing out a design element that I think really needs more discussion: the distinctive style used in certain visuals in the game.

It's actually kind of difficult for me to describe. But there seems to be a recurring style used across many enemies and their weapons. This style is typically white in color, and typically very ornate and detailed-looking. It's easy to pick out because most of the shapes in Undertale/Deltarune's sprites are more simple...and because of one fact: all of these designs look symmetrical.

Here are the places I noticed this style appearing. Hopefully as you look at these, you can understand what I mean by a particular “ornate, symmetrical look”:

Reaper Bird's overworld appearance

Reaper Bird's body

Asriel's CHAOS BUSTER

Final Froggit

POSSIBLE: Knight Knight's Good Morningstar (listed here as “hammer”)

POSSIBLE: Memoryheads (they're in 3/4 view and melting-looking so it's harder to tell, but notice the curly parts and comb-teeth-like parts)

Gaster Blasters (using the unused version since it's easier to notice the style without the eyes)

(While most of these designs are technically not symmetrical if you look closely, they all definitely give the impression of being so.)

There's some other possible references to this style, but I'm just going to focus on the more distinct ones for now. And even some of the ones I've listed are debatable. If I had to pick just a few, I'd use Reaper Bird, their overworld sprite, and CHAOS BUSTER as the definitive examples.

So it's taken me a couple years of not quite being able to place why this style felt so familiar. At first I thought they might look like fractals...

...but that wasn't quite it. Finally, all of a sudden, I put my finger on it.

This design style reminds me of Rorschach blots.

For anyone who doesn't know, the Rorschach test is a psychological test involving the subject looking at inkblots and determining what these patterns look like to them. As you can see, the inkblots are very intricate and symmetrical - just like the examples above.

How does this connect to Undertale? Not too much. But Deltarune? Possibly a lot! Maybe that's the reason most of the instances where this style appears seem connected to Deltarune in some way.

For starters, inkblots are black and white. Specifically, they're black patterns on a white background. So far, every instance of these inkblot-like designs in UT/DR have been the inverse of this: they're all white patterns on dark or black backgrounds. We know light and dark have meaning in Deltarune, so this makes sense.

The ink blots' meaning are what you make of it. Your brain determines what real world things this abstract ink on paper looks like to you. This seems like it could tie into the concept behind the Dark Worlds, and how they seem like “interpretations” of items in real life: For example, the Halloween Pencil becomes a SpookySword. (It's possible the ShadowCrystals may play on this “perception” idea a bit too, but we don't know yet.)

Doctor Gaster seems to be conducting tests on us (Sound Test, SURVEY_PROGRAM, etc.) to observe our feedback. This thematically fits with this whole Rorschach blot test reference. I'm not sure if “WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK?” from Entry 17 and the egg man's flavor text 'What do you think?” are necessarily connected to this at all, but it does happen to fit the theme, lol.

All right, so we've established that there seems to be a symmetrical-looking style. We theorized that maybe they were supposed to evoke a similar look to Rorschach blot tests.

Now we're going to speculate even further.

So why exactly was this Rorschach blot looking style chosen? I think this symmetrical look might be based around reflections. After all, Deltarune involves a Light World and Dark World that reflect each other. And there are actually a few important references to reflections across Undertale and Deltarune.

Kris first appeared in Undertale as the PC's reflection in a puddle if Undertale is being run in Debug mode (Video by marxvee)

Reaper Bird is encountered in a mirror

Asriel and Kris' sides of their room are almost perfectly symmetrical in terms of layout and furniture

Kris' room in Ralsei's Castle has mirrored sprites of Asriel's trophies

The File Select text before Chapter 1's completion states “CHOOSE THE TARGET FOR THE REFLECTION” when copying a file, “IT IS IMMUNE TO ITS OWN IMAGE” when trying to copy a fiile onto itself, and “IT CONFORMED TO THE REFLECTION” when overwriting a file with a copied one

Mettaton NEO's attack is incredibly high but defenses are low, Spamton NEO's defense is incredibly high but attack is low

Gaster's motif of “666” is “mirrored” by 999: 999 appears in multiple places, eg. Chara's attack, stats of Grandpa Semi were “atk: 99999, df: 99999, hp: 999” (pointed out by LeedleLel's comment on this video by Lil' Alien).

The background of Jevil's fight is a mirrored image of a carousel.

The mirrored sinks in the right hospital room read “(It's a regular sink.)” and “(It's a clone of the other sink.)” Also: “(Perhaps there was originally one tall sink that was cut in half to create both of them.)”

All leg options in the GONER_MAKER are identical except the final one, which is mirrored. (pointed out by Shayy via Semi Frequent Undertale Facts)

The background of the GONER_MAKER itself is mirrored.

The background of the Asriel Dreemurr fight is mirrored.

The strange fog graphic before Papyrus' battle appears mirrored.

"I can't get any closer to the camera, I can't even see...my...little reflection." from the Spamton Sweepstakes

POSSIBLE: Gaster's belly face (upside down, details are white on black background, where Gaster's main face are black on white background)

POSSIBLE: Hot Fridge (inverse of the function of a normal fridge. look this one's loose lol, only including it because Alphys invented it and fridges are tied to Asgore's egg fridge, Snowdrake's mother, the Sans fridge call, and maybe the unused “rustfridge” in the Trash Zone (a place rife with possible Deltarune references))

POSSIBLE: Unused rooms 123 and 321 (123 is a relatively accessible unused room with interesting dialogue and 321 is...dark, and "empty").

So notably, the places we find this reflection motif in Undertale seem mostly connected to Deltarune: Kris is the PC of Deltarune, Reaper Bird is tied to Deltarune through Everyman, Mettaton NEO is similar to Deltarune's Spamton NEO, and Gaster is...well, probably the one who gave us our SURVEY_PROGRAM in the first place. Even the more tenuous examples of reflections seem plausibly Deltarune-related, such as the fridge Fun call and the Gaster belly face in Spamton's dumpster and a reflected dark room.

I'd like to expound a little bit on the File Select and sink dialogues. Both of these seem to be playing with a concept that could explain this reflection motif.

Copying a file in the File Select seems to mean we are “reflecting” it onto another slot: “CHOOSE THE TARGET FOR THE REFLECTION.” We cannot copy a file onto itself because “IT IS IMMUNE TO ITS OWN IMAGE.” If we overwrite an existing file with a copied one, “IT CONFORMED TO THE REFLECTION.” Interestingly, though, if you copy a file into an empty slot... “THE DIVISION IS COMPLETE.”

Not multiplying the file - dividing it in two. The original file is also implied to be changed in some way by this, because if you cancel the action of copying a file into an empty slot, “IT RETAINED ITS ORIGINAL SHAPE.” Meaning it would not have retained its original shape if it were copied.

The flavor text for the “cloned” sinks reflects this (hah) exactly. “(It's a regular sink.)” and “(It's a clone of the other sink.)” are followed by “(Perhaps there was originally one tall sink that was cut in half to create both of them.)” Aside from being relevant to the only tall sink we know of, Papyrus' in Undertale, this seems to be setting up a concept of “reflections” representing “an original being divided in two.”

That's about as far as I can take this with the context we have now. We don't know what exactly this reflection/division concept will mean in the plot of Deltarune, as it hasn't showed its hand yet. We don't know if the resemblance of that one recurring style to inkblots is intentional or just coincidence. But at least we have some possible explanation for why these motifs of symmetry and reflections keep showing up.

[inkperch]

How long do you think it'd take for carmilla to teach vaggie ballet/give her a pair of pointe shoes

The answer to this changes when the ever-spinning wheels of possible Carmilla backstories finally comes to a stop somewhere lmao-

[creekfiend]

look not to be a Jew about this but actually I do not like this at all and I feel pretty strongly that it is buying into some truly weird shit about Judaism, Yom Kippur, cultural ideas of sin & repentance, and also missing some big things about the inherent and unexamined cultural Christian-ness of this genre of gothic horror to begin with

as Kuzu said: "Heine would be appropriate for the 19th century gothic mood PRECISELY BECAUSE he lived in such an antisemitic artistic context that he converted to LUTHERANISM" lol

tbh it's giving Tracate Middoth vibes which is never a good thing

my view: Literally the ONLY possible way this could work without being an antisemitic film would be if it was about some hapless Jew who somehow wandered into a world where his own religious practices for some reason keep getting transformed into shit that reflects Christian understandings of sin and repentance and he keeps trying to be normal about making amends and reflecting on having wronged people but everything keeps getting warped and twisted into This Bullshit and he's like BRO I AM. I AM LITERALLY JUST TRYING TO DROP MY PEBBLES IN THE RIVER WHY IS EVERYTHING BLEEDING

this would of course be a horror comedy though.

[parroset]

Reflections, reflections, reflections -- and Startouch elves

One of the more prevalent motifs in The Dragon Prince is the reflection motif. You can see many, many examples of it in the show, including Aaravos's mirror, multiple characters looking at standing water, and the short story series, which is literally called "Reflections."

Reflections are great because they force characters to confront themselves, both in appearance and in emotion (they can "reflect" on their own actions and thoughts). TDP tends to put these two ideas together, and many of the appearances of the reflection motif have characters reflecting on their emotions or decisions.

Now, how does this connect to startouch elves? Aside from the mirror itself, which obviously connects to Aaravos, the dragon scale necklace that Aaron Ehasz confirmed to be related to Laurelion has a super reflective surface.

The way that Claudia's reflection appears in this picture also reminds me a little of this scene:

I think she has a similar confused face and is puzzling out the source of the reflective object, but there may be more to it than that.

Another thing about the reflection motif is that many of these reflections are shattered/ruined by Aaravos. Aaravos shatters his mirror in season 4:

This connects back to a line from Patience:

The fact that the exact word "shattered" is used here is probably not a coincidence; he is trying to do to the other startouch elves what he did to the mirror. It's a violent way to break things, leaving jagged edges that can hurt others. Shattering something is usually sudden, and implies that the thing being shattered is delicate. There is a connection there between the mirror and "everything [the startouch elves] have built."

Aaravos has a pattern of ruining reflections. From his first appearance in the show, he "ruined" Viren's reflection by appearing in the mirror, and as discussed above, he later broke the mirror. He also has the following line in Ripples:

He is specifically talking about ruining the "perfect reflections" of the startouch elves, and at the end of the story, he is the one who touches the surface of the water and watches the ripples spread, and thereby continues to ruin the startouch reflections.

I'm curious to see what the connection is between Aaravos, Laurelion, and the necklace, and if any of the reflection imagery ends up being important in this.

[raayllum]

opening with the reflection motif the same way 4x01 did in the present with callum... the reflection in the water that is most consistently tied to rayla... i am unwell

[imminent-danger-came]

MK+ Reflections

(1x00 A Hero is Born)

-

MK: “I just...I don’t want to let my friends down, you know? [...] But it’s too hard! I’m just one guy.” (1x02 Duplicatnation)

-

(2x00 Revenge of the Spider Queen)

-

Mirror MK: “Ugh, Stop that! Listen, every time we get in trouble we turn to Monkie King or our friends or someone—they tell us a story and we find that smidge of motivation we need. Well! Now we’re on our own. It’s just you.” (2x00 Revenge of the Spider Queen)

-

“I gained a new power!”

“The power...of self-reflection”

(2x00 Revenge of the Spider Queen) (This one is an honorary mention)

-

(2x00 Revenge of the Spider Queen)

-

(2x02 Dumpling Destruction)

-

Lady Bone Demon: “Whatever she’s planning, it’s all to do with that. I- I’ve seen you use your staff, surely you could use it to smash that thing?”

(2x05 Minor Scale)

-

Mirror MK: “No, stop! What are you doing!”

(2x05 Minor Scale)

-

MK: “This is the trigram furnace, from the celestial realm! How is this-”

“...Trust your instincts.”

(2x05 Minor Scale)

-

(2x05 Minor Scale)

-

Totally Not Macaque: “The Hero and the Warrior were like the sun and the moon, their light like a protective glow shining upon the world. As the hero’s light grew, so too did his shadow—and soon, the Warrior was cast into that shadow. In the darkness, the warrior was forgotten by the Hero.”

(2x07 Shadow Play)

-

(2x10 This is the End)

-

Lady Bone Demon: “This is your destiny.”

(2x10 This is the End) (This isn’t MK, however MK’s self reflection is so closely tied to the celestial furnace, and LBD appears in a trigram furnace reflection so many times with MK that I am obligated to include it)

-

Tang: “Um, MK? I get the feeling you aren’t telling us something.”

(2x10 This is the End)

-

Tang: “My mother was right! Associate with the wrong people and see where you end up.”

(3x02 Great Grand Dragon of the East)

-

MK: “It’s like a whole new me!”

(3x02 Great Grand Dragon of the East)

-

Sandy: “Are we sure we’re going in the right direction?” Tang: “Not a clue. All Monkey King said to do was head west, so-”

(3x03 Smartie Kid)

-

MK: “UGH. How am I meant to fight the lady bone demon?”

(3x04 The Winning Side)

-

(3x06 The First Ring)

-

(3x14 Destiny Fulfilled)

-

Sun Wukong: “You actually might have done more for this world than I ever have!”

(4x01 Familiar Tales)

-

(4x02 New Adventures)

-

MK: “Remind me how this ‘game’ is supposed to convince me I’m not destined to turn into an evil demon monkey thing again? Cause, EVERY option I pick brings me to this! Same! Screen!”

(4x10 The Jade Emperor)

-

Oh reflection motif, how I love you.

Interesting to note, MK’s reflection never shows up in the Demon Revealing Mirror (something that is actually, you know, a mirror). Very intriguing to think about, isn’t it?

[its-leethee]

Soren thought he was done chasing, done reaching—

reaching for people who turned their backs on him,

who closed doors in his face, 

who disappeared over the horizon and never returned.

from Strangers

[mx-nada]

i really liked the pilot and i felt compelled to make a sona/self-insert