I deconstruct the madness that is the Deltarune fandom and how it feels to be in it. This will likely be a divisive post for Deltarune fans.

Note:

There are no spoilers for Chapter 5 in this post. I started writing this post before Chapter 5 released, around June 10th-ish. I won't be including any information about it in here. In fact, we haven't played it yet.

Just for fun, I'll describe the fandom through several "tion"s. It's not important, just a fun naming scheme.

OBSERVATION: Experiencing Deltarune from the outside

Deltarune, whether intentionally or not, has become something experienced just as much outside the game as inside the game.

If you're reading this, you're probably in the same kinds of online circles and communities I am. Namely, queer and neurodivergent spaces. And there's no way you haven't heard of Deltarune, or at least Undertale. They're both massively popular indie games that have become somewhat mainstream. Fan art of the characters, especially the main trio of Deltarune (Kris, Ralsei, and Susie), appear regularly, not just in UTDR groups like the subreddits, but everywhere, To be fair, this is expected of any beloved media. Making fan creations based on something you love is a very pure and sweet action. But this has led to a problem unique to Deltarune: it's unavoidable.

I know I sound like Stop Posting About Among Us right now, but that's okay. This person got memed very hard, but I actually agree with him. With the way communication has evolved online, it's in everyone's best interest to curate only spaces they want to be in. Think of it like subscribing to several subreddits on reddit. You choose exactly what kind of content you want to see. But there's always intrusions. I observed over time how politics and news influences memes and media created by individual people. I do like this. It's a great way to create satire content about bad things. It makes it easier to digest. But politics aren't the only thing that spreads into other spaces this way. Anything popular can.

Just like Among Us in 2020, Deltarune has a very wide reach. I've seen Deltarune content

modded into Zelda 64

, some very good Deltarune music mashups, and even

Deltarune characters in Figura

. Undertale and Deltarune stuff has been showing up on Nintendo Direct for a few years now. sans is in Smash. Because Deltarune is being released in chapters, that means every time a chapter release date is announced or said chapter is released, there's a massive surge of Deltarune popularity, and it becomes even more unavoidable. If you're in these online spaces like I am, you have a few friends who like Deltarune. People change their profile picture to Deltarune characters. They put character quotes as their discord status. They share a communal excitement and hype, told to you, and in any gaming-related channel you can find.

You can't avoid Deltarune content online.

We can't handle fandom hype. It's like a loud noise to us. It can be overwhelming, especially to neurodivergent people like us. Being told to watch or play things over and over ironically makes us want to avoid it. This is extremely the case with Deltarune, given its immense popularity. But what's worse is the way it engages with spoilers, as you'll see in the next point. We simultaneously don't want to play and don't want to be spoiled, which is extremely likely to happen if we don't play. It only makes the situation even more overwhelming. It makes me feel like I have stockholm syndrome for a video game!

Make no mistake, I do like Deltarune, the game. But Deltarune's popularity works against fans of Deltarune, too. I'm going to try to paint a picture of what it's like to experience the Deltarune fandom from my point of view. I'll be saying a lot of negative things, but there are things about Deltarune I love, both the game and the fandom.

INTIMIDATION: Spoilers and

FOMO

Spoilers are power.

I can speak to this personally, as someone who's played Deltarune since it was called SURVEY_PROGRAM. Every time a new chapter releases, there's an intense rush and pressure in the community. For chapter 2, Toby Fox had set up a webpage with a countdown timer to the moment it'd be released. On September 17th, 2021, me and about 6 others sat in a discord voice call, mashing refresh on the Deltarune Steam page until the download button was unlocked. As soon as it was, everyone simultaneously shut off discord and went to experience the game without any outside influence or spoilers.

This happened again with chapters 3+4, which were released together on June 4th, 2025. We had surgery that day, and a pretty rough one at that. Our arm was in a sling, so we couldn't play. We watched a friend play through chapter 3 blind, instead, in private, and had a great time. But we stopped there, and wouldn't see chapter 4 for a few weeks. We had decided, I think understandably, to hold off until we healed a bit more.

But guess what? Youtube thumbnails, discord friends' statuses, and fan art showed up everywhere on our discord. We tried as hard as we could to avoid spoilers, but inevitably got spoiled on chapter 4, on multiple details.

Toby Fox encouraged players not to spoil the game for each other, which he seems to have done almost every time he's released something playable - and that's very much appreciated! And to their credit, our friends used discord's spoiler features to spoiler-tag everything Deltarune they shared. But as with anything, there are always going to be people who ruin the magic, who spoil the fun for everyone else. Whether it's for a feeling of power, because they didn't see the newsletter, or because they simply didn't care, many users on youtube uploaded videos of the chapter 3 and 4 secret bosses, final bosses, egg secrets, etc. Before we even played chapter 4, we knew what undertale character returns in chapter 4, who the secret boss is, the name of a miniboss that a friend's status alluded to, that a "prophecy" is involved, the setting for chapter 4's dark world, etc.

Toby Fox's writing style, ever since Undertale, has relied significantly on surprise and plot twists. Here are some examples: (spoilers, obviously!)

Because of the significance of these strong moments and surprises, twists or not, being spoiled on Deltarune content hurts a lot more. If you get spoiled on something really cool in Deltarune, that moment, and your initial reaction, has been taken from you without your consent. And to be clear, there's nothing wrong with a cool game relying on surprising and hype moments. If they work well, which they do in Deltarune, they feel awesome!

FIXATION: The obsessive nature of fans

Long-time fans of Undertale and Deltarune are no doubt very familiar with dissecting an experience they loved, and scavenging the pieces for more juicy bits of content. People love to take apart Toby Fox's two big narrative games, and take a look at their inner workings. This has had the positive effect of teaching a lot of young creatives (including us!) about game design. This leads to a lot of awesome fan creations, even fan games and fan game tools. But it also has a secondary effect I take issue with.

An old friend called it "Deltarune brainrot", but I prefer "obsession".

I mentioned earlier how, as soon as a new installment of Deltarune is released, the fans all go through it as fast as possible and take enjoyment from all the secrets and surprises. But these fans are obsessive. They will comb through not just the big secrets in the game and the alternate route, but they'll also seek out every little thing. Desperate to reignite the neurons that made them happy the first time, they'll squeeze every last dialogue box and sprite out of Deltarune like a toothpaste tube.

Everyone is free to enjoy a cool video game however they like, including replaying it many times, and going over the details with a fine-toothed comb. Some people enjoy being secret hunters, and that's cool. And most of the time, I enjoy hearing about cool things people have discovered in games I like! But there's a reason that I point this out: the effect that obsession has on other fans.

I had an interaction with a fellow Deltarune fan earlier this year. They sent me some fan-made gifs of Noelle referencing early 2010s internet culture, such as parodies of Nyan Cat and Leekspin. I thought they were cute. They remarked that "Girelle" is canon, and explained she's dressed like Gir from Invader Zim in the gifs. I asked how it's canon, and learned that this is from a picture in Noelle's old PC photos in chapter 4. But not a photo you can see, one that's described to you through text. Moreover, it's a reference to a SiIvaGunner video that Toby Fox must have liked. No offense to this friend of mine, they were sharing something they enjoyed, but this conversation really rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, this is a cool interaction between Toby Fox and his fans, back and forth. But I felt like I'd been slapped across the head - as if this info was obvious. I mean, it was obvious enough to the team behind the collaborative video the gifs came from. Not being up to speed on all the latest tidbits and lore in Deltarune feels like being left behind.

I have the perfect comparison, actually: Minecraft. Minecraft needs no introduction, it's one of the most popular and successful video games ever created. It's disseminated so widely by now that, functionally, everyone knows about Minecraft. In fact, deep knowledge about the game's mechanics is assumed and expected of everyone who plays. Our uncle hasn't played Minecraft since beta 1.7.3. Catching him up to speed on a decade and a half's worth of content updates is extremely difficult, because Minecraft depends on players already knowing how to play it. There's a youtube playlist I highly recommend for Minecraft fans, PiroPito's first playthrough of Minecraft. Basically, this is a completely blind playthrough of Minecraft from a man who has avoided all knowledge about Minecraft purposefully. The resulting playthrough, as long as it is, is enlightening. Knowledge that we take for granted - like how to build a nether portal, and how to use bookshelves with an enchanting table - are

not explained at all in game!

In fact, the Japanese translation for Minecraft had a mistranslation in the nether portal advancement, that made him believe a nether portal was

crafted in the crafting table

, rather than built. Whenever PiroPito started playing on the version that adds phantoms, he had no way of knowing that phantoms only hunt players who haven't slept, and because he's building a bridge in one direction as far as possible, he can't use beds, lest they move his respawn point.

I bring up all of this just to say... this is how I feel the Deltarune fandom is regarding knowledge and theories. I guess it is natural, in a sense, just as a consequence of fandom. Again, I don't think there's much that can be done about this problem. There isn't a way to only hear about "some" or "none" Deltarune content, and if you're talking to another Deltarune fan, you're opening yourself up to hearing every little detail, regardless of if it counts as a "spoiler" to you or them, or if you've even played the latest content! It's very difficult to play the game in isolation.

DISSECTION: Theorycrafting

Before chapters 3+4 came out, the Deltarune fandom was running wild with hype over their own interpretations and theories.

This is nothing new for the UTDR fandom. Almost a decade ago, the Narrachara/Charrator theory took over the fandom, followed by Sans is Ness, which we loathed with a passion due to its effect on the fandom. Looking back, you can see the same DNA in this kind of analysis that Deltarune fans continue to this day. Every detail, no matter how small, can become fuel for a theory. Here's a modern example from Deltarune chapter 4. It's just as elaborate, if not more so, and it's far from the only one of its kind.

A very popular theory was "friend inside me", a prediction that either chapter 3 or 4's secret boss would be a reanimated cowboy doll, because Toby Fox vaguely hinted a "cowboy segment" may be "cancelled". Fans found his tumblr post from 2019 with a silly audio edit of You've Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story. Two months before chapters 3+4 released, there was already a playable fan battle based on the theory. Fans work fast! Another example is Pluey. On February 17th, 2025, Toby Fox made a post on bluesky, cryptically stating "we also still need to implement Pluey". Quickly, fans created meme edits with the word, designed original characters named Pluey, and shared various interpretations of what it could be. I peeked in the Unitale/CYF discord to find Deltarune fans obsessing over how "pluey" could be the missing piece to explain Gaster, the weird route, or other mysteries. It reads like another covfefe moment to me. Turns out it was just a minigame with a silly title.

You've probably heard of "betas" and "unused content" in the context of video games. We've had a fascination with these for many years, probably over a decade now. We're guilty of the same thing I'm attributing to Deltarune fans - wanting more out of something they loved. If you don't mind spoilers, check out The Cutting Room Floor's page on Deltarune. It's massive. I bring this up because, now more than ever, Deltarune fans are taking apart the game to peek inside, and using unused dialogue, cutscenes, graphics and music as evidence in their theories!

I can see where they're coming from. It's very fun to grab a corkboard, some thumbtacks and red string, and put together your own theory based on bits and pieces. Theorycrafting is fun in its own way, and is totally a valid way to enjoy the game. My problem is when this attitude takes over the fandom.

We had a discussion with someone some time after we played chapters 3+4. They told us there's a big theory forming in the Deltarune fandom, revolving around water - Deltarune features dark "fountains", has a side mystery involving a character in a body of water hearing a familiar sound from below, and most of all, inside the game's source, the texture for a background image is called IMAGE_DEPTH, and was found to be a recolored stock image of the ocean. Check out this snippet on the Deltarune wiki, and you'll find this quote:

It is among the few assets within the game whose filename is completely uppercase, a trait associated with the voice.

It hardly constitutes a theory, to me, just some interesting observations. But we couldn't help but think two things upon hearing this: One, why look outside the game? Does this have any relevance to the gameplay or story, anymore? And two, why does this matter?

But most of all, I have to talk about IMAGE_FRIEND. This thing upsets me greatly. Take a look at this image:

What is this? A weird little face, right? Nope! According to some, it's the mastermind behind the entire series. Why?

The sheer amount of obsession that Deltarune fans have in picking apart the source material has led to this character, nicknamed "FRIEND" after its filename IMAGE_FRIEND, gaining an undeserved reputation, as something secret, unknown, or sinister. Because it appears in notably strange places, both in the game and in the out-of-game ARG (we'll get to that), it must have significance, right? Surely this is foreshadowing, setup for a grand reveal later on that this being, whatever it is, has been pulling the strings all along?

It's a png that shows up maybe three times in the entire game so far. How did we get here?

DILUTION: Deltarune's two "threads"

I love the channel hbomberguy on youtube. I want to share one of my favorite video essays he made, Sherlock is Garbage, and Here's Why:

In this video, he discusses the writing style of the former show writer Steven Moffat for the shows Doctor Who and Sherlock. There are a lot of flaws in his writing style, but I specifically want to bring up the hype aspect. And just to be clear: this video isn't my only source. Sunny and I have both watched all of Moffat's run of the Doctor Who reboot. We can confirm from experience that this is how it is.

Moffat's episodes constantly provide hype, notably in cliffhangers, played-up character drama, things that sound deep, and season-wide "arcs" that happen in the background between each episode, or get teased at the end of each. Doctor Who, for instance, used to be mostly about an eccentric friendly time traveler who helps people out, makes friends, and takes them on adventures. In Moffat's run, The Doctor is implied to have unfathomable depths that we never get to see or understand, with many galaxy-destroyer-level enemies who hunt him through time and space because he's basically the most important person in the universe. Many episodes end with cliffhangers and teasers that really look like something amazing is about to happen, but most of the time they fail to live up to the hype.

In other words, fans are made to care less about the main stories and more about what's going on in the background. Sound familiar? Deltarune has the same problem.

Now, don't get me wrong. Deltarune's main story content is great. There is a lot of praise and fanart given to it, and it's all deserved. But there's now a divide in the Deltarune fandom. The main content is appreciated in one "thread" of the fandom, while the other is endlessly obsessed with all the secret and mysterious content - the rare dialogue and cutscenes, the egg rooms, the ARG, FRIEND, the intense theory crafting, and what they consider the true "lore".

In the same way that Steven Moffat's writing constantly promised interesting things to create hype, Deltarune adds a ton of secret and mysterious content that leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I believe this is intentional and Toby Fox goes out of his way to generate hype for his game.

IMPLICATION: How to create hype for your indie RPGs

I didn't realize just how much Toby Fox has been taking advantage of hype until I put all the pieces together for this post. We actually have to start all the way back at Undertale for this.

Almost 3 years later, in October of 2018, the Undertale twitter account had its name and avatar blacked out and started posting cryptic messages, leading up to the 31st - Halloween. An executable file called SURVEY_PROGRAM was released, under the guise of filling out a survey for whatever character possessed the twitter account, along with instructions to not discuss the program for 24 hours. The program starts with what appears to be a survey, having the user create a humanoid vessel, pick traits, and enter two names, before a bait and switch - you're actually playing a game that looks suspiciously like Undertale! The name of the upcoming project, Deltarune, is only revealed at the very end, after defeating the chapter boss.

Also worth noting is that Toby Fox started doing anniversary livestreams for Undertale and Deltarune, which have gained a reputation for having surprises and twists in them. These aren't just live streams of a playthrough of a game, they have secrets as well. For instance, the Undertale 10th anniversary stream happened recently, and just look at this massive compiled list of differences between the stream and release versions of Undertale! These were all added on purpose, for fans to notice. And sometimes, new content is announced during these streams, such as the launch of Deltarune Chapter 2! And now, these are even happening on Nintendo Direct! All of this means fans are very incentivized to join the livestreams and be the first to hear any news and discover any fresh secrets. Since it's a livestream, that also means FOMO.

As I said way earlier, Undertale and Deltarune's writing rely a lot on surprise and twists. This also includes cliffhangers, which appear at the end of every chapter of Deltarune, and are set up to be incredibly surprising and imply something wild. Chapter 1 ends with Kris throwing the player soul into a birdcage, flashing a red eye to the player, and revealing a knife, which is immediately handwaved at the start of Chapter 2 as Kris just used the knife to cut a pie! How silly! Chapter 2 ends with Kris creating a dark fountain in their living room, something we've never seen the process of before, and strongly implying Kris is the Roaring Knight as that's the only named character known to make fountains which kind of vanishes over the course of Chapter 3 and isn't really brought up again. You get the idea.

Another big part of the hype generation is Deltarune's interaction with fan theories. Toby Fox absolutely knows about the popular theories in the Deltarune fandom. In Chapter 3, they're directly referenced in game! Right at the start, the "darkners are objects" theory is confirmed, with a very intentional tease about Ralsei's true identity. A character named Tenna suddenly shows up and reveals his form - fans have known this name for a few years thanks to the ARG (more on that later), so their speculating is paid off immediately. Other scenes elaborate on his connection to Spamton that was teased in Chapter 2, the phrase "darker than dark" which has history as far back as Undertale, a silly character framed like a conspiracy theorist theorizing the identity of "Mike", the Roaring Knight that fans expected to be an endgame "mastermind"-type character appearing early, and more.

But most of all, I think Deltarune's biggest strategy for generating hype is unanswered questions. Implication, if you will. Toby Fox just loves implying secret, cool, and mysterious things. Hell, look at Gaster in Undertale and the Undertale alarm clock dialogue!

Deltarune has an ARG. ARGs have been all the rage for several years now. This one is called the Spamton Sweepstakes. The "Spamton Sweepstakes" was a live, Deltarune-themed charity event organized by Toby Fox, with cash prizes... but more importantly, tons of hidden pages, accessible through hidden links, with all manner of content. Some pages have in-character dialogue from some Deltarune characters, and refer not just to events in game, but also to the secret content in the game. These pages also add some context and background info for some characters - in my opinion this is a little unfair, because ARGs can be exhausting to navigate, so someone like me who doesn't engage will be left out of info that immediately becomes part of the expected general knowledge due to the fan obsession I talked about before. Importantly, these secret pages have continued to be updated long after the sweepstakes ended, to provide fans with even more vague and mysterious hints about who knows what.

Also, the newsletters. Deltarune has a mailing list you can sign up to. Newsletters usually share progress on the game, cool crossovers and other projects Toby Fox is up to, interesting anecdotes about game development... and even more secrets. The newsletter that spawned the "friend inside me" fan theory was found to only have that body of text for some recipients, not all. And this is just my opinion, but, when reading these, I can't help but feel like Toby Fox writes in a very short, simplistic way, in a style that leaves a lot unsaid. I don't really know how to explain it. I could be off on this one.

Back to in-game. Deltarune has so much content that, all the same, implies something mysterious and unknown that keeps fans scrambling to theorize and figure out. Some examples:

• The "egg rooms", within which lie the "man behind a tree", much vague and metaphorical dialogue, an unexplained liminal nurse's office, and the methods for reaching these egg rooms are very elaborate and esoteric.
• Secret images of the prophecy in Chapter 4 that can be found in secret rooms.
• Kris's antagonistic relationship with the player through the human soul.
• "The Roaring", if it will happen, and when.
• The secret boss fights, and their strange, metaphorical dialogue
• For some reason, every single equipment item in the game, including unused and unimplemented ones, has dialogue for trying to equip them on Noelle, a temporary party member in Chapter 2 who can't equip any of these items and requires save editing to have both her and these items.
  • Similarly, choosing a certain dialogue option at the end of Chapter 4 increases the amount of HP a certain item restores... except it's an item from Chapter 2 that becomes unusable after the chapter ends. Again, save editing would be required to even see this. Why?

But biggest of all...

MUTATION: The weird route

This is possibly one of the biggest sources of hype and mystique that Deltarune has.

The "weird route", as it's called by the fandom, is an alternate route similar to Undertale's "genocide route". In this route, not only do you you attack every enemy, leaving the dark world devoid of life, you also go out of your way to psychologically break an innocent girl and pressure her into murder. I point this out every time I talk about the weird route. This is incredibly fucked up, potentially triggering content to put in your game enjoyed by a primarily neurodivergent audience. Why is this here?

The weird route constantly reminds you how much you're messing everything up. NPCs tell you your castle town is "broken" and can never be healed. Lots of music is slowed down or replaced with more uncomfortable variants. There are slight changes to the plot and cutscenes. Your party actually gets stronger and gains stats. But, yes, the real star of the show is Noelle.

It's beyond fucked up. And there's no doubt in my mind that that's why it draws so much attention from fans. Fighting, drama, psychological harm, murder... dark topics are innately so captivating and hook so many people. I've asked myself so many times, why does the weird route exist? And I'm still not sure. But one thing's for certain. People want more. Every new chapter has the potential to have even more weird route content that will suck in fans hungry for drama.

As you can imagine, this puts more material into the feedback loop. Popular fan theories suggest that the weird route is the "real" good route, because you're defying the prophetic intended route of the game, or that the weird route will reveal even more secrets about unseen villains and characters who were pulling the strings all along. And as these theories gain traction, fans are already so far gone that they no longer really care about Deltarune's main content, its intended messages and themes, its sweet moments, its story...

DISTRACTION: When the main content no longer satisfies

There's a channel on youtube and nebula I really like, called The Cursed Judge. I recently watched this video from him:

There is some quite moving writing in this video essay about how we bond with video games that mean a lot to us - what it's like to have that magical first playthrough, and how a game becomes a shadow of the original experience when you go back to dissect it. I want to explore here how this applies to Deltarune, the video game itself.

As people pick apart Deltarune bit by bit, compile every secret, every rare bit of dialogue, every scene, every single frame of a cutscene, what the game originally was falls apart. After a certain point, the original meat of Deltarune, the good stuff, the main story, the characters, the themes, the message... moves to the background. The most obsessive fans have all but stopped caring, and just want to figure out all the secret background stuff that's totally going to unravel everything. It's... upsetting, to me.

Deltarune, at least as we've experienced it, has some pretty nice themes throughout. They're mostly isolated to each chapter, with a few themes appearing in each. I wouldn't say there's any overall grand, unifying themes or messages yet, but who knows, there might be eventually. Susie is absolutely my favorite character, a former bully implied to have a bad home life (possibly even none) who has no friends but wants to make them. Ralsei is good representation for the kind of shy, weak, meager personality I used to be, solely focused on what they have to do, and not ever stopping to really live, their actual "core" almost a blank slate. Chapter 1 deals with Susie's transformation from a bully to a good friend and learning to trust others, and repeats Undertale's philosophy that it's always possible to be a good person and solve problems peacefully. Chapter 2 deals with Noelle's loss of her sister, as well as - if it counts - themes of technology dependence and over-reliance. Chapter 3 has themes of nostalgia, growing out of old technology and old habits, and emotional dependence. Chapter 4 shows Susie learning to be confident in herself and her abilities in a really well done character arc, and touches on themes of loss and mourning, with the overarching theme being prophecies and fate.

Oh, and I almost forgot, we're talking about a video game here. It's fun. You can play it. There's fun and exciting music, fun gimmicks, challenging stuff to do for the hardcore players, secrets to find for the secret hunters, jokes and easter eggs to find to spice up the game world, creatively designed enemies, bosses, and dark worlds. Good stuff!

...I mentioned at the very start that I started writing this before Chapter 5 came out. Now it's been 2 days since its release. I sent drafts of this post to a friend. They told me, "I don't know what part of the fandom you're in, but that's not what I've experienced." I held off on finishing this post due to worries I'd come off overly negative and hateful, when that's not the point. But today, that friend came back and said, "You were right." Yeah so, according to them, they just played Chapter 5 and loved it, but when they went to check out the fandom, a lot of them were disappointed with the new content, some calling it a "nothingburger" or "unimportant" chapter... and all because it doesn't progress the stupid meta secret shit that's been overhyped and overanalyzed to hell.

I was right. If you are a spoiler-proof Deltarune fan, go check out the Deltarune subreddit. I'm sure you'll agree. When I told my friend before that people care more about the meta stuff than the actual game, they didn't believe me. But these people do exist. I can't say whether they're the vocal majority, but either way, they're loud, and ruin the experience for everyone else.

REFLECTION: Why does any of this matter?

We're fans of Toby Fox's work. Sunny was hugely impacted by Undertale, at a time in their life where they needed it. When I was created, I started a very long history of working on Undertale fangame stuff. I got good at playing Deltarune, and I've engaged in many theme and theory discussions with friends myself, the difference of course being that I act reasonable about it.

But I need to give everyone a reality check. Toby Fox and Deltarune are not perfect. Toby Fox is just a guy. Deltarune and Undertale are silly Game Maker Studio games full of personality and passion. Toby Fox is not this omnipotent prophet/god figure the fandom treats him as. Every single tweet he makes doesn't need to be hyper-analyzed for secret clues. The amount of overanalyzing happening with Pluey rivals the GameStop meme stock movement to me. Deltarune is not a Doctor Who, or a Supernatural, or a Petscop. There are hidden secrets, yes, but it's not worth this. If your first thought when introducing a friend to Deltarune is FRIEND, or Roots theory, or how Ralsei is secretly evil and plotting to kill the player, please take a step back.

But okay. I'm sounding awful negative right now. I want to answer the obvious point:

Just let people have fun!

I agree! I am not going to stop anyone from enjoying Deltarune however they want to, even if they personally do like to take it apart into tiny pieces. I may disagree with their theories, I may dislike their approach to the game, and hell, I may dislike even talking to them about Deltarune. But this isn't, like, a moral offense. I don't care what they do with it.

What I do care about is the aftereffects. The people ruining the fun for others. The widespread spoilers. The overwhelming hype. The incredible FOMO to play the next chapter as soon as it drops. The overanalyzed details and popular theories being reinforced as expected knowledge to other fans. The noise Deltarune creates that's incredibly hard to muffle.

I know not all fans are like this. I've tried to curate only reasonable people in our life. Still, it's truly impossible to completely avoid Deltarune. Yes, well-meaning friends asking politely if you've played it or they can talk to you about it, is fine. But it is overwhelming in large numbers. And worse are those who let their utter obsession turn into pressure to others - again, well-meaning, usually, but harmful. Having somebody reminding us to play chapter 4 repeatedly almost completely turned us away from it. You start to get the feeling that you must play the new Deltarune stuff, for them, not for you.

I don't know what should be done about this. It's kind of too late for Toby to take back what's been added to Deltarune, right? One might argue the problem is with individual people. While this is partially true, there are still wide-reaching effects that we can't control as individuals. Us Deltarune fans will still play new content the instant it drops, to avoid spoilers. What do you think?