Content warning: themes of death, self-harm, grooming?

Ok so… I’ll start with I’m glad I finished the whole of Chapter 5 before I did the weird route, or as it should be called now “Side-B”.

This is a game, it’s fiction, that being said one of the themes in Undertale and Deltarune is the suspension of disbelief (in my view) being a diegetic component to the game world. The very first thing you see when you first boot up the game is “Are we connected?” That connection is the suspension of disbelief but in a kind of joke/meta way.

It starts out fairly innocent, I mean, the whole snow grave thing Berdly was terrible but in a more fantasy/game like way. sure some darkeners got frozen, but maybe that actually a way to preserve them in case the roaring happens? It’s only until you get back to the light world that you learn the truth. But it’s not like he’s dead, right? You can kind of help by putting a hot water bottle on him and turning the heat up to make some small amends.

Then you force Kris to put the ring back on Noelle, you get a melodramatic spooky song play along with the thorns sprite. Like yes it’s dark but it’s not like you did anything too wrong, right? You have fun interaction where Susie asks what the both of you were talking about and it glitches the game because the device layer tried prompting both Kris and Noelle at the same time.

You broke Kris, he uses the last bit of strength to stay in bed but you just keep pushing the controller and he starts walking like usual, or does it? If you try to prompt anything you get a single dot in response, for everything. He is essentially the vessel at this point.

Shenanigans happen with Susie/Sans and you can only progress by going to the lake.

She stands on the edge of the lake her hair is reminiscent of the “Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli. Noelle says that she feels like her life was happening around her instead of her living it. But it’s not Noelle, not anymore, I broke Noelle, taking someone who you learn in the other route was already in a dark/suicidal place, and used the characters just to sate your own curiosity? I tried to back out but it was too late, the prompts that say “No” do nothing. the music swells, it’s the same song that played whenever Ralsei gives a speech about the nature of their world but overlaid with the effect they used when he was crying in chapter 4 along with the drums from the Berdly fight all those years ago. And you are gripped and can’t let go, it’s almost like whatever you did is coming back to be forced back on you the player, you feel the loss of control via being locked in. And slowly you get dragged into the lake, and it only gets faster, you’re pressing the prompts at a breakneck pace hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe if you’re fast enough they won’t drown? It’s possible they are in “nowhere” now, but as we were told “… it’s not a good idea to go nowhere with somebody else… Alone is better.”