User:Reversedragon/UTDR/pointed-tail

10-15

having Deltarune chapters 3 and 4 now, I have a much better idea of what the context of Goners and even the Memoryhead might be

so there's the "forgotten man". he only appears in the Dark Worlds, and he's clearly symbolic in some way. Gaster may actually be a wild embellishment of the forgotten man that appeared within greater and greater and greater darkness — a Darkner Darkner that wrapped around to being real. in turn, the forgotten man might somehow be a haunting memory of Dess that Kris half wants to get rid of so Kris and Noelle can move on, where the Weird Route is about slaying this fake "Dess" but basically, the more you fight her she only gets stronger, because she's made out of bad feelings and killing your friend's sister can't feel all that good. the forgotten man and the Knight would be two manifestations of the same thing and as for the Goners, a Goner is somebody who has "world-died" — which totally isn't an English word, but so what. when a world dies its living characters (and possibly some dead ones?) turn into Goners; it has already happened to Darkners when they step out of a Dark World context they belong to. Gerson is another hint of what a Goner is: game characters don't fully die when they die, they are only really gone when their world dies and they become "world-dead". Deltarune's basic premise /may/ be that there is one ending but Kris ran away from the ending so long the world is about to die before the game actually reaches its ending. this would explain how Deltarune was "the ending to a dream" that would become "the ending to a game" — Deltarune's most common "ending" is also the most common ending to a whole lot of dreams. simply tearing apart without actually ending. so putting that together, the Memoryheads in Undertale might actually be shadows of the forgotten man taunting the people of the Underground after tiny Kris ran away from them and died. why there are six faces on there isn't totally intuitive. it could have something to do with there being six major characters from Deltarune that were saved by going into Undertale? or it could be six faces of Gaster showing at different angles through a broken mirror to become one weird skull thing, thanks to something to do with shadow crystals and Gaster fragments. one of those two. I do think Chara is an alternate version of Kris that went into the shelter at a young age while the world would later die at the same time it would in "normal" Deltarune containing older Kris. the fact kids can still come into the Underground after the Deltarune world died is a little strange, but hey, Dark Worlds can make up all sorts of stuff, so maybe those kids really are refugees just like Kris that unfortunately died before they could find their freedom from scary game endings. either way Deltarune technically exists in Undertale, it's basically the surface and it's just shifted to a different time. I also think Asriel is Undertale's version of the Roaring Knight. which is why everyone was so utterly scared of him. Undertale left out the fact that the Underground is capable of seriously distorting things only in some cases and making them really really weird to look at when they get back to the surface. however, we're given slight hints of this when we see "god of hyperdeath" and Omega Flowey, two very strange distortions of Asriel. imagine if Asriel got to the surface and he already looked like Omega Flowey. you can see why people would immediately want to slaughter him. so that is my working theory of Deltarune. Kris really is the main character of Undertale, but died, so you really are naming the main character. Undertale was a sort of maladaptive haven from reality that somehow turned out okay when everybody else cleaned it up.

10-15

so with this in mind. my new interpretation of Memoryhead and "Redactedtale" is this:

Memoryhead can be six random people that became Goners... as long as they're from Deltarune. sure. that isn't really ruled out, even if Deltarune never explicitly said these people existed. but those six characters are actually people Kris spotted randomly while passing through the town they were in before Hometown. young Kris is sneaking around, detached, unconcerned, maybe just a little preoccupied on something specific. they see six people that are particularly notable, and start making up stories about who these people might be in their head. this causes these people to be entered into the Dark Worlds as possible characters that could emerge from some appropriate object connected to them that then becomes a Darkner. when Kris gets to Hometown, and ultimately dies in the shelter, the six random people leak out of their fracturing Soul and become Undertale characters, as well as the seventh mythical character, the forgotten man / W.D. Gaster. these six people are Goners because the world of Deltarune died, and they didn't actually jump into the shelter before it happened. if anybody accidentally remembers that event, suddenly the six "memory heads" will vanish. this makes a ton of sense. gosh. I was maybe about halfway to guessing Deltarune, I just was never ever going to guess it without seeing the Roaring Knight.

I like this new lore because it is just really really funny to imagine Kris existing in this semi-realistic world in Not Hometown, in Furthertown, and running into these still semi-realistic but larger than life characters. just, this inexplicable demonstration of a pathetically small number of Communists around this booth or table with signs about some kind of important world event that small Kris totally absolutely does not understand at this age, that just, out of desperation after not getting through to anyone else hands a kid a newspaper. and this might be the actual item that first spawns the Three Ells as Darkners. their stupid newspaper. it's unclear if their names are actually Ellsburn, Ellshriek, and Ellwing in real life, or if that's just what the Dark World made up. from Kris' point of view they're enigmas.

this small but formidable looking birbat. kid Kris sees this old guy out hiking or something and taking a rest on a bench and they see him take one look at some other man, in reality probably just in admiration of like, "nice to see these younger people are also at my level", and subliminally starts wondering if the odd sage guy is into men. going home from town one day old guy accidentally drops, ironically enough, a packet of sage, leading kid Kris to think, sage! well how can he not be special now. when you're a fairly small child you always connect the logic of things a bit weirdly. so Kris scoops up the sage, and probably eats it like a gremlin because who knows if they have anything to eat, but keeps the bag or one leaf for reasons. they take this leaf and press it into a book like it was actually interesting

Antiqua is at the library. Kris finds a book sitting around, which might even be the How to Draw Dragons book (I have no idea if that will actually be explained in Deltarune or not), and either gets lost in reading it or just has been carrying it around a bit too long. they walk out of the library with it and yet somehow forget they have it, but the beeper doesn't go off because somebody had actually checked it out, just not them. while at the library they see Antiqua go by murmuring something about where to shelf an uncommon kind of book, and passively assume them to be the librarian, though they are actually some other kind of staff member. they also spot some kind of curvy bird monster heading to the second floor, who never says anything but who they presume to like the books upstairs. this later registers both these monsters into the Dark Worlds as potential Goners.

as for why these specific six people become the Memoryhead... I don't know. my guess is that Kris just remembers them the most strongly after having seen them on multiple days. they're some of Kris' earliest memories before Hometown, uniquely connecting them to "the past", and the edge of "forgetting someone". I also don't think the six "memory heads" rule out all the other people being resurrected either, as long as Kris so much as caught a glance of them once and mostly forgot them. one of the six "people" is actually a group of three people, after all.

the only thing this doesn't cover is why Dess is so significant in Deltarune and there may or may not be traces of her/him/them in Undertale. why would it be that Gaster is this really important overblown mythical figure born of Kris' mind that could most likely only be a reflection of the traumatic event of Dess missing, but Kris would only remember six random people that manifest in Undertale as an Amalgamate and not Dess? why wouldn't Dess be Gaster, or at least the person Gaster is trying to cover up with darkness to create a better world we know as the Undertale world?

10-15

maybe... this is a long shot, but maybe Kris was first discovered in the other town and brought back to Hometown by Dess? Dess just happened to be there for some reason that surely made sense in context,

but seeing a big shadowed deer-person just emerge out of the bushes suddenly perhaps with a bat might be a little scary for a second when you're a child. Dess is younger at this time, but definitely after the time she turned notably rebellious and became a pain.

Kris is mysteriously wandering around near some dumpster or maybe at the edge of a forest area eating up moss, when Dess steps out Kris jumps. Dess: ooh. afraid of me, huh. [raises hands and makes grizzly claws] yes, I'm a Monster, we eat human Souls. Kris tilts their head upward, intrigued. seeing somebody be intentionally scary isn't really scary to them but does make that person very interesting. Dess: [arms deflate to sides; vaguely impressed] oh. you're a tough one, aren't you. Dess: I have some money. you want a pizza? Kris perks up Dess has brought the mysterious cryptid child to eat some pizza, which they gobble down, when she gets a call from her mother asking where the hell she is. Dess: Everything's fine, mom. I am getting pizza, just like I said. Dess: But uh... I found this weird homeless human. So... can you come pick us up in Furthertown? I know this kid just needs a home. I'm fine. [frowning] ...What I worry about is whether they are.

Carol would be angry about all this but seeing her child, her otherwise annoying headstrong child, show concern and generosity toward somebody else has deflated her anger. Carol knows deep down that a few people find her uncaring and almost oppressive, and when she hardly has time for anyone herself, anything that reflects positively on her or her family is something she simply has to embrace. so for the next week or so she takes this event in stride and tries to pretend like she meant for it to happen — sure, December doing nice things for her communities, I totally encouraged her to do that. she will try a few times to unsubtly hint at things Dess should do for her own town, but mostly ends the discussion with "I'm glad it turned out well". and then, quite abruptly, she informs Dess that despite the relatively great amount of space in their house they do not have room for another child and they will have to send Kris to foster care. Noelle catches sight of the strange bedraggled forest human and does get a bit spooked for a moment. though it's not really even the sight of a human child, and specifically the weird way they silently stand off-kilter in the hallway like some sort of liminal demon. the town doesn't really have any specific place to put extra children, and Carol has to put up a classified ad. before long the Dreemurrs find out about Kris, probably before they even notice the ad, and bring them in. Asriel warms up to them quickly. all three like Kris pretty well. things seem good. they clip out the ad as a funny little memory, which Kris soon stows in their "collection" of old objects.

time passes. Kris goes to school. Kris, Noelle, and Dess become friends. Kris invents a weird game of creating scenarios out of seemingly random objects. Kris lays out the folded red-accented newspaper and puts the book on it and sets Seam or something on top, and inspired by a couple words from the newspaper, says that this is the tale of how the old world will end after a great unstoppable crisis — this story is true whenever they put this particular altar of found objects in the room. Noelle remarks that the premise is "a little dark". Kris notes that when phoenix Monsters are delivering this prophecy, it's not all gloomy and the world can probably be rebuilt. maybe if everyone is nice the outcome would be more favorable. they stand the green crayon next to the book and Seam and start voicing these ideas through it like a smaller friendly wizard who totally knows about the prophecy. Noelle finds this pretty funny, confused why there are two wizards. Kris is full of explanations as long as they are always too terse to actually explain anything. Kris and Noelle play cards near the altar, they make up storylines about "the demise of kings and queens", the newspaper once again at fault for some very fancy poetry. Noelle makes horror stories out of things that shouldn't be terrifying, like the wall plugs. they have quite a time with this.

Kris, Noelle, and Dess get into various misadventures. Carol is internally bothered that Dess never seems to straighten up and just gets into more trouble over time even if the trouble is rarely big. she ends up being lenient on Dess and taking out her anger on Noelle. it internally drives her crazy when Dess won't respect Toriel's unfair rules on Asriel, so she snaps at Asriel and shoos him away, not Dess.

one day Kris, Noelle, and Dess investigate "the pointed tail". I'd rather this was the Dark World manifestation of some mundane event, but I'm not sure what that would be. so, all we know is "the children followed the pointed tail". Dess goes out of bounds somehow. she finds a thin fracture going through the earth that the three follow to its center, and thinks it looks like fun to bust it open. Kris and Noelle are neutral about this, maybe a little scared but too intrigued to make her stop. so, after picking at the crack a bit, seeing that the frayed edges of the ground look a bit like cardboard, Dess simply punches through it. below is nothing but airy darkness filled with faint stars, something like outer space. as her arm goes through, it becomes invisible. she tries to pull herself out, and successfully extracts her arm, but to her dismay the ground cracks further and she simply falls in and disappears entirely. Noelle runs the other direction as fast as she can. Kris hesitates for a fraction of a second, grasping toward the void but not quite brave enough to actually dive in and potentially be lost forever. before long, Kris runs the other direction too. Kris feels terrible about the incident. ever since being rescued, they always looked up to Dess. Dess was scary sometimes but overall, more like a brave warrior that protected people. failing to save the one that saved them, letting her fall into the void without trying, it felt almost as bad as deciding to kill someone. why would they murder their hero?

10-15

when Kris and Noelle come back alone, Carol looks at them with narrowed eyes. she knows Dess did something forbidden and is mad at her, but again, has to take it out on the children. both are too afraid to explain and all they can really do is choke out "darkness" and point an arm in the direction of the rift.

Carol investigates. she sees that the problem is very much not normal. she ends up bringing in some contractors from another town to build a shelter that entirely encloses the hole. where cracks have extended outward, the contractors fill them in with rocks and dirt, which don't fall into the hole and seems to be sufficient. the few people in town that actually see the hole are told to never talk about it, as if it didn't exist.

the town takes on a deep emotional sickness. Noelle comes to think of Kris as the beginning of Dess disappearing. the fact they were playing games about the world ending in darkness before something that sure looks like it actually happened makes their relationship uneasy. Kris becomes tense like Noelle really ought to be mad at such a "murderer" and snap at them about it if they even come close. one day, Kris strikes first and as Noelle talks about doing web searches to find Dess, simply says "she's dead". this possibility is the only frightening thing Noelle is genuinely too afraid of to look in the eye. she looks away. she takes it very hard. for a long while the two don't even speak to each other at all. over time all of Kris' memories begin to become slightly poisoned. the altar of things and the games in the classroom all feel like they secretly hide the concept of Kris being a murderer and Noelle or Carol or Dess somehow bursting up out of the ground and turning into terrifying abominations that will end Kris and end everything. Kris moves some old things from the house to the classroom. this process is loosely related to why their room is so empty, although it's not the exact same set of things; as they clear some things out, they don't have the heart to put other things in. things continue to gradually get worse. the Dreemurr and Holiday families themselves destabilize, and Toriel and Asgore get divorced. the silence wears on everyone. then one day, one fateful day far in the future, the Roaring Knight appears and begins creating Dark Fountains. Carol rounds up Kris and tells them they have to promise to go into the void. it isn't about the consequences of not doing it, but they will be forgiven for everything if they only locate Dess. Asgore too — though she doesn't tell him going into the void is possible.

the Roaring Knight isn't actually Dess at all. not literally, not physically. the Roaring Knight is precisely the fear that Dess wants revenge, or that Kris deserves to be smited. the fear that Noelle can't trust Kris, and Kris can't trust Noelle. the fear from Noelle that Kris somehow is a Monster-killer. the fear from Kris that they will actually hurt Noelle. all of that crystallized, semi-literally, into the Roaring Knight, because the void itself turned both of their thoughts into one very nasty Darkner. but here is what I think the twist of Deltarune is. Dess is somewhere else in the darkness. she doesn't even know about the Roaring Knight. Dess might even have turned into a scientist studying the Dark Worlds in the weird dilated expanse of time she was down there. Dess might have come out as not female and got a slightly different appearance. any number of crazy things could have happened in there. I'll just say those two things are true for Redactedtale purposes, because it is a /wild/ image.

this ultimately causes Kris, on some subliminal level, to invent the character of W.D. Gaster. he fell into his creation, but he's not actually out to get anyone. he actually wants to solve all of this and make things better. maybe if the world is actually ending he could even stop it... given enough determination, who knows what could happen. so Gaster is categorically Kris' hero, but he is associated with darkness and fear and being "The Opposer" (ha-satan, 666) because Kris perceives themself as evil, afraid others see them as evil; only a highly ominous figure could ever be their hero. a figure that is able to protect others because he strikes fear in the hearts of only those who are actually dangerous. Asgore is characterized as having hired Gaster because the "real" Asgore is leading the investigation to find Dess. it's a weird way of Kris trying to get Dess to save themself because Kris knows they should be strong enough. so "Asgore" "hires Gaster" to create a better world. literally. Gaster creates the core that makes the Underground exist, like the Underground's Soul, and then the rest of the Underground and the happy endings for various people we see in Undertale coalesce around that.

the Underground is a sort of idyllic world that small Kris either intentionally or unconsciously creates to escape the harsher outcomes of Deltarune's world. in Deltarune, this imagined world is somehow thrown away, and Kris continues to grow up. in Undertale, Kris does not grow up and somehow tosses themself into the void as a child, never to be seen again. for some reason, Kris' sacrifice makes Undertale exist as reality, and the alternate Asriel inside it has to help either the Kris that fell in or some imagined projection that replaced Kris to break out and attack Hometown. it's hard to say what's going on there because on one hand Kris dies in the story of Undertale, suggesting the real Kris is mounting the attack, but on the other hand, everything we know about Kris in Deltarune doesn't necessarily suggest that the real Kris would do that. maybe it's just the story I've constructed here that rules that out, and the idea is simply that small Kris likes the imagined characters in Undertale better than the real ones and wants them to destroy the real ones so they can take their places. that would more or less make sense. though I don't see anybody as commanding the Roaring Knight, Kris deliberately changing to be the one who would do that is possible, especially if it's not teenage Kris.

I guess this is where Sans and the quantum mechanics book come in. the reason there are two versions of Kris is simply "many-worlds interpretation". Kris dreamed about a world where they fell in, but they actually don't have to because little did they know it also happened. this is one of the weakest actual-plot-points-in-Deltarune because there's no real reason for it to happen or not happen that we know of so far. the only way it fits together with anything is like, Deltarune is stated to have one progression of events, so you need a way of forking the timeline which doesn't truly depend on anyone's choices and is "scientific" or "realistic" in that sense. it's possible that Gaster reaches over and puts the Angel into Deltarune so that it will have an "observer" and set off the many-worlds timeline fork — that's not the way real quantum mechanics works but it is a frequent mischaracterization which is quite conceptually funny to use in this kind of fiction, so we let it slide.

Gaster talks about creating "a new future" because he is quite literally the replacement for Deltarune's future. when he says "my Delta Rune", he means the Deltarune that will be capable of a new future. where it gets confusing is when we are trying to figure out what Gaster created (or fell into). according to this theory, what Gaster actually created was Undertale, not Deltarune, and the phrase "my Delta Rune" is meant to throw us off from this simply so we wouldn't guess the rest of Deltarune before Chapter 4. after Chapter 4, I suspect toby knew it would get more "predictable" as the actual narrative pieces aligned, and this is why he acted like Undertale fans might find Deltarune disappointing. but looking at all this? I greatly doubt anyone actually will. even if this theory is correct, you know the game will be wild and full of visual and gameplay surprises. the actual scene revealing the day Dess disappeared will be crazy. so, Gaster creates the Underground, he disappears because the narratives of the characters become too real and even the better version of Dess has to disappear 'into darkness', he manages to create the Red Soul device which loops around and finalizes the creation of Undertale, but the Red Soul device simultaneously causes the creation of the timeline where Kris survives and has to live with the existence of The Angel. the Angel has existed before the game booted up, that really is what the birdcage means, it's just that Deltarune happens to timeskip over a bunch of years where the Red Soul was theoretically making decisions but real-world players didn't get to see it, only the in-world Angel. the Angel is diegetic more than it's literally us, even though it's also us.

so. the only real loose thread that's still hanging is what happens if Dess is found. does Gaster stop existing? the funny thing is that doesn't actually break continuity, because we already know Gaster stopped existing. "Gaster" disappears the moment a player finds him. maybe his purpose was fulfilled and that's why he disappeared. maybe his overall mission was ultimately to become a Goner, because Gaster having no reason to exist is actually the best possible outcome. if Gaster has no reason to exist, it happens because Dess was found and there was no need to construct an elaborate mythical future to help find them.

around the time of Chapter 2, I once half-believed a theory that there was some kind of conservation of Goners where only some characters could exist and their existence pushed out other characters that then had to be Goners. I now am almost positive that's not true, because the only character that is actually true of is Gaster. his purpose is to not exist, but that's highly specific to him, and as of the time of Undertale we weren't supposed to know this until Deltarune Chapter 4 because it might spoil Deltarune.

why does Kris avoid the shelter? fear of the Knight, fear of Dess' revenge if Kris runs into them. maybe Kris somehow knows deep down that the Knight and the Titans are basically the same thing, and thinks on some level, I don't want to open the shelter door and have a Titan jump out at me. Kris confronts the Titans in Chapter 4, but that's because Susie and Ralsei are there. in the sword route Kris is alone, which explains why they don't want to go to the shelter. the sword itself is a projection of what it feels like for Kris to be alone.

and as for the brown door on the stream? we'd only get angrier at it being skipped if we had the full Deltarune. Dess is behind that. in some weird sense I could not predict, there is a version of Dess behind that door.

10-15

so, on the RedactedTale timeline

I still kinda like the Gaster Amalgamate idea, even though you'd have to change it a lot to make it work with Deltarune the whole entry needs to be rewritten to end up at the "right" Gaster lore and yet... if you look at it as the story of Kris everything but the hints toward Gaster were oddly on point, so "rewrite it" is actually a positive thing to say.

I guess how it would work is the Gaster Amalgamate would represent the "good" version of Dess merging with the Roaring Knight to become an unsalvageable horror. you use the concept of the Underground being a mirror to Deltarune where unreal Asriel is going to replace real Asriel, and basically the Knight created from everybody's negative feelings crosses over that mirror to merge with Dess. the Gaster Amalgamate or Dess Amalgamate is then the Dark World reflection of itself but also the imagined-world version of Dess existing in Undertale. we replace the concept of mutually-exclusive individual Goners with mutually-exclusive Deltarune vs Undertale worlds, and it still somewhat works as long as we're only focused on Asriel or Dess.

> Every possibility that presented itself, you let slip by you and fade into nothing. ... > ... We are the only thing powerful enough to save this world Gaster being super mad when you fail to prevent the accidents was crazily on point. I don't even think I had a lot of information about Deltarune at that time. I couldn't have had any idea I was predicting the Roaring Knight. I was going solely off Undertale. so, it's crazy how much the teeny tiny bit of information about Gaster in Undertale reveals about Deltarune. it's actually almost like the Gaster lore became a bit incoherent solely out of the need to be Deltarune foreshadowing. but, in light of that we could fix it here if needed

if there's an angry Gaster, Alphys interacting with Gaster is probably something that would happen. as well as protecting Frisk from danger — I mean, in Deltarune she's the teacher so she wouldn't really want Kris falling into the void. Alphys, Undyne, Sans, Asgore, and Toriel all likely don't believe Kris "killed" Dess. I think that really provides context for what characters appear in Undertale. it's highly notable how Carol and Noelle aren't major or noticeable Undertale characters.

> Just because you are who you are it doesn't mean you're hopeless! still a really good message for Kris and their image of Dess it's so important to keep in mind that it doesn't matter whether Kris is dead or not in Undertale, Undertale is still full of themes that apply to Deltarune either way. that kind of thing is a lot stronger here, but it's also in the actual Undertale, even if it's harder to find.

10-16

If Dess appeared in Undertale, if we could open that door and find Gaster for real and surprisingly find out it was Dess. I think Dess would be going on and on about Chara similar to the way Asriel does.

where alternate-Asriel is practically crying about Kris not being there, I picture Dess as being almost more outraged and angry that Kris had to die to create this imagined world and try to bring him back and didn't go on living without him like a sensible person. Kris goes through the time to Deltarune afraid Dess is mad at them for not trying their hardest to bring back Dess, but it's actually the opposite — Dess is mad Kris would sacrifice themself to find him instead of the other way around

Kris, Asriel, Gaster, and Dess are all connected. they're all bound together by the tragedy that happens in alternate-Deltarune to create Undertale. so Dess is going to be torn up by the death of Kris in some way, maybe one which is more "real" in that it's closer to Deltarune and less buried in the fantasy realm of Undertale. even if we have to maintain the concept that Undertale players are basically walking into the middle of Deltarune without any context, Dess saying all these vague and strange but important-sounding things that absolutely do not make any sense until you play Deltarune. exactly like Deltarune is the secret you've-gone-way-too-deep lore of Undertale, which it kind of is. I think in a certain way I had it kind of right by totally bluffing with what Gaster is about and represents and means, like Gaster is on his own higher plane of lore merely parallel to Deltarune and if you found Gaster in the heyday of Undertale's world it's almost like nothing he said would make any sense at first. you would have to be really deep in Deltarune lore to have any idea what he was on about. my main mistake there was not having actual information about Deltarune I could skillfully hide under some amount of opaque bullshit (pronounced redacted) such that only when you knew about Deltarune it would become shockingly coherent.

10-16

I think of the Chapter 3 line "no one will shed a tear for him". cracktheory: that's a metaphor for Dess, after he got lost way inside the Dark World, found his gender, turned into a kind of amateur researcher, and started slowly becoming a soft version of the character of W.D. Gaster, sort of "roleplaying" him without knowing who he is or that anyone would frame it that way.

Dess kind of just wants people to move on and let him work so he can help them rather than the other way around. as he's gotten lost in the infinite expanse of non-time within the great canvas of imagination he's started to realize that there are ways he can fix the world of Deltarune and perhaps rearrange it or something so the great disaster he now knows about won't even happen, at least in the same sense or in a way that would be a big problem. so Kris doing something crazy like dying and creating a whole separate layer of Dark World universe so Dess doesn't have to fix Hometown is a big issue that gets in the way of his plans and makes him at least a bit mad. "complete without issue"? the issue is that if Kris picks up the eggs it will transform Dess into the globby skeleton man because Dess' last anchor to Hometown and "reality" will be destroyed.

I think there are a couple of little nonlinear-narrative complexities here. I think what I'm describing is that in a sense the Dark Worlds do corrupt people into slanted versions of themselves, sometimes in a good way like turning Undyne into a crazy anime warrior, but sometimes in a less good way. here, Dess kind of goes a bit crazy from dissolving into fiction and legend in the Dark World. not in a strictly bad way where they become a cartoon mad scientist. more like after being immersed in darkness for a seemingly infinite amount of time and under a lot of stress knowing Hometown is slated to be destroyed, they simply psychologically snap and throw themself into their work at unreal ten-times speeds. kind of like Carol, in a weird way — neither this version of Dess nor Carol wants to be disturbed in their surely-very-important work and they get mad at people under pressure. Dess just wants to finish his breakthrough and get out of the darkness, maybe give Kris a bit of a hard time jokingly for letting him fall in, if after all this work and stress and sheer breakdown of normal reality he isn't feeling terribly grumpy with a wild rotating headache as he probably will be. he has totally lost track of what time actually is, and has somewhat forgotten that time will have moved on and everyone will have been suffering and driven apart and stuff. it's really not his fault he can't remember that, it's very much the darkness that's done that.

so there's the "normal" version of Dess before they went missing, there's the version of Dess all the way at the bottom warped by the darkness but never to be un-transformed because he has actually been finding himself at the same time he's been lost to the world, then there's the forgotten man on layer 5 (who helpfully changed gender to match the real Dess on layer 4.5), and then there's Gaster, the strictly mythical version of Dess that lurks way below on layer 6. layers 2, 3, and 4 below Hometown are sort of continuous with each other, just one great gradient of the same darkness that seems like it can always go deeper if you know how. 1 - The Angel 2 - Hometown 3 - Dark Worlds 4 - true darkness, trauma, The Titans 5 - the forgotten man 6 - Gaster, and Undertale

RedactedTale Dess is at either level 3.5 or level 4.5, not totally sure. the notion that level 4.5 exists and Dess could be chilling out inside a Titan because it's actually a world of its own is definitely really interesting. it is the case that in Chapter 4 there is a waterfall you can walk through, while we also learn that the Titan is a Darkner made from a Dark Fountain. is that an illusion? is the real galaxy brain thing maybe to just walk through the Titan into the next level and find the grumpy deer man? I do love that image. it would finally explain the whole bizarre story of the Undertale monsters "walking through darkness using crystals to find their new home". only for fictional characters, digging the hole deeper and deeper turns out to be weirdly sufficient for solving their problems if only they had enough hope. I love the "troll physics" aspect of it where it is absolutely not real, yet it feels like the characters have made a great discovery. nope, this wasn't an allegory about "escapism", not exactly, it was just a fun worldbuilding exercise with a surprising conclusion. I like it. I like how it'd be committing to its premise and committing to being an abstract mood rather than aiming itself toward a specific moral. I definitely find it funny to imagine the Undertale-Deltarune setting being used to explore particular morals like with the Communist phoenixes, but I think the reason that succeeds at being so funny to me is I know that's not what it's for, so I know to deliberately play it as a joke. on the other hand, this notion of punching through all the levels to reach Undertale actually feels tonally correct to the games.

so, to sum that up, Dess (on level 4.5) is running out of time. he wants to get out of there and save Hometown. Kris (on level 2) is trying to save Dess before time runs out, but is inadvertently making Dess' time run out by creating Gaster. the antagonism between Dess and Gaster-proper drives a silent rift between Kris and Dess, which accidentally spawns the Roaring Knight (on level 2.5 or 3). Dess didn't even mean to do that, but if enough people think the same thing the Dark World creates it, and when everyone is thinking negative antagonistic thoughts about Kris, Noelle, and Dess fighting, that'll create the Knight. it's like a slider. each time Kris imagines the forgotten man or Gaster, Dess moves down the slider and Gaster moves up the slider, until they potentially crash into each other. like matter and antimatter unwinding, when the two crash into each other Gaster vanishes from Undertale and Dess vanishes from Deltarune. this is quite the mess. ultimately, Kris can stop it by just, not creating the forgotten man and Gaster any more, and coming to terms with the fact they don't want to confront that they might never find forgiveness for leaving Dess and yet Dess could be alive. if Kris would embrace that one uncertainty, this huge knot of problems would no longer be an issue if they could only overcome the terrifying physical division between world and mind to actually go into the Titan and retrieve Dess. likewise Dess has a few problems of his own, not wanting help and trying to be vastly better than Kris and apparently falling backward into outdoing Carol's expectations of him and everything. the more Kris makes seemingly exaggerated projections of Dess in the form of Gaster, prideful hero who tried way too hard and fell backward into himself, the more those projections turn out to be actually somewhat correct analogies if taken as a bit of a metaphor.

so this is how you get a Gaster Amalgamate with two opposite-pointing faces. one face is the real Dess, one face is the idealized mythical Dess. real Dess is good, Gaster is good, the collision of Dess and Gaster trying to destroy each other and marking the beginning of the surface-underground war is bad. I think it would be cooler if Dess actually manifested as two colliding black and white deer people, stark, shambling, angular, drippy from darkness-water, but relatively defined, more like god-of-hyperdeath Asriel and less like mysteryman. that sounds like a totally killer Deltarune boss encounter. that's my Chapter 7 "prediction". showy cataclysm in about chapter 6, game has no ending without true ending, bizarrely grounded "Yume Nikki" and character interaction section with a bit of trippy imagery in Chapter 7, where we finally see Gaster, but it's Dess.

10-16

definitely, the rationalization for Gaster being a skeleton and not a phoenix is that Kris saw a skeleton monster on the newspaper and assumed they were inherently connected to phoenixes somehow. the way you just assume false correlations from vibes when you're very small. who knows if they could even read everything on the newspaper. I feel like they just skimmed over the thing and mainly looked at the color splashes and the pictures and a few weird phrases, and folded the thing up as a mat for doing crayon drawings on or eating on or who knows what, eventually to be set under the "Dark World creation altar" as a strange arcane text from another time.

Gaster is definitely this mythical superhero kind of figure that a kid makes up — Kris deciding that somebody lost deep in the darkness outside the earth will turn into some kind of spooky but very cool withery skeleton. it's one of the only things that genuinely makes sense with every occurrence of Gaster or "him". and here on this timeline, it's even easier to explain the thought process because it's just Kris' brain free-associating. they see skeletons in Furthertown, skeletons are weird, they're apparently allied with phoenix Monsters to save the world, phoenixes are known to regenerate so maybe skeletons do that too, and maybe Dess regenerated into a weird super-powerful skeleton guy.

10-16

now what about Sans on this timeline???

the "don't forget" picture is critical to Sans' concept. it depicts what's likely Kris, Susie, and Ralsei. but "don't forget" refers to Dess. and Dess is Gaster. and Gaster is a skeleton. so... did Sans locate Gaster before he would ever find Dess? accidentally taking the wrong side in this whole weird trainwreck because of the false familiarity of this weird... man.

gaster: Surely you must know who I am. sans: ......no? gaster: I am the only one who can save this world, ▓▓▒▓▓░▒▓▓▒▓▓▒░▓ (pronounced [insert wild glitchy static]) sans: [stands there stunned for a bit, deeply confused yet totally understanding the static at the same time] sans: ...▓▒▓▓▓▒░▓▒░▓ (pronounced [wild glitchy static]). nice name.

one thing that only occurs to me now is... there could have been two different fates for Sans, just like for Kris. one of the Sanses could have dived into the void, maybe after Kris, maybe this is where his narrative of being the very last person you'd send after a crisis came from. the other one could have remained in the Deltarune world until Deltarune doing something else. just imagine. Sans goes in to save small Kris, who due to time shenanigans is already dead, but Gaster is there, and is like, don't fear, I'm a mythical hero skeleton and we can still save your world. this is the start of Sans' arc downward. for whatever reason losing Kris is really really depressing. maybe just because Sans knows this is a kid who didn't even get long to live and was homeless and stuff, and was like, that's a bummer. or maybe because he knows the world of Deltarune is ending and now seeing one of the last people who was supposed to save it die is more than he can take. meeting Gaster only makes things a bit better. when they eventually start to discover they can't really save the Deltarune world or go back, then Sans' outlook goes downhill. based on the story I've given so far you'd think Susie and Ralsei may or may not be secretly wandering around in Undertale, but even if that was true, if the whole world of Deltarune vanished except for them it could still be something to be depressed about. I mean, Toriel could have been torn apart. the other Papyrus could be no more. both of those would be serious losses even if new versions of both of them exist in Undertale. I guess the picture could always be of Toriel, Papyrus, and some other secondary character, or them and Sans. Gaster is still going to disappear, and Sans probably knows that on some level, so you'd think he has a doodle of Gaster too, although we know that it would probably look like a bunch of scribbles with a tree drawn over them; that's the way you draw Gaster. I don't know what the deal with the machine is. it doesn't really fit with the themes of Deltarune so far, which are all about magic and imagination and mind. so I just don't have any ideas right now.

otherwise I love this. I love the idea of just stitching the plot holes in the AU to make an adaptation rather than trying too hard to fit them to what was shown, just like Carol bringing in the dirt to fill in the cracks in the Deltarune universe. it feels like carefully fixing loose strokes in sketches or paintings by painting onto the errors. it wouldn't have been possible at the time of Deltarune chapter 1, but when we know so much more now it's a lot more fun to do it this way, just extend out the working theories in good faith to make Undertale a bit better instead of asking why potential errors in Undertale don't perfectly line up.

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deltashard1 RedactedTale/ basic concept

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:: cr.

2025-10-16T05:09:25Z

:: t.

2702_pointed-tail

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REDACTEDtale/ fitting REDACTEDtale into Deltarune chapter 4