#sorry this is suuuuuuuper long tho

[buddyhollyscurls]

HI MARIA! 😄💗 Assuming the "weird questions for writers" thing is an ask game, from that I'd love to ask you (sorry there are so many, HEH): 7, 22, 25, 30, 32?

AW THANK YOU LILY UR THE BEST <333333

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

Honestly... I can't pick just one thing. I thoroughly find joy in every aspect of writing. The worst part of having gone through a deep depression in my late teens - early 20s was that I couldn't write. I missed it so much it was one of the things (like not reading) that made me feel I wasn't whole. like something was missing. I find joy in thinking of ideas, coming up with characters, researching things for accuracy, of seeing a story unfold. Of just writing a line that I'm like oooh I like this. The entire aspect of writing brings me joy and helps me be peaceful

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

I'm not organized at all. The thing with me is I have so many wips that I pause and come back to hahaha. I have notebooks, notes, Google Docs, and things like that for all kinds of different stories I can't even keep track but I am doing my best to outline first and jot down plots

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

I absolutely adore questions like this. I'll answer this with my brand newest story that was inspired by Pride and Prejudice and all Jane Austen novels. I haven't even started writing it yet and I'm still figuring out the plot but I'll give u a very specific detail about the Main Couple:

Maya Damas - so in the story its gonna be stated that even tho she loves Jane Austen she doesn't read much classic lit or much other romance... except for Federico (male lead) . That's why his novels intrigue her bc her genre of choice is Horror and Mystery. That does have a small semi-relevance to the story but what doesn't is that despite the fact that she loves horror and mystery NOVELS she doesn't like horror MOVIES. She prefers light-hearted movies and can't stand gore.

Federico Ballester - Cat lover.

Something about them TOGETHER - they both love Joni Mitchell and black sabbath

30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?

ooohhh tbh i have a lot of trouble sleeping haha I'm a night owl and its rare now that I even dream much less remember it but when I first started writing I used to use my dreams a lot to come up with stories

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

this one is so good! tons of lines that I come to from novels "You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being please", (pride and prejudice) "If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad", (northanger abbey) "you sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others" (persuasion) these are all from jane austen (I'm really sorry this just became a ja love letter) she was just brilliant at writing love and such a great story teller overall

[thefloatingstone]

What are the Deltarune takes? o.o

Ack! Sorry I asked and then bounced. We were hit with a bad storm that knocked out my wifi for like a whole day!

Anyway, people did in fact want to know my bad Deltarune takes as I haven't had any contact with the fandom as a whole's opinions yet, so here we go!

Let's start with what my friend tells me is tumblr's new favourite, Spamton.

I do not like Spamton.

I don't DISLIKE Spamton necessarily, but I don't reallylike him. (his music fucking slaps tho)

I liked him when you first meet him and he's just kind of a silly dude, but the more he talked and the more things he said the more he just genuinely unnerved me. I find the dude incomprehensibly creepy. And not in a 👀 way. In a "hmm. Don't like that." way.

All I can imagine when I read him talking is fucking SHODAN.

I don't like it.

His song when you fight him the first time is genuinely in my top 3 of the chapter tho. And his very first fight is the first fight in ANY of Toby Fox's games where I managed to end the fight without taking a single hit. His NEO form is also the first highly difficult fight I managed to beat. (I need to go back and do Jevil since Seam said if I defeat him in any save file the darkshard will appear in my chapter 2 save file.)

So that's it for Spamton. Dude's creepy.

-

I've really REALLY grown attached to Susie. I think she's my favourite character in this whole thing. I replayed Chapter 1 to get ready for chapter 2 and yeah. I love Susie so fucking muchhhhhh!!! I think when I played chapter 1 the first time it was during the Hell Year for me, and I was really nervous and like weirdly uneasy about "a new maybe-Undertale" game and what it would mean for the original that Susie's mean-girl personality was genuinely intimidating. But now knowing what her character arc is in chapter 1, I was much more on board with her in chapter 2 and she's so greatttttt aaaaaaa

I took every opportunity to be nice to her.

she's my fwend

*weeps*

-

Ralsei is suuuuuuuper fucking Sus in this chapter.

I've been pretty open that I was really disappointed when at the end of chapter 1 it's revealed he's not a fluffy little spider boy but instead Asriel version 2.0. But he is acting REALLY suspicious throughout this entire chapter. Not like he's evil or anything like that, but like he knows a LOT more than anything he says, and he's purposefully being vague and trying to manipulate Kris and Susie's actions and decisions because "they have to make the choices themselves but it's super important they make the RIGHT decisions so I'm just gonna gently nudge and manipulate them and withhold critical information and generally just be incredibly untrustworthy."

I have never agreed with Susie more.

-

Noelle is.... ok.

She's a really passive and meek girl who got introduced to the friend group late when Kris, Susie, Ralsei, and Lancer had just bonded into a unit. So having her introduced after this but not too long after this makes her feel like a bit of an intruder, but I have a very strong feeling this might actually be on purpose which I'll get to later.

The date was ok. I liked the part where I told Susie to eat moss to impress Noelle.

-

Queen is a difficult character for me because I can't actually figure out what her personality is.

Ok so she's "teh lol random XD" and she's basically one of the less plot crucial Homestuck trolls, but I can't really figure out who she is? Other than She friggen imprints on any unsupervised children she finds and decides to adopt them faster than friggen Batman, I don't really know.... anything about her as a person.

She's funny I guess, but jokes and shitposts are not a personality.

So I don't really know what to make of her.

-

I was so happy to see Lancer was along for the ride! I had a very genuine concern that he might not show up in chapter 2 at all since the end of chapter 1 ends with everything in the dark world turning into real world items. So part of me was rather unsure whether that dark world and the characters even still existed. But chapter 1 overall had a very strange and slightly off-putting undertone where everything and all the characters in the over world had a rather unpleasantness to them which I couldn't really figure out. I genuinely thought it was a plot point that was going to lead to something, but after Chapter 2 I'm not thinking perhaps Toby was going through something when he was making chapter 1 which might be why it had a strange off putting undertone to it.

So yeah, my point is I was very very happy to see lancer 1: still existed XDDD and 2: was gonna be along for the ride to a smaller degree.

I didn't think of checking him in my inventory as I played tho, so I might need to replay to see if he has unique dialogue as you play. I did think Toby leading you to use him to solve a puzzle was REALLY well done. You put something in your inventory which seems weird, so you check your items to see what it is only to find it gone, so you think "oh it must be under key items" and go there, only to see Lancer say he ate it. And then right after this is when you need to use Lancer to solve a puzzle, and you've just been reminded that he's there. I genuinely thought this was a brilliant bit of game direction.

I also really really REALLY like the concept of the little castle town that you're building as you play. I love this so much.

-

But now I wanna talk about the character I find most interesting in this game; Kris.

Honestly I like Kris as an individual character a lot more in chapter 2 than chapter 1 where they still felt like an extension of the player. After replaying chapter 1 and playing chapter 2 I really enjoy them as a character on their own more.

There's a continuous theme in chapter 2 of Kris getting pushed aside, first by their family and the town in chapter 1, and now in chapter 2 even by the friends, they made in chapter 1. Which introducing Noelle into the plot feeds into on purpose. So again, it's not that I dislike her but not exactly a recipe for me to like her that much. I just notice Kris' friends pushing them aside more and more, completely by accident, as they get more wrapped up in each other.

One of the enemies (I forget who. It might have been Queen or even Spamton) make fun of them for it. As does a save point. Like "aaaawwww, did your friends all ditch you?" And when you're alone with Noelle after Susie runs off with Ralsei, she mostly asks you about Susie. Just like all the people in town in chapter 1 mostly talked to you to hear how Asriel is doing.

So when you find out Kris had slashed Toriel's tires at the end of the chapter I was like "oh yeah. yup. that'll happen."

I don't see it as spooky scary Chara possessing Frisk. I see it as Kris being a very troubled kid who really really needs some help but they are continuously overlooked, forgotten about, not considered etc etc.

Kris also obviously has massive issues with fitting into Monster society. They show a lot of discomfort about being a human among monsters and shows to try and avoid any reminder of other human beings, which is also a running theme in the game. You hear about them in chapter 1 asking about when they'll grow horns and how Toriel had to buy Kris little fake ones to make them feel better. You see in chapter 2 Kris has been googling how they can learn to use magic like the other monsters can (and sadly only getting results on being a magician). You see Toriel had checked out a library book multiple times on how to take care of a human child and when kris pages through it and gets to a photo of other humans they quickly slam the book shut.

Kris has a feeling of "not belonging". Which is why I think them making friends with Susie, who is also a complete outcast is so great. Especially since Kris is seen as the one who "has it together" more than Susie does when I think the reality is, Kris is a lot more troubled than Susie is.

This is why I like Susie a lot, I like her friendship with Kris and Lancer, I think Susie, Kris (and Lancer) have a LOT more synergy than with Ralsei who is basically the babysitter trying to herd a group of cats, and I think that's why the introduction of Noelle as a main character is rather sad, because just as Kris manages to develop a friend group removed from Asriel, Ralsei is shown to basically be Asriel 2.0 and Noelle comes in and starts turning Susie's attention away from Kris Which gives the impression that Kris is basically just there as a bandaid for Susie while she goes through her character growth. and once she becomes a better adjusted person she'll move on from him to a new friend group in time.

Kris is her "training wheels" until she can form other, stronger, closer relationships and friendships with other people. Then she won't need Kris any more. And will probably move on without even realising Kris is getting left behind. I think Kris is aware of this, and it hurts them as is obvious by the save points in theanymore game when Susie runs off with Ralsei so she can bully him into teaching her healing magic.

I knew when she did that, that that is what she was doing. It was too convenient timing with her suddenly getting the idea to learn healing magic and then basically forcing Kris to shoo so she can ask Ralsei to teach her in private because she feels embarrassed asking in front of Kris. But the save points during this section makes it clear that Kris' feelings are a little hurt.

My friend said she's picturing Kris as wingmanning Noelle and Susie's relationship and I 100% agree, except I saw it more as gently encouraging her and Noelle to get closer to each other because Kris has this belief that Susie will ditch him eventually anyway, just like Asriel did. and Asgore did.

And Lancer is as well. Lancer is obvious BFFs with Susie, but Lancer is also branching out and making friends with all of Kris' growing social circle too. He's made friends with Queen, he's been nice to Berdly who is almost definitely gonna become a party member in the future. He's making friends with the new dark world characters who join your town from the computer. Lancer has always been more Susie's friend than Kris' friend, but it's just an added relationship slowly moving past Kris.

This is also why I think it's super important that Susie said she'd walk Kris home at the end of the game. I think (and I hope but I do believe this is gonna be the case) that the longer Susie spends with kris, the more she's gonna notice everything is not actually ok. And if the story goes the way I think it will, It'll be good to see her completely reject this "I'm just your training friend until you can make real friends" idea and punch some sense into Kris. This is also why I like that she stood up to the kids making fun of Kris behind their back in the overworld.

Susie is proving to actually NOTICE. And to actually LISTEN.

This is also seen after beating Spamton NEO although this might be me reading too much into things. But after you leave, Susie asks Kris if they're ok. You have the option to say no which I took. Kris has a meltdown at Susie which we only hear from Susie's side, but then RALSEI fucking bumps her out of the way to be all "hey hey~ It's ok Kris! Everything will be ok~ Just take deep breaths~!"

And Susie's little side-eye squinty glare of suspicion as she just stays silent before breaking the awkwardness and lightly calling Kris a dumbass for trying to do stupid shit on their own without her help. (ie fight Spamton).

And then she breaks the tension by smashing a fuck ton of pots in the next room.

-

This is also why the tire slashing, and the reveal that kris is the person creating the dark fountains wasn't even a twist for me. I didn't know what Kris was doing when they climbed out the bathroom window, but Toriel calling the police because the tires were slashed made me go "oh yeah. There it is."

And I had pretty much become convinced Kris was the knight around the middle of the chapter. I can't remember what it was that made it clear to me. I don't think it was any individual moment or thing that made me realise it. I think it was a suspicion I've had since the end of chapter 1, and the further I went along in chapter 2 the more convinced I was of this.

-

Anyway. Those are my Deltarune Chapter 2 thoughts before the fandom has a chance of swaying my opinions or thoughts on any of these things.

I hope you guys enjoyed???

Also....

I loled at this part because all I could think was "I wonder how angry this made people."

Beautiful.