September is not the 7th Month

I figured I ought to write more for both subscribers to this blog (my 2 dogs), but what to write about? I haven't yet figured it out, you get impressions and reviews of media until then.

My judgement is cruel and empassioned, both loving and apathetic to the creators of these works. In general I dislike critique because there is a current cultural malaise where criticism is spread like a virus made of jam whilst genuine new creative work is stifled. There are only so many videos on how Spongebob was actually a creative masterpiece with dynamic character interplay that need to exist, and none of them need to be 2 hours long. Something in here about Ratatouie and Igor.

But maybe this will be useful to someone regardless.

These are the media I have meditated on this month, grouped by medium:

Reading

Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson

This is my first Brandon Sanderson novel. It fared a lot better than the first time I tried to read the other major darling of novel writing advice YouTube won't stop recommending me, Stephen King, but still left some things to be desired.

The novel is split into 3 "PoVs", separated by chapter until they begin to intertwine and collide later by the 2nd and 3rd Part. To be a simple market paperback this means that each branching path is simpler than it otherwise would in a novel of this length. This is not a bad thing, but has consequences for storytelling convenience and pacing later on.

Plot: the princess of one nation enters a political marriage with another to avoid falling to a burgeoning empire, but when she arrives she finds her husband is dead and the empire she wants to thwart is already doing nefarious deeds in this new place. However, her husband is not dead but exiled, a victim of magical leprosy in a dead city. There's a deadline for fixing everything before the county is super-invaded and wiped off the fantasy map from the front-slip of the printed book.

This dramatic tension drives the plot at all times, but some of the solutions to resolving national geopolitical issues is a bit contrived and magical (not just in the intended literally magical ways) with the excuse that the nation is not well established in its ways and culture (unless it suits the plot for it to be).

The nature and circumstances of the magical pseudo-disease and the city are interesting, it's rare that a civilisational collapse is shown as a thing that just happened and the implications of that explored. I see why Sanderson is known as the magic systems guy, he clearly likes his worldbuilding and puts a lot of effort into it.

The story itself and interactions between characters are more variable in impact. From best to least-good, the 3 narratives are: one of leadership and the pain of responsibility and command; one of Machiavellian machinations and empire-making within the church of a powerful empire; and one of a diplomat in a foreign land playing politics to try and save their homeland and discover what it means to be a woman and a widow.

The story of Sarene, the stong-willed princess and suprise widow, was the most interesting thread in the beginning. It's marred by a constant bent on whig history posturing in the holier-than-thou-art school, raging against comically overdone bigotry. Liberalist policies are waved like a magic wand. In one chapter Sarene gives concrete economic labour policies to a group of merchants who are canonically very successful in their endevours, then in a later chapter she says she knows nothing about making money, then her policies pay off massively and make all the businessmen loads of money.

It's "fine", it's the default position. But for a novel where it's a key focus, it's still very low-dimensional. Perhaps there isn't enough book across 3ish plotlines to make it less so, and the lady needs some kind of weapon and impact. Maybe a later Sanderson would have more tools to give her.

In all, a very naive view on power and how it is held. For a recently overturned nation it is much to stable and without tension-of-arms. There is vague mention of one revolution, a violent paroxysm that happened and then was suddenly quelled, but settled quickly and the merchants are stably in power. This seems unlikely.

The 2nd part is very exciting, plots collide and reveals are made and the reader gets payoffs to judgements about how the world does and does not work. This is intertwined well with things there are no reasonable clue about to make the whole thing seem a little smarter than maybe it actually is, but who cares, it's hype.

If nothing else is said of it, I enjoyed reading it.

Le Major (English Translated Collection), by Moebius

TL Note: "le" means "the"

A pair of men are wandering freely through a boundless desert, or maybe not. They are having a philosophical discussion, but maybe not. They entreat "The Major" to answer a question for he is wise, though maybe not. In an endless desert he is entombed alone in a stone pillbox-cupboard, however: maybe not. Then a bird made of skin lands on the box and says some other shit and everyone gets distracted and leaves.

That about summarises the vibe of the story. It's very French, even as it pokes fun at things that are very French. This happens to also be the first actual comics by Moebius I've read, though I've admired his art and especially his full-colour covers and spreads for a long time.

What's it about? At least in some part about "freedom", although any 2-bit schmuck could tell you that. Two dudes walking an open desert are locked in circular conversation, Major Gruebert is locked in a box governed by bizarre rules but has a lick of creativity to him; all of them are characters locked in a story that Moebius wrote.

What BitBit McSchmuck couldn't tell you is how the love of comics and comic-craft oozes off the book in that pursual of freedom.

The panels run and morph, characters change whimsically between scenes, within a scene, within a thought. It took me a while to realise that the plot does the same thing, even though Moebius says it in his Prologue notes: "[The Major] was created over a ten-year period of total dramatic and joyful improvisation, alternately concerned with meaning, then suddenly quite cavalier and anarchistic". I wasn't paying attention.

The end of the book makes it more clear though as you do a few double takes to see if you can follow the thread of the "plot", which is like if you were knitting a sweater and at some irregular interval dropped the yarn on the floor and made funny patterns with it before gathering it up again.

Back to freedom (astute readers will note we never left). Near the end, in a conversation between the Major amd the author, Moebius says he is greatly concerned and thinks a lot about the responsibility of giving characters freedom.

So then does the author trap his creation by giving it form, or freedom by allowing it to be? Does the work free the artist by providing artistic expression, or ensnare it by its considerations, chosing one amongst many paths not taken? Is artist slave to art or art slave to artist? Else do they liberate one another, or at each other's expense?

Moebius says something but idk he was asleep in a casket for most of the story, implying both the death of the author and that he can't really be all that concerned now can he?

Guide to Learning, by Joshua Waitzkin

The start of this book is a bit of a slog. Parts comes across as the writing of someone that is high IQ, and shows you all the ways his family puts him ahead as a child. The cynical view is "yeah intelligent guy with supportive overachieving family and friends will do that" but maybe I am just coping and seething.

Regardless, there are useful tidbits in here. The key takeaway of the text is that getting good at getting good at things is driven by a) fundamentally believing you can improve with practice and perspective, and b) you must always be pushing at the boundaries of what you can achieve.

These are good things to know. You should know them. Most of what I have to say about this book is about the printing.

Art of Learning Book Photo

The printing of this book is genuinely awful. It is the ugliest book that I currently own, and perhaps the ugliest that the charity shop will own after me. The cover is essentially a stock image covered in the film of a weird powerpoint gradient thing, sliding across the glossy cover paper (?). The cover text is ugly and misplaced. The picture of the author as a little kid on the front cover is cute, but a bit weird and out of place.

There is a review quote on the front cover, and the review is from some guy that sells courses about learning; not only does this associate the book with people who make a career over selling essentially self-help "performance" as a living, it's especially funny they chose this random dude over another quote on the back cover by literally Robert Pirsig.

Also, every left page in the print I have is jaunty by about 10 degrees.

I believe that beautiful books are important. Even a mass market paperback can be beautiful, so why not make it so? There is a good bit from Ursula le Guin on this; instead of quoting it I am going to link this: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/get-weird-and-disappear

The Home Invaders by Frank Hohimer

An autobiography of a cat burglar that was good at his job. Inspired the film Thief (1981) which I haven't seen yet.

This reads like those Business Insider videos play, about a colourful streetwise character with a story to tell. As with many such biographies, there is an enduring sense of pride in what they achieved. This is someone who committed crimes sure, but they were damn good at it and they're not gonna apologise straight, because they followed their own code of conduct (almost) every step of the way.

The standouts for this read for me are both incredibly specific details about catburglary in rich 60s homes and the general sense of the American 1960s mythos that are brought out in this book.

For example, in the cat burgling rules he starts the book off with there's shit like checking if there's baby formula in the fridge to know if there's a baby in the house, and warming it up and giving it to the kid to keep it satiated so the lady of the house doesn't get "spooked". These are enlightening, both because most peopple don't spend a lot of time specifically thinking about going unnoticed in places they're not supposed to be, but the way that people approached life and living back then.

In 1960s America there's the mafia, corruption, and lots of money. An open stage where people act out real life heroism and villainy. I wonder if it seems this way because of the dramatisation of the time, or vice versa. The sense that these people invite and pursue a whirlwind of love and loss and drama shines through every action of every person.

There's an off-hand sense that there's a lack of cumbersome legislation and its good and bads. It's easy for a guy with cash to set up shop, hire someone just to check the door each night, and do as he will as long as he doesn't get on the bad side of a guy with power. Out of this falls rampant, blatant corruption, but nowadays things are still blatantly and openly corrupt in many ways but with less "upward mobility".

The people of this time are in more danger, but freer. People are more dangerous, and people treat one another as adults who can handle themselves.

Reading it does require recalibrating the value of the dollar and what you can do with it.

Gackling Moon, by Patrick Stuart and Tom K. Kemp

The bulk of my reading and thinking, pondering, considering this month has been this book. I have too much to say about this, so it's going in it's own poast.

tl;dr as a repository of ideas and inspirations for fictional worlds, it's wonderful. I have no idea how I would use it as an actual TTRPG setting as written in the book, seems like it would take a lot of effort. My context is the former, so I have enjoyed it.

Patrick Stuart is one of the few authors that makes me still believe that interesting art is still being written, and I am glad he is getting success. If you don't know anything about TTRPGs, don't think about it and just read the words. He has a way with them.

17776, by Jon Bois

One of the lads poasted the new Jon Bois feature-length presentation in the gc. We all innately understood, as internet connosieurs, that we were all Jon Bois enjoyers.

In the discussion of his catalogue, someone brought up 17776, and described it as one of the finest pieces of online media yet created.

We found out collectively that it had a sequel, and that sequel has an unbelievable banger of a trailer. So I read 17776 for the first time to get at 20020.

Jon Bois has a shining love for people and play in almost every thing he has ever made. Though a stats nerd, he swells with human wonder at the idiosyncracies and marvels of human experience on the regular in his videos.

It didn't surprise me then that 17776 is a humanist story. The stats nerd did come though to make it an existential, fatalist story.

I don't strictly agree with its philosophy or its conclusions about what would actually happen. No realpolitik or Machievelian workings could still live in the world written about here.

Many animals play, in fact. Why do they play? Why do people play, and why do they fantasize? I don't think it's pointless, and neither does Jon, but in different ways. Jon, or his characters which stand-in for him in most philosophical moments, thinks play is a cause unto itself. That the joy and curiousity of limited competition is primary. I believe play is fun because it's not the be-all-end-all, that play is fundamental because it allows us to compare to one another and to learn and delve into deep problems that reflect the universe and society. And also because running around is primal-ly enjoyable.

Regardless 17776 isn't really about that, it's about pushing contrived striving to it's logical limit in interesting ways, and capturing the ennui of a world that doesn't age.

Interesting difference between 17776 and the other media and fiction I've read this month, most fiction really, is that they depict worlds and times other than ours, but this story creates a fictional world that idolises the current and just-gone times of our world. So much so that it becomes a simulcra of it, encased in time forever like amber.

In the world Jon Bois writes, of a civilisation consumed by the concept of play to the exclusion of all other pursuits, it's more likely that such a civilisation would descend into a sort of wirehead virtual reality sarcophagus and become inert sooner than play national (as in, nation-wide) sports forever.

17776 is also impressive digital media. Da Medium. With the fakeout news article start, with the cookies not making you have to do that to get to the chapter select, with the funny rotations and inclusions of imagery and videos. Reminds me of reading Homestuck as a teenager, the chatlogs of naive satellite with ironic satellite, broken up by animations. For some reason, although I haven't thought about Homestuck in years, it will come up again later in this poast.

In turns of the satellites coming back to life, it turns out there are several satellites that have come back to life.

My favourite is Transit 5B-5, which sounds like it's whistling a tune when high energy and like a wailing slide whistle when it is low energy. In space, ham radio operators can hear you scream if you're a satellite from the 1960s.

Becoming quantum linked to another due to the "abstract concept" of negative temperatures in Farenheit doesn't strike me as very realistic though. Since it's an American satellite I think processing Celsius would have tripped it up sooner.

Animations

Outlaw Star

I would have left this in the watchlist for another few years but after reading 17776 I wanted a counterview for a scifi future that was not inert. There is a phrase in 17776 about mankind going out to the stars and finding nothing. A universe empty, devoid of life. They give up exploration, and return home. I wanted to see glimpses of a future that is not so.

I was promised by various internets that this East Asian basket weaving tutorial could fulfill that role.

It is, as promised, a very different vision of the future with a different perspective on humanity and what drives people. A universe full of life, and hopes and dreams. This is pulp fiction sci-fi novels about a man's romance made anime.

Made very anime. Taoism and robot spaceship fistfights in space, fronted by Bro McGuy, 11 year old hacker kid, sentient computer lady who is the key to the realm of the gods, cat girl, and wooden sword wielding femme fatale.

It's wildly anime tropey, but has a singular and consistent vision. I would taxonomise it closer to One Piece than Cowboy Bebop. I'm very smart.

The universe here is full of life and beauty. The links I linked say this so I don't feel like I need to say it.

What I will do ruin the day of anyone who doesn't know how they make beautiful deep space imagery yet and then make it better again.

Turns out the universe doesn't actually look like this:

Pillars of Creation, Hubble False Colour

These images are entirely colourised in post, many layers from different cameras on different wavelengths measuring the wave emissions of different elements present in the big gas clouds. Then they composit them on top of each other to make pretty pictures.

The photo above of the Pillars of Creation uses "classic" Hubble false colours.

So the colourful universe of Outlaw Star isnt there, or it is but its not something we could ever directly see.

The good news is there is a cottage industry of amateur astrophotographers painting on the tapestry of that unreachable enigma, the universe, and they make lots of beautiful things you can go look at: https://astrobin.com/

Looking more locally, the worlds of Outlaw Star's universe are life-filled ecosystems producing wonders and marvels of visual ooze. The best examples are on the desert and tundra planets otherwies devoid of life.

On a forgotten martian world, rocks spire like grasping claws, and plants sprout and flowers bloom like alpine flora. The rock and grit silently hold the mysteries of grand and gorgeous ruins.

The hellish dead tundra prison planet has a glorious aurora from "da magnetism" at night and a purple haze at twilight.

One of my favourite pieces of art in the whole show is not background art - it's this map from the start of episode 7. With the goofy here be dragons in the nebulas and the oort clouds and the somehow being old-school cartography despite space having 3 dimensions of travel and no standard bearings, presumably with the help of all the circles and lines.

Outlaw Star Cartography

Amazing.

Bâan

I learned about this because Kevin Penkin, my beloved, uploaded the OST to his YouTube channel. I listened to that before I watched the show, and only watched it cos I saw in the description that bigtime weeaboo Gigguk was involved. Turns out it was a self-funded and self-pursued project.

That's really cool. It's unbelievably rare for people to make stuff like this, because it involves so many artists of so many expertises and so much time and energy and cash money. Having a guy make a thing he wanted to make, with no precedent for it really being possible, is amazing.

No matter what I say below, let it be known I appreciate it.

In Bâan, there is a fairy girl from fantasy Japan ("THE TOUHOU DIMENSION") that leaves that world and finds a perfectly ordinary life in modern-ish Japan. However, due to social and career pressure, she restricts her magic, eventually not using it altogether. Then she returns to fantasyland to recapture that magic.

Yeah it's about creativity, or more critically, escapism. This is a very familiar story arc to anyone over the age of 10, and Bâan doesn't bring any unique perspective other than being a Japanese anime and having specifically an Eastern fantasy dimension. That is it casts that special introvert-captivating magic that only Nippon can by invoking the power of THE TOUHOU DIMENSION.

One recurring theme about animations made by small western groups is that they are often some meta-commentary on anime itself, its creation sometimes and its consumption and inspiration often. The more blunt an allegory is the more sugar it takes to go down. Ultimately, I think Bâan is a bit flat.

The landscapes are very pretty, and the little pieces of a magical Buddhist world are interesting. Although there's not much plot and the pacing is "floaty", it doesn't seem like it's about that so much as demonstrating the realisation of a possibility.

Now: I happen not to watch Gigguk videos because I think he's a weeb normie and the name Gigguk sounds like a gargled hiccup and he's a pale immitation of our boy Demolition Deezy. No offense, that's the goat we're comparing to.

But this show and Gigguk's perspective aren't really "for" me. I can still be genuinely impressed by the work involved. Maybe with more experience and a clear vision he will make more interesting things, and I love independent artistry being enabled. Maybe I just like artsy hipster direction?

It didn't inspire great feelings in me, but I still appreciate that it exists. I continue to hope that small independents can fund and achieve their dreams, that way surely lies cool art.

Homestuck Animated Pilot

Now for a piece of media I didn't expect to exist, didn't expect to enjoy, and was seriously impressed by.

Homestuck is cringe. It's too long, the forum interaction only lasted a while, the characters are developed but only insofar as they can impart high school drama and "bad jokes for 105 IQs" through an overconvoluted plot, and the ending is unsatisfying.

I still enjoyed it as a teenager and it was successful at what it wanted to achieve...which is...

Enough about chatlog voyeurism simulator. This animation hit the one-two punch on nostalgia and unprecedented quality of execution.

The direction and visual design in this short goes nuts. The 2D and 3D chatpanels for the long-distance conversations, this scene with Dave pushing the border of a panel over the doorhandle John is trying to use, the way silodexes are incorporated, lots of visual meta-jokes and callbacks, and one specific zoom out from John's computer starting Sburb out through his window out through the Mayor's monitor.

The voice acting is good (Toby Fox voiced John? What the hell?).

The characterisation is ok.

The actual script is about as cringe as an abridged homestuck series would be.

This is the 2nd time Homestuck has been mentioned in this post. Hope there's no reason to bring it up again.

Music

Bâan - The OST, by Kevin Penkins

Listen here.

I enjoy Kevin Penkins previous works a lot.

Not a huge fan of this one. It's very pretty, and I appreciate Gigguk giving Penkin a gig, but it doesn't exhibit the qualities I really enjoy in his previous stuff.

In the Made in Abyss OST - the harmonies and dissonance, naturalistic melodies and electronic roars create a sense of peace and restful calm teetering just above a lingering sense of tension, falling even into dread on some tracks.

In the Tower of God OST - flowing, wide open soundscapes and some glorious choirs and electronic synths. Sweeping highs and melifluous mids and battering lows. I think this may be better than the Made in Abyss OST, but I haven't listened to it as much yet.

The OST supports the emotional beats of the show neatly, and the piano melodies and strings and singing are very pleasant to listen to, and I'm a sucker for wind instruments, but overall it doesn't have a lot of character compared to his other soundtracks.

It's a fantasy soundtrack for a fantasy animation. Maybe I had certain expectations because of how much I enjoyed his previous stuff. It's still a fine piece. The longer I sit with it I think I am too harsh on it.

The Shimmering Hour, by Wisp

Listen here

The only full length non-OST album that I listened to this month, though I also stopped at a surprise jazz concert in town.

This is an old classic and an autumn favourite for me. Full of simple melodies carried by an eclectic collection of synths. I'm a real sucker for sustained warbly notes over skitchy percussion.

This is the kind of album that imagines a world in your head for you, unbidden. All oak and ash trees. "The Well at the World's End" is like this.

If you like this sort of thing I'd also recommend

Similar world-apparating effects from electronic noises can be experienced on zvλd - Baklava and most anything by Iglooghost.

Bronze Claw Iso, by Iglooghost

Listen here

Speaking of the man himself, Igloo has been busy lately. He made a track that self-destructed in 24 hours, which is a very Iglooghost thing to do.

This EP continues the direction he's been following in a lot of his music lately. Not sure how it compares to his earlier work, but it is very enjoyable to me.

Deltarune OST, by Toby Fox

Toby Fox makes good music. Sounds better after playing the game. Is the game any good? See below.

This post is too long as it stands so I'm not giving any actual opinions.

My favourite battle themes are Black Knife (more on this one later), Chaos King, Vs. Lancer, Vs. Susie, Hammer of Justice, Ruder Buster, and A DARK ZONE.

My favourite non-battle themes are TV WORLD, Dark Sanctuary, Second Sanctuary, Glowing Snow, My Castle Town, Castle Funk, Spamton, Fireplace, The distance between two, THE HOLY, Faint Glow, Dialtone, You Can Always Come Home, Welcome to the Green Room, Ripple, and 13am.

That's a lot of tracks that are my favourites. It's a very good OST.

Video Games

Deltarune, Chapters 1-4

I'm not the exact target demographic for Deltarune. I am not filled with the power of "fluffy boys and mean girls". I find pastel-coloured anthropomorphised animals offputting outside the context of childrens cartoons.

Ok maybe the power mean girls but only a little.

These misgivings are irrelevant. Undertale and Deltarune are really, really good games.

Chapter 1 seems like a test of the concept for the game. Chapter 2 feels like the fully realised version of that concept. Chapter 3 loads the concept into a cannon and shoots it into space. Chapter 4 brings it back down to earth and the re-entry is spectacular.

Themes

Control

Imagine you woke up one day without any control over your body. Your body still moves, walks, talks, buys food from the store, jokes with friends and family.

But it's not you.

Some alien parasite has taken you as its host, your consciousness caged by the walls of your senses. You are at the whims of an unknowable puppetteer. And so is your relationship to the people you care about.

Deltarune and Undertale are games about choices. All role-playing games are, but implicit in "playing roles" is that the player is standing in as "their" character from within the fiction. In Undertale and Deltarune, the player is playing as themselves, and only incidentally has control over a character in the world via its rules.

Toby's games are not the only games to do this. OneShot was developed around the same time and has a similar vibe, and arguably the Stanley Parable is a close older cousin.

Deltarune differs from these games, especially Undertale, with its focus on control. The boundary where making choices for another "sentient" person becomes controlling them, and how much control a player really has over the game in the first place, or any of the characters have over their fate.

At the beginning of Undertale, we are told the world is ruthless and it's kill or be killed, and the entire rest of the game is a subversion of that premise. At the beginning of Deltarune, the first thing that happens is a player created character being thrown in the trash and us being told that no one can choose who they are in this world. Everything in the game is thematically tied to this concept.

The player has no control over who they decide to control. The player controls Kris -- Kris can somewhat reject the player's control, but they are bound to us in some way. It then transpires out Kris is bound by a promise to take part in a shadow conspiracy with the town council from Hot Fuzz and receives spooky commands over the phone. Even then, everyone in this world is bound inextricably by a prophesy, the nature of the world, and the meta reality of Deltarune being a video game made by a team of people led by Toby Fox.

Undertale puts a lot of focus on the impact the player's choices make to the outcomes, but in Deltarune it takes a lot of concentrated effort to even make a dent on the default path.

As if to say "looks what happens when I let you decide", there is one route in the game that does give the player significant control over events. It involves the player willfully, repeatedly, obsessively abusing another character, forcing them to hurt others and themselves in order to try and break the normal rules of the game. In Undertale there was the "genocide" route where the player has to willingly decide to do something unfun and grindy for several hours just to see what will happen, but by the end of it it's sort of framed like the player didn't even have a choice and went on autopilot, because they had to try everything, as the character they were playing gained self-consciousness as a psychopathic mass murderer. In Deltarune's equivalent, the player is expressly malevolent in the way they apply their control over the characters.

The characters are in the same boat. Susie moves around a lot, Ralsei is a literal object that doesn't believe they even have a will and staunchly believes in the prophecy, Kris is implied to be an orphan with a troubled childhood and is under multiple thumbs, Noelle has an overbearing mother, Berdly can't escape a social perception.

In a way it boils down to a funny young adult fiction "our parent's messy decisions dictate our lives and we gotta try and find ourselves". The existence of the player makes it a lot more interesting.

The only other piece of media I can think of that treats the relationship between the player and the characters in the media quite this way is another project Toby Fox was involved with. It's called Homestuck, and this is the last time I'm mentioning it. I don't know what happened this month, I haven't thought about Homestuck in years. MS Paint Adventures originally started off with reader suggestions being rendered into the world in strange and unusual ways, and eventually wove into the narrative of the story of Homestuck in some 9 or 10 intertwined meta layers of physical embodiments or metaphors for what was left of the 4th wall. I am very certain this in part inspired both Toby's games.

Escapism

In Undertale, there are big fantasy problems - there was a great war lost by the kingdom of monsters, they are sealed underground, and their civilisation's future is uncertain and bleak.

In Deltarune, the main characters have difficult home lives and get bullied at school. The "Dark World" is their imaginations run amok, the personification of their latent creativity. They understand that they are playing with something dangerous, but in this other world they get to go on adventures. The characters pursue it deliberately in the first few chapters, not for heroic motives but because it's fun and not real life -- Chapter 3 is literally a mishmash of minigames and colourful diversions. There are still threats, but nothing they can't handle.

At the end of Chapter 3, the main antagonist shows up and resets the tone from high-fun to low-funstasy. Even then, there's the sense that they're just playing with us, giving us an enemy for the sake of it. Still, Chapter 4 has a completely different base tone of sombre-ness -- comedy is injected by the addition of a new character rather than vice versa. Gerson is an anti-Knight, and his entire character is about encouraging the kids to embrace their creativity and desires and open their options.

The idea that the dark worlds are the imaginative imprinting on the world by darkness so dark it makes the mundane world one of make-believe is wonderful, it gives and shows off endless creativity in items and location theming.

I would compare it to Bâan because they share this theme, but it's not the same. Deltarune is made by people who are very experienced at creating the thing they're making and know exactly what they're trying to achieve, where Bâan is an exploration of what was possible in a medium that historically would be unthinkable for an indie to self-publish.

Gameplay

At the end of Chapter 2, one thought I dared to think, in hubris, was that the game was a bit easy. Even the special secret bosses weren't that bad, I had "only" died once to Jevil. In Chapters 1 & 2, the puzzles are very signposted. There are a lot of interesting mechanics you could play with that you don't really have to, like grazing shortening enemy turns and managing TP for expensive abilities, and the way equiped item abilities impact grazing vs stats for offence and defence.

In Chapter 3 there was a lot more variety on all accounts, with minigames that fit like a glove despite being unlike anything else in the game and sokoban puzzles with some interesting secondary points-scoring objectives. There's a creepypasta-like Legend of Zelda alt to the videgame-in-a-game on the main path that has not-so-oblique commentary on the game as a whole and neat references, with a tough boss fight in it. The "final boss" of Chapter 3 rewards maintaining high TP for its ACTions and is just crazy fun overall.

Then, the actual final boss of Chapter 3 sends you to THE TOUHOU DIMENSION.

This fight is weird, in that Earthbound/Mother late-game way. It's also hard, in an almost-actually-a-bullet-hell kind of way. You don't have to beat it to continue, but...I did have to beat it to continue. This fight made me a much better player, not just from movement execution but it made me understand how fighting by dealing as much damage as possible actually works, and experimenting with equipment setups. It felt like preparing for a difficult boss in an actual RPG game plus memorising patterns from an actual bullet hell.

The dissonant crunchy-drum music in the background is the platonic form of Souvenir de La Boum Avec Sophie Marceau from Everhood, with screaming highs and the all-new addition of an actual melody. That constant sense of tension and pressure is very stimulating, great running music.

Beating the fight leads to the exact same outcome as winning, but with secret boss items. Decisions continue to not matter, but it remains to be seen how accumulating these secret boss fragments will change the story.

Overall

I really enjoy the overabundance of easter eggs and references and hidden things. You feel rewarded for paying attention. The way the events of the game constantly build hints towards the overarching narrative is incredibly enjoyable to follow along with. Finding small easter eggs and hidden secrets makes you wonder how much is in here that you've missed, how much more there might be. In chapter 3 I found a secret door that leads to two animal cages shaped like animals choosing between LOVE and HATE, and a Yume Nikki like room found by entering a number from earlier in the chapter which is rewarded by some strange...something. This is a feeling of youth for old RPGs, where there were truly endless possibilities for things the developers could have included if you disregarded the idea that few would ever find it and that doesn't suit the budget.

Vs. Undertale, Deltarune didn't immediately grip as much. It felt like it was missing some special thing. Maybe the expectations I had when starting this game were already set in a way they weren't in a pre-Undertale world.

Now that I've had some time with it though, I think it's technically probably one of the best games I've ever played, and it's not even finished yet. This is troublesome, because last month I also played one of the best games I've ever played, Blue Prince. This sets a disturbing precedent. Will report back next month.

September Review

The world is full with the signs of summer's waning. Crisp mornings cloak the earth in mist and dew, not yet frost. The sun rises slowly, casting tall shadows, and the last wisps of the morning fog hide in the coattails of bushes and yellow-leaved trees clinging to the last of the cool morning air. The sky is clear and the moon is large in the morning and the night, or else the thundering rain beats down in marching sheets to that imperceptible rhythm of nature.

8/10, dewy mornings make my boots and dogs wet. Drying Milo with a towel is like entering a cage with a rabid honeybadger (unless you tell him to sit still, but that's no fun).

Milo soggy from dew