So delightful. I'm happy Chara was given so much attention and praise... there is someone we still need to save.... uhm, I'll ramble what it made me think about... the things we were handed...

Well, I'm most happy that Toby made fun of Asriel's "maybe Chara wasn't the greatest person" comment. It seems to have made other people think about this line more. We should all think about Asriel's actions. You know, he's saying that meaningless thing while standing beside Chara's grave... (though you, the player, may lack the crucial information that Chara was buried there by Toriel, as events are contrived and locked behind certain route)...a specific, and far, far away place to reach from your confrontation. I doubt he expected you to come all that way, find him here, at this place which is more significant to him than it could ever be to you. He says, "someone has to look after these flowers". Someone has to stay with Chara. Nobody else will.

Rather than only saying something like, "Asriel is the fakest idgafer", I would like us to think *pushes up my little tiny glasses at the bridge of my nose* what his value of Chara VS the understanding Chara wasn't composed of the best impulses, makes him truly feel. He is committed to staying by their side forever. He doesn't join you on the surface. The surface still holds no more meaning to Asriel than it did eons ago, when they made the Plan, when Chara tried to open his future for him to be free. Asriel chooses to never go free. Acknowledging Chara's mistakes, doesn't shed Asriel's attachment.
On top of that, what reason does Asriel have to admit to you, in this circumstance, that he still loves Chara? What would such a narrative even mean to a complete outsider, a child at that? How could he explain, why would he take that time, to impress upon .... what? What virtue, what moral, what lesson, to take away from him still loving Chara, still missing them? You're capable of something neither of them could do in life... that selfless, unresentful love. Asriel is a simple failure. I always like that by the end of your final interaction, he says, "don't you have anything better to do?"... I always thought he sounded a little tired, or bitter.

You are the flower, I am the rain....

I'm happy we were given more information about the other fallen children...
maybe even the implication there were more than 6....? Merely 6 that Asgore got ahold of...
the concept that some children lived their lives for years with Toriel...!
She refers to the ruins as a 'catacombs' and she is a kind of groundskeep. I wonder how many bodies she laid to rest there.
Flowey has described (in other aside media), Toriel being bad at taking care of herself... not always eating, sleeping, drinking.... I wonder how many years sometimes passed between children needing tending. I love that Toriel isolates herself from society and commits to a particular life. It's more dramatic and extreme than it appears on its surface to any kid falling (a nice woman living a humble life in a little home).
The exposure of the greater ruins was amazing, it seemed to emphasize the extremeness,
the image of Toriel wandering through and steadily looting an abandoned town of its supplies... I enjoy. I wonder what books she cherry-picks for her shelves, for children's shelves, which she leaves to dust in the ruins....
Monster food doesn't expire like human food, because it isn't 'digested' like human food...

Asriel resents her willingness to take in other human children and love them as she did Chara... it makes him feel as if Chara could have been 'anyone', or wasn't special. It makes him feel love isn't exclusive, that it's replaceable. It makes him feel insignificant and afraid, I think. It is a betrayal. He's a child, afterall. With the knowledge that some of those children got to spend many more years with Toriel than Asriel or Chara ever did, you can kind of sympathize with his bitterness, his sense of everyone drifting farther and farther away from him.... without exclusivity, how do you designate importance...? Time becomes this endless thing, everyone moves perpetually, only occasionally bumping into one another briefly...

but when you look at the actions of Toriel compared to Asgore, maybe you could say she has sacrificed much more in honor of her children's disappearance. Asgore still has friends, and a life continuing outside of his pain, some normalcy... to some extent. He has Rudy, Alphys, Undyne, so many people... though he lives in a scary tomb of memories in his own way. He's frozen in time... Flowey is derisive to both of his parents, but him and Asgore are simpatico in their mission to kill other children falling, to treat them in contrast to Chara.

More history, too... uhmm I like acknowledgement that human/monster relationships exist, obviously...
we don't really have context for just how rare they were, or how they were seen in society. Obviously I'm always thinking about this. In DELTARUNE Kris clicks a pop-up add for "MONSTERS4HUMANS"........ the chaserism. Laughs....
I'm happy the war should be thought of as miserable and complicated as you'd expect, the nuance of wide scale conflict... something nobody was committed to, something nobody wanted, but was happening all the way to its climax. I wonder if the banishing of monsters was so magical that none could have lingered on the surface in secrecy, or if some may be tucked away on the surface, utterly isolated from their own kind....
In Deltarune it looks like neither humans nor monsters know magic anymore, so I wonder why that is... if we can 'use up' all magic in any sense, that's fun.
Uhm its interesting Gerson could be normal nuclear monster same-species married with kids in DR but have had a more ambiguous history with a human in UT. I guess we don't know anything about his personal life, though. Of all of the translations of character's qualities between UT->DR, the transition from being a historian to a religious figure in Gerson is the least straightforward (...from our perspective?!!??!) ... uhm much to think about.

Uhm I laughed out loud when Toby suddenly said Alphys wasn't conventionally attractive?????!??!? Look, I'm not saying she's gorgeous to me, but I didn't really know we could put any monsters on 'the grid' like that......... I didn't know if that was really set in stone........... like I could have just as easily blamed her circumstances entirely on personality flaws............. I don't know monster beauty standards, I don't know if and when a dinosaur is less sexy than a bunny, I don't know what 'convention' is in this world of Starwalkers. But my image of the designs in UT/DR changed in a subtle,, almost imperceptible way.............................

I love in-world attractiveness context, it is my bread and butter.
I don't care what the world itself looks like, whether it is a silly cartoon or a beautiful anime world,
any of these things can express a concept of ugly/pretty! I like to say "YES AND" instead of arguing with it!
In Adventure Time, Finn may look like a funny little guy to US, but in canon, he's often regarded well by princesses and seen as handsome!!
In JSHK, we may just see a bunch of sparkly-eyed beautiful boys and girls, but Aoi is a popular, pretty girl while Nene-chan is on the frumpy side (an acquired taste, let's say). Of course the Yugi are small, weedy, bug-eyed creeps, not traditionally handsome at all, to their peers.
I like that a lot. It informs you about any character's individual experiences...

who receives a lot of Valentine's? How do characters feel about their own body, their own face? What does any character expect to be seen as commonly, by others? What leagues exist? What relationships are more socially transgressive?
Though it's also never the be-all end-all of context. Alphys struggles with loneliness for many reasons, some more self-imposed and inflicted.....
it's an ingredient in the recipe....

Of course, someone like Noelle appears to be pretty to some extent in canon (though I can't be sure as Catti, Berdly, and Susie are all erm, unique individuals and not exactly the most popular opinion... and I don't know how she may have compared to her sister)... but this won't save her from loneliness and a feeling of being lost. Her inability to be assertive makes her a pushover, subject to distasteful things regardless of her own preference.
I wonder how Kris feels, as the only human in a town of monsters.
I doubt anyone sees Kris as an eligible bachelor ... that's my assumption. I would doubt they see themselves as anyone's dreamboat. Becoming a clown goof menace weirdo is often a way of coping with that. Someone like Noelle can't really conceptualize of a Kris who is flirtatious .... that's a reality Kris has carved out for themselves, one where it's absurdist to imagine them lustful. Perhaps if nobody 'expects' you to like or want romance, there can't be rejection. Can't fail at what you don't try......... (but I think how they 'play' in the Darkworld exposes that it is an interest Kris has, a behavior they want to act out, in secrecy... flirting with cards and toys.... SAD)

Now, the notion Alphys and Sans ?? may have ever or could ever be a thing ?? is deeply interesting uhm, in its own way....
I wouldn't say either are 'conventionally' attractive to anyone, and I highly doubt either of them are really the other's Ideal Endgame. They are both scientists though, and were studying aspects of their world's structure in an attempt to free their kind.... so they crossed paths, eh? Uhm, many such cases ..............

a moment of silence for my curiosity at how the games handle the concepts of relatives + romantic partners. It's like uhm. Interesting Alphys & Undyne are respectively attached to Papyrus & Sans. It's like, interesting to have a, possible sexual history, with a guy who is brother to a guy who is close to your crush ................ small world..... kind of embarrassing to think about navigating.... Alphys is probably lucky Papyrus is such a clueless guy who won't do espionage or babble to Undyne about. Things. But that is also a kind of burden of its own. Noelle is kind of weird about hiding her mere FRIENDSHIP's depth/history with Kris to Susie, her crush ... (she doesn't want to give Susie, who is easily discouraged, the wrong impression) .... not that I think Undyne would really care if she knew Sans and Alphys were ever anything, more like... isn't it just interesting how layers of interconnection work.................. over duration of time especially...

You also have the strangeness that is Mad Mew Mew, Undyne's training dummy, having a crush on Undyne, while Alphys has a friendship with Mettaton, and Alphys definitely finds both Mew Mew (whos body used to be her anime figurine?) and Mettaton (whos body she designed to be sexy?) attractive ............ and Mew Mew & Mettaton are 'cousins'....? and then you have Mew Mew and Mettaton duking it out over Napstablook (beloved cousin). Uhm this is me saying, there sure are tangled webs in Undertale, aren't there....?

The Underground is so small, it does remind me of living in a small town, where like everyone has at some point had some kind of interaction ........................... and you have weird transient relationships and people not capable of disappearing from one another's lives after a hook-up (something you have the grace of doing when you live in a larger, more populated city).................

We can't talk about Napstablook's Mettaton drama CD .... it threw me back in time to trying to listen to BL drama CDs as a teenager. Harrowing. Blooky is a blameless innocent soul because they do Not know Mettaton is actually their cousin possessing a robot, as Alphy's narrative for Asgore was that she built a robot from scratch; but I WILL blame Mettaton who DOES remember Blooky and for some reason chooses to OBFUSCATE his real identity to Blooky past the point it is even necessary to do so.

Blooky part 2: I'm sorry I did laugh a lot when 1st stream, people for some reason zeroed in on Napstablook being "misgendered" as he/him (all ghosts appear to be they/them before possessing something, for some reason?)..... and Toby was like.... "urrr the text to speech is clumsy and makes mistakes easy lol what can ya do" but then Immediately shared a piece of old Napstablook development work that also referred to Blooky as he/him. Tasteful. Calm down everyone............................. its not so serious.............................

I'm interested in Toby's interest in depicting attractions and relationships that shift over time...
feelings, relationships, that were one way at one point, and another later...
obviously, that's an aspect of Toriel/Asgore...
and probably the entire Holiday-and-Dreemurr history, given Asgore's... attachment... to Rudy......... (I also might question how much Carol supports Asgore)

but, we should be interested in how that can be an aspect of anything, right?

I have suspicions that Deltarune will also explore this, the at times transient nature of romantic interest, the ability to 'miss' that connection and move 'past' it...
I have my own real life experiences of this sort of thing. It's strange, surreal. I remember a friend and I, in high school, in respective relationships, but admitting to one another that we both actually had crushes on each other, for years, in the past .... it just didn't crest at any point, since neither of us said anything. We had been friends since middle school,
so I wondered just how long our feelings were actually in synchronicity, but uselessly unmentioned.
I feel like Deltarune could depict something like that.
More complexity may be added to these sorts of strange, incomplete feelings, when you add in people moving, dying, going missing... how age might play into something like that, as well. Like having a crush on someone a little older or younger, and failing to realize it's incredibly unlikely you even registered as a romantic possibility to them.
Whim has a funny story about thinking he was flirting a bit with a pretty girl in church, but learning she was much older than he thought.... wwwwww.... the interaction was different for her.

even if someone is right there every day, you may still dodge any closure with them, as a consequence of humility or shame. I can only imagine what kind of ephemeral feelings could have existed between a set of 4 neighbor children in a small town, growing up beside each other.

By comparison, Asriel and Chara were so young ... we lack a few of those layers of time... but I think Asriel still suffered, in his own way, from feeling appealing to Chara... he didn't want to be seen as a crybaby to Chara, he wanted to be cooler than that. God of Hyperdeath ...
oh, right, Toby casually commented what we already knew... that God of Hyperdeath is a persona Asriel made up, his own idea of 'cool'....
To Asriel, Chara was probably so naturally 'cool', right? With that ability to make creepy faces, laugh things off, perhaps be a little more withholding and mysterious, dark, brooding. Isn't that just so cool? Asriel's emotions are embarrassingly more obvious...

While for Chara, Asriel was likely someone so much more deserving of love and happiness than them, someone innocent and sweet. Chara wanted to kill themselves, hated the very thing they were ... humanity... must have hated their own face in the mirror. I'm sure the entire dynamic with Asriel, at times, felt like something they don't deserve ... hence, enacting a plan to die, and free him to live a life on the surface, to move past them, to love other people.

I think something both Undertale and Deltarune touch on, is people underestimating their meaning to one another. Obviously Chara couldn't have imagined dying would effect Asriel so hard; they thought they were a fundamentally bad person!

Like the 'relationships' thing I was talking about earlier...
or, like Toby mentioned about Alphys... someone like Undyne could always like someone like Alphys.
When we admire someone so much, we might imagine it's either,
so impossible they could ever return that,
or, that it would be a wrong decision you have to save them from,
to like you. If you hate yourself,
it can feel like shackling someone to a terrible burden.
You may believe they only like you as a kind of misunderstanding...
"if they really knew what I was like, they would understand to stay away"
"they wouldn't love me if they knew the truth, because the truth of me is fundamentally unlovable"
... someone like Alphys, and someone like Chara, can feel that kind of thing.
You could think of Susie too...
These feelings are also present in """""Ralsei"""""...
I wonder what """"Asriel""""" or Kris may feel, in Deltarune.

Characters will go far to try to shield others from information that may alter the state of a relationship as it is, too...
Alphys hiding her experiments,
Ralsei hiding the prophecy and his depth of knowledge,
Isn't it fascinating that a person may BOTH shield others from information to maintain a certain image,
and ALSO keep that person at a fixed distance, freezing them in a state of semi-intimacy?
Refusing to let the relationship become either "more" or "less"....
I wonder about Kris and Asriel, again...
isn't it interesting that siblings are a special kind of 'fixed state' that is much harder to turn into 'more' or 'less', without something rather catastrophic destroying or escalating it? It is expected to stay a certain way. I'm sorry I'm the stupid incest whore, ughhhh I'm sorry I'm srory... we almost made it a whole post.... shhs hshshshhhh shshshshshshhshhhhhhhhhhh

In this life we have to give people the opportunity to surprise us............................
what a difficult thing to do. It's scary, because, they may do the opposite,
and just reaffirm the painful reality we already 'knew' was 'true'.
They they really, honestly couldn't love us.
It would be more painful to be open to hope and have it crushed,
than to perish all hope in the heart before it can form. Decisive beliefs about ourselves protect us from probable pain by accepting absolute pain. Self-hatred can be so comforting like that.

... anyway ... that is what the stream made me think about. Much TO think about.
I'm happy for little tidbits of informations....
and I'm really happy it was ensured that Chara would 'win' hah... how meaningless it would be to have a stupid meme in those emotional dialogues. Togores I will beat you to a pulp. I will pull all your limbs off with my bare hands. I will slice you to ribbons like banana peel. In a year or two nobody will remember you, insignificant trivial fandom-crafted meme. Starwalker will outlive you.

I was really happy the mods were deleting things like the 'truck' meme. Thanks ... I don't feel it is appropriate. I don't think we should make gags about something like that in the charity stream, of all places, any more than we should make gags about Chara or Alphys committing suicide, or something. I think it is pretty counter to the point of. The games. I know I'm the incest whore so my opinion is meaningless but, it made me happy something like that was kept away from the experience...