Stalin Theory [slideshow transcript]
[slide 0: title]
[slide 1]
Many dystopian novels are based almost directly on the Soviet Union
[Animal Farm: Napoleon = , Snowball = ]
[1984: Big Brother = , Emmanuel Goldstein = ]
[Image of Umineko character wearing violet — ]
[MLP: Twilight Sparkle = United States, Starlight = Stalin, Autumn Blaze = Trotsky] (or Bertolt Brecht or somebody, it's not clear. probably somebody from China, but someone specific)
[Gerson Boom / Old Man Hammer-of-Justice in corner: stories can be retold] (quote from Deltarune Chapter 4)
[slide 2]
It's difficult for art to truly break away from imitating life But many people will try to deny that Hence all the arguments over whether The Matrix could possibly depict gender identity despite what the directors came out and said
[slide 3]
Deltarune appears to heavily reference Kingdom Hearts
(though my examples here are mostly Undertale)
[Sora I let my conscience be my guide :)]
7 princesses required for darkness to rule the world
all monsters uniting to break Barrier = people's hearts uniting = Kingdom Hearts
(unfinished slides)
But there is a problem: Kingdom Hearts is a world made of corporate products
The narrative calls them "Disney worlds"
[Frozone - Do I look like a cartoon?] [Woody - you're a TOY!]
[= that's the golden moon]
Kingdom Hearts represents an antagonism between
the people who would wield all the world's individuals for power "XIII"
and
the world's individuals fenced into many isolated corporations
If the good guys win the battle...... what happens?
all the corporate territories become one
to defend all their inhabitants against that which harms all of them as a whole
This is almost exactly what it says in the Communist Manifesto
"Society ... is more and more splitting ... into two great classes directly facing each other" - chapter 1 [Elsa] vs [Axel] [Roxas]
"The real fruit of their battles lies ... in the ever expanding union of the workers" - chapter 1 [Sora] + [Elsa] [Woody]
"the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery"
(imagine XIII's [dark heart] as victory of [Sora] [Elsa]) - preface
~~"the workers have no country" "national industries ... are daily being destroyed" [Flowery] [Knight] [Seam] - chapter 1~~
-
"The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority" [Kris] [crumpled trash can] [Ralsei] [Rudinn] - chapter 1
"the workman ... an appendage of the machine"
[shadowguys] [Ralsei] [Kanon: we are furniture] - chapter 1
"they are daily and hourly enslaved ... the more openly this despotism proclaims [itself] ... the more hateful and the more embittering it is"
[Ralsei] [Spade King] - chapter 1
-
"the labourers still form an incoherent mass ... broken up by their mutual competition" [Rudinn] [Tasque] [Shadowguy] [Netsuki] - chapter 1
"the commercial crises ... a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created [industries], are periodically destroyed" "too much civilisation" "a universal war of devastation" - chapter 1
"It compels all nations on pain of extinction" "They had to be burst asunder"
[Knight] [Titan] [angry Spade King] [Flowery] - chapter 1
-
"The bourgeoisie ... in a constant battle ... sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help" [Angel] [Red Soul] [Ralsei] - chapter 1
"in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour ... [with] such a violent, glaring character ... a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class"
[Carol] [Noelle] [Dess] [mean queen] [Anna] [Elsa] - chapter 1
"a portion of the bourgeois ideologists who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically [... proletarian history] as a whole"
[Dess] [Toby ??] - chapter 1
What are corporate territories actually made of?
Every product is made by an arrangement of workers (perhaps in China) [map]
while the existence of workers is almost completely forgotten
Thus:
Elsa locking herself up in the ice palace
unintentionally becomes a profound analogy for gaps between corporations
Elsa retreats from the universe-wide "revolution" in fear of violence
when she would have less to fear if all toon worlds joined together
And thus:
Dess' character arc may accidentally echo all of this
Dess becomes tired of the constraints of Hometown
learns Materialism and steps out of the world
to create a new world with a new future - "my Delta Rune"
Dess & W.D. Gaster are the same man. fight me
"[Capitalism] has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour ... in the icy water of egotistical calculation"
[Mizzle] [Dess] [Carol] [fountain] [Tenna] [Gerson] [Alvin] [Dess & Titan]
- Communist Manifesto chapter 1
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"
- Dess Holiday, perhaps or originally, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
i'm positive this is 'the reference' for the bathtub in Undertale
Is Elsa a toy?
Or a symbol of how the people who make movies and toys (and so many other things)
have become forgotten, and forgotten themselves? [Pixar blooper theory]
What about Squall, Sora, Starlight, or Dess?
I don't think the writers of Kingdom Hearts /intended/ this
God forbid Toby Fox actually intended this but he's a mad wizard so who knows
It was just an inevitable result of the abstract symbols they chose
If you put Batman next to a dead criminal people will immediately want to
tag it --fascism-- "pre-Liberal-republican tyranny"
symbols always communicate /something/.
If Trotsky had actually defeated Stalin
[if she wins Snowball]
[but either way if he wins or she wins Woody and Elsa
or maybe She wins Starlight]
The act of releasing the Soviet Union from Stalin's party would look similar to abolishing the fences that separate workers because the world is united
No serious difference between defeating capital and defeating Stalin
And now, Mike! This slide is just for fun actually
Tenna calls on Mike
thinking a shadowy authority above everything can help him do anything
but call on Mike, or call on the player / Angel,
and it's no real help overcoming the inevitable collapse of Dark Worlds
or how they must fight each other to exclusively exist
So in a way, slaying God is a little like defeating Stalin
if there is no "god"... is Mike just some bureaucratic statesman?
Mike is Stalin
This is actually Trotsky Theory but I thought Stalin Theory would sound more shocking and surprising so I went with that. I clickbaited you
but like, most people today have no idea who Trotsky was or what he believed
even though he appears to have had the more correct model. what's up with that?
Oh yeah...
and if you're an actual Trotskyist / Stalin-follower that's found this
Never say the word "bourgeoisie" online. It is incomprehensible to people
Speak of capitalism dividing people into violently antagonistic compartments
that are unable to help each other, and mostly produce more violence
with every passing day people work producing something that could "help society".
[80,000 hours institute struck out] [Gramsci: I died from this mistake]
Although that will inevitably lead them to the concept of a single worldwide revolution (Trotskyism)
Unfortunately I don't make the rules.
The world is very anti-Stalin now, and you have to live in it [R.Raccoon]
Anyway
"Trapped in the ice palace" is an unbelievably profound metaphor
Through mad genius, Toby Fox made it genuinely easier to solve the end of global capitalism than the ending of Deltarune.
"When I'll rise like the break of dawn ..."
"I'm never going back, the past is in the past"
- Elsa, 2013