Finally got time to finish ch5, so gotta write a wall of drivel… Ill try to condense it as much as i can. As fair warning, Im not going to bother put spoilers tags, if ure browsing this thread either you already played up this chapter or you dont give a shit about being spoil’d.
If i could summarize DR ch5 id say is peak toby dumbfuckery:
wacky, weebish and gay af.
This chapter is supposed to be a
“look back to the setting sun before it gets dark” but figured actually this obscene amount of levity was mostly to give himself permission on unzipping his pants and stroke his creative boner for yurislop and LOL-so-random shenanigans in order to commit into serious business later? Perhaps setting up this relentless indulgement of Susie is intended for a more dramatic delivery of a subversion?
My money’s on Susie ends up as a parallel to the shadow crystal holders, right now she isnt just “high”, but
drowning on copium phase. I get why u guys seethe tho on how this chapter was handled besides the yurislop, Asgore just going for the cliched “im dropping everything cuz u made frens and now i trust u” after they essentially just
spent the entire time playing pretend with a bunch of flowers cuz his child is downright conspiring against making progress on his DW case.
In regards of the flower im pretty much onboard with the same sentiment expressed here. Wanted to bring up theres a chill session where Aqua asks Seth whether is a boy or a girl, Seth fails to deflect the question and seems to legitimately not know how to answer. No sooner Blue shows up yapping about gender grooming platitudes whilst the rest of flower gang up to make an “attack helicopter” kind of joke. And the only interesting aspect going on with Pink is the parallelism between her and Kris, overall is just a worse mettaton fight.
Flowery had so much ironic Sonic OC energy, Id have liked him if he doubled down on roasting Ralsei but he’s just a foil. His sole contributions to the plot was warning some possibly underworld titan thing and disclosing the code whereabouts.
So, which plot points were clarified so far?
Jack shit
- We only learned definitely that there were prior dark worlds and possibly the whole prophecy is actually hometown thrown into a twilight zone loop or whatever. Barely a twist
- Either Sans Undertale is actually him or just is a glorified easter egg.
- Susie finally aware Ralsei cast fire. Also confirmed that he nerfs himself, which was already established too.
- Castle town fountain has to be sealed eventually, vanishing everyone. Well, no shit
- Asgore’s involvement exposure was kinda toby having an internal tug of war between wanting to vaguepost whilst dropping some key plot points. But you cant have your cake and eat it too
It is really tony taking full ownership of the script? Because this shit felt like going thru a satirical critique of his own writing style, holy fuck.
Back to the angst barney. I believe Susie shift of tone and going down bad for Noelle is a sympton of
her subjugating to her role in the prophecy. And now with Ralsei being her main benefactor (funnily enough, previous chapters ralsei basically warned her to not grow attached to the dark world), then everyone and his uncle in both LW and DW pamper and ship her hard with Noelle.
Susie claims during an early puzzle that involved the generic NPC flower battle that love is when someone downright
tells you that they like you -i cant recall exactly what she said-. Unlike with Kris which mostly led more towards platonic bonding and very short and awkward romantic ones (like when kris pulls her before the link knockoff we control harm her), Noelle scenes had the perk of having strong uninterrupted romantic connotations (dark world ferris wheel and lastly the lake sunset view) which led to Noelle confess to her, which naturally made an impressionable and affection starved teenager like Susie to go down bad. However, so far theyve not got past the honeymoon phase yet.
In the ending, Susie gave kris kind of a breakup talk given how much she beats around the bushes. Then she finally pulls out the “Uohh this cant be our thingie anymore, we need help, we need to involve my new gf Noelle!”. K then, why dont involve berdly by that logic? since he can fight too. But as things went on this chapter for berdly, might as well be comatose on an aborted route.
No sooner she descends down the closet to Castle Town, every single goddamn darkner + ralsei
is awaiting for her at the entrance like excited lapdogs.. The scene conveys triumphal but delusional vibes as She builds a new room and prepare a welcome party to Noelle, whilst cutting back to Kris, he just walks alone in the dark without taking any part of this clownish microcosm.
Also notice how normal and weird route have totally different endings this episode, the former with a “happy” ending whilst the later left with the usual cliffhanger.
So far, for me the weird route ended in a more vindicated tone, albeit of insufficient content. I first regarded WR as just a reenacting of genocide route with psychological manipulation added to the mix, whilst the normal route was the true path considering you don’t have to miss out anything..
But now i think the normal path is actually the
“bad” route:
you still are the less informed member of the party, kris keep conspiring behind your back, ralsei and susie only obey commands when is convenient, your dialogue choices meant shit, deciding whether taking susie to diner or not meant shit, spending optional extra time with any main character meant shit… As the prophecy goes on as intended, all your choices worth as much as playing a regular Pokemon run while skipping dialogue.
A single choice, spamming the single option
PROCEED, led you to a complete opposite direction, with Noelle showing her true colors and ralsei shitting his pants at the thought that WR is beyond his reach.
And this is the hill tony decided to die on, by adhering normal route to the jrpg format, the nuance has to be hammered into the homo
sexualgeneous and contrived lineal progression of the main story. Even when he puts a lot of effort gaster baiting so zoomers/millenials reverse engineer multimedia and sperg on long form videos, it shouldnt serve as a substitute to functional storytelling.
Ngl all things considered putting faith on toby writing for ch6 almost feels like im being baited into dropping a fat shadow crystal and end up playing another fountain of the week. Deltarune might turn out to be a gayer LOST after all.
