r/DeltaruneV2

I see it a lot for the following characters:
*They/Them for Swatch (Confirmed He/Him by Toby Fox)
*She/Her for Ralsei (Who uses exclusively He/Him thus far)
*He/Him for Kris (Uses they/them)
*He/Him for Susie (Only uses She/Her)
*She/Her for Pluey (Also exclusively referred to with He/Him)
And a few more less prominent ones I don't feel like pointing out.

I understand that people have headcanons, but I've had people extensively police me on these things, treating them like canon. It's okay if you think Ralsei or Susie will transition, but isn't it really disrespectful to go against a character's stated gender identity- and then get mad at people who adress them by their canon pronouns? Furthermore, it's kind of transphobic for people to assume a boy can't be feminine and a girl can't be masculine

Thoughts?

EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: I understand that they/them can be neutral, the specific problem i'm referring to is how often I have people try to correct me by saying that a he/him or she/her character is actually they/them

IT'S OKAY FOR THE SHELTER TO HAVE MULTIPLE DARK ENEMIES! The late game is SUPPOSED to be packed with content! Please, hear me out.

Ever since chapters 3 & 4 came out, there's been a noticable group of people complaining that the shelter has "too many dark evil enemies". To be honest, it's not an unreasonable complaint: this really can be pretty confusing for some people and, dare I say, feel repetitive.

There were different attempts to prove that 2 of these entities are actually one in the same, the ones I've seen the most are:

Friend = Eram,

Friend = Knight,

Eram = Knight.

Less often brought up are:

Gaster = Friend,

Gaster = Knight and other less popular ones.

And it's entirely understandable why people want to view some of these shadowy mysterious entities as the same, it's a good way to theorise — combining solving multiple theories at once. That's the case with Dessknight, for example. By solving/attempting to solve two seemingly different mysteries the community reached a satisfying conclusion. But that's where I draw the line.

All of the shelter entities have unique attributes only they have and are at the very least implied to be different characters, and I feel like trying to fit them into 1 is really reductive for the story and a lot of the times it requires some stretches to be made.

The main argument I wanted to make is that the late game, the shelter, is supposed to be packed and filled with content. The shelter is where we find out what has been hiding behind all the mysteries in the game and has connections to almost all important mysterious entities that are moving the plot forward and have been setting up things behind the curtains(even if these things are the weird route or weird route exclusive or other secrets like the sword route and shadow crystal bosses).

Do you think NOT getting to fight Friend in the shelter/at all is a good idea? Do you think NOT getting to fight Eram in the real world is fine? Or a rematch against The Roaring Knight? Maybe even a theoretical Gaster bossfight is possible (I'm still split on the idea). I mean, after Deltarune is over, it would be a massive shame to never get to see what the man who speaks in hands is capable when deciding to throw hands with us. Gerson is stated to be "consumed by his own creation" after writing chapter 6, which, coincidentally, is stated to be the biggest, most packed and broad chapter of them ones that were written before Gerson died(something something, "death of the author" is a literary term thst actually exists), and in Undertale Gaster HIMSELF is directly stated to "fall into his creation", possibly the Core(which is speculated to be powered by dark fountains by some people. I mean where could you get free clean energy from aside from... magic, I guess? Then again, Gaster is a scientist, not a mystic, and DELTARUNE is implied to be "an interesting next experiment" despite being all about dark fountains and darkness. So I assume that Gaster ending up inside his own experiment isn't impossible at all.

Now, back to the topic. It would also suck just as much if we don't get all the lore about all of these 4(oh wait, it's 5 actually, how could I forget Gaster Junior? Silly me). As far as we know now, the shelter is the end of Deltarune, the last fountain we have to seal, the most climactic adventure we will ever have.

The coolest, the most horrifying, the most interesting place that we've been theorising about since CHAPTER 1, back when even FRIEND wasn't around. Guess who was though? You have time to find out by yourself, but here's another thing: even if we don't get a bossfight for each one of them, that still doesn't mean they won't be relevant or won't get necessary lore drops.

Now, the thing I wanted to talk about as well is not just their presence. They WILL be important(just in my opinion, but thst doesn't negate my points), and they WILL be separate characters. It is simply because all of them demonstraighted several abilities and traits unique to each other. Here is the list of(some) similarities between all ~~four~~ 5 of them:

•Likely reside in the shelter

•Are tied to deep darkness

•Are tied to hell(and/or DEPTHS) in different ways

•Are powerful/implied to be powerful

•Are implied not to be confined to just 1 dark world and have means of transportation between them

•Have mostly dark designs...?

•Are tied to Gaster

•Are obeying Gaster...? (Except Gaster Junior, he's a naughty one)

•Are mysterious...?

•Are malicious...?

That's about what we can deduce about all of them at the same time ends. All the other stuff they have is different. I genuinely don't want to bother listing traits of the Knight, Gaster and Gaster Junior, I hope you already know all three of them well enough to acknowledge the similarities but also the differences as well. My main point of this post is acknowledging how different specifically Eram and Friend are. The theory of them being the same character just bugged me so much for almost a year at this point, especially as someone who has Eram as their №1 favourite utdr character and has Friend pretty high up there in the tier list as well.

There is a number of similarities between Eram & Friend which I'm sure people who disagree with me will bring up in the comment section. My goal is to instead focus on what they are different in to convince people once and for all that these two are separate entities.

ERAM's unique attributes and adjacent stuff (which as of right now we have no reason to believe belong to Friend as well):

1.Unique laugh sound

2.The ability to say anything or willing to speak anything on-screen

3.Demonic fire powers

4.Flying

5.Being present all the way back in chapter 1

(In one of anniversary streams when Spade King's cape flew away after King being weakened, Toby Fox HIMSELF says "cool mantle bro", even though King's cape was never referred to as a mantle. But it WOULD make sense for it to be in ch1 since Seam claims that they owned the shadow mantle and then it got stolen. Whether King did it or, much more likely, Eram did it, it was gone. As well as that, the shadow mantle as an item was never implied to be able to literally fly. So unless some demonic stuff is involved this would literally make no sense. Isn't it weird how King's Mantle was flying away all this time for 8 years and it's only NOW we're starting to have questions? Imagine if YOUR piece of equipment decided to leave you when you lost a battle, LMAO)

6.Knows about the player possession

7.Unique character:

Eram talks down on Kris, knows them deeper than they themselves do down to the point of calling out their intrusive thoughts(something that they clearly are trying to repress), has a certain manner of speech through which it is easily to tell how much they enjoy "pranking" Kris. While Friend's laughter is more so out of genuine fun(they disappear right before you can hit them and run away when you look at them, they find it VERY funny fighting Kris/You), Eram keeps laughing even if you strike him multiple times a second — this definitely sounds like masochism, considering that are literally in control of the game and can dash and fly at super speeds. And all of this is probably just scratching the surface of their difference in character.

Eram's theme "BURNING EYES" has no connections to the ROOTS lietmotif(which is present in far more places than just DIGITAL ROOTS and BUT ROOTS, and still, isn't in Eram's track). It instead has a ton of new motifs we haven't heard before as well as... Power of neo motif?... Whatever ._.

It would've been so damn easy to put the ROOTS leitmotif(which is speculated to be related to Friend given thst he appears in digital roots but Eram never does), especially since the section thst came RIGHT before the 8-bit shelter was 8-bit Roots. If these two really were the same, Toby, THE musical genius would've put the motif in there, and it's not like with the Freedom motif where everyone can hear it and always looks for it: the Roots motif thing is far less known than freedom motif.

FRIEND's unique attributes and adjacent stuff(which as of right now we have no reason to believe belong to Eram as well):

1.Unique laughing sound

It's possible that they aren't disappearing away but instead get one shot, which is a huge difference between Eram's enormous hp and Friend dying from one hit.

3.Being in the DEVICE naming system in the files

4.Having eyes and teeth and overall more living features unlike a posessed mantle/demon in the shape of a mantle/demon who wears the mantle as a disguise

Now, let's look at the imagery and see how different it is:

ERAM's imagery includes:

1.Fire(unique to Eram✅)

2.Demons/horns/hell

3.Titan eyes(unique to Eram✅)

4.Orange and black(unique to Eram✅)

5.Referencing the Knight(the starting beats for their theme are the same and Eram's last attack references The Knight's) (unless you count the Friend's and Knight's similar laugh, which in itself isn't much — is fully unique to Eram✅)

FRIEND's imagery includes:

1.Demons/horns/hell

2.Cats(unique to Friend✅)

3.Calls(assuming that Friend is Mike, which is basically confirmed at this point)(unique to Friend✅)

4.Pink and yellow(unique to Friend✅)

5.Puppets(unique to Friend✅)

6.Amalgametes(if you look at their full sprite it reminds endogeny, ESPECIALLY with those weird thingies between their legs which are probably meant to be other cats FRIEND cats)(unique to Friend✅)

Deals(assuming Friend = Mike)(unique to Friend✅)
Having followers: Spamton, Mike trio and Tenna to some extent(he adores Mike at the very least) (unique to Friend✅)

Now, my questions for the theory of Eram and Friend being the same characters:

Why never let the player know that? It won't be that much of a shocking reveal to be honest, considering that presenting them as two different characters kind of enhances them both(subjective, but I think is fair. You're allowed to silently disagree with this one)
If Mantle is just Friend in disguise, why disguise yourself? Just why? If Eram is Friend, then you literally have yourself show up not only all over the game but also in that exact same fight! And so the only possible reason, that is to hide your involvement, then congratulations, you completely failed! And it also seems rather out of character, since Friend looooves to throw their imagery and involvement all over the game. Except chapter 1 of course. We can't interrupt Lancer's silly goodarounds, can we?
Why does the Mantle show itself to be different from Friend visually? It spies on you in a different place from Friend on board 1, it CAN speak, given that it speaks and develops different topics while moving after the fight with them.
Why is Eram so much stronger than 8-bit Friend cats if they're supposed to be one and the same?

People are so eager to write Eram off as someone else despite their unique properties, despite them just not happening to have enough screentime. The shadow mantle's stats are coded to grow with every chapter, so I assume it will at least have more uses inthe future, and Eram themselves says "We both have work to do" before flying away. I can fully accept Friend being more relevant or anything like that or Friend getting more spotlight than Eram, but in no way for me these two are the same characters. People looked at Kris making a fountain and went "Oh, look, Kris is the Knight!", people looked at Friend's first appearance in Queen's basement and went "Oh, look, Spamton!". These two just didn't have enough screentime to be developed, and they WERE developed in the very next chapter. And I just want the community to wait and think a little longer before making assumptions and theories.

This post took me a few hours to properly write and was born out of genuine passion for all of these characters, ESPECIALLY Eram(including Gaster Junior above all else), and I just want people to understand thst it's far from being impossible for the endgame to be packed with these interesting characters, as well as shed some light on why Eram is so unique.

The post that inspired me:

da_post_:3

Thanks for reading, I hope the 7 Eram fans enjoyed this one

Almost your age. (@olive_doodles_)

A thought (@_RyanDraws_)

Spamton drawings

It was a life and death situation. Definitely...

So, like, Mr. Cattenheimer has GOT to do something with Catti & Kris summoning a deamon, right? Maybe this has to do with Kris' guilt and making him think about losing his hand? Maybe FRIEND is Mr. Cattenheimer's missing arm?

It's okay for the Shelter to have multiple dark enemies!!!

ALWAYS STAY PREPARED (NSFW just in case) - Art by WaruSaki (aka me)

Cupsrune "Castle Town Chronicles" Part 1

Night on The Town, Again (COTF; Art by f4kqcid3)

the broken reunion (part2)

Somehow I just forgot to upload this here. Oops...