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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2345 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 29, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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These points are where most progressive art falters. It slavishly follows a set of predefined norms, instead of the artist’s opinions; it drowns itself in politics and analogy; its characters exist purely to push one or another point, which must be driven home explicitly, and wind up flat because of it.

This is where my language differs; this is 'art that happens to show a progressive worldview' and not 'progressive art', which I believe is by definition driven by hatred for all non-progressive worldviews. Same thing with Christian art, for that matter, for exactly the same reasons- if you ever wondered what the difference between a Chick tract and Lord of the Rings is, it's this.

Maybe you could call it a Traditionalist game because a certain negative aspect of Ralsei 'being a girly/GNC boy' is not only revealed, but actively punished? I dunno.

Anyway, I posit that a work in which 'mistake theory predominates' can't really be specifically labelled to ideology-specific. "Correct" is not a political identity- though I get that they all pretend to have a monopoly on it.

Oh yeah, and depending on your choices you can to a degree, rape one of the implied-to-be-teenage female characters

which is rank blasphemy against all of the Progressive gods (and is to my knowledge the only major post-release artwork change), and you're actually encouraged by the game to do this.

This is something that should have generated absurd amounts of butthurt and problematization, but it has not; I suspect the offended are mostly told "fuck off, it's a good game" (partially because of Undertale and how well its narrative also happens to include 'yes, you can kill basically everyone' while not being absurd grimdark), and because everyone is more interested with where the so-far-incomplete story is going to go.

Most of the points you've made can be beat-for-beat substituted for Omori, as well, and it's actually kind of interesting to see the parallels between them (to the point that Toby Fox did to a point co-ordinate with Omocat to make sure they weren't making the exact same game).

Heck, both of those games have the 'seemingly-indifferent protagonist', 'girly boy who loves you', and 'tomboy bully/bruiser who the protagonist probably prefers romantically' archetypes; and the relationship the game revolves around is same-sex[1]. Omocat is, at least publicly, a bit more progressive (though perhaps that comes with the territory; Toby Fox is an Easterner and makes his money on the game itself, whereas Omocat is from California and the game was an incidental and more funded by merchandise). Also, Omocat is a woman and Toby Fox is a man.

And yeah, I think a lot of that comes through in the writing and gameplay; Omori's RPG system has emotion control as its primary mechanic where Deltarune's mechanics are kind of all over the place (and are more often played with), and Omori's more interested in being a good story where Deltarune focuses far more on its self-awareness as a game. Not that Omori doesn't do that at times (specifically at the end), but 'changing the mechanics in a place you don't expect it to be done' is something traditional media doesn't get has an emotional impact.

[1] This is a lot more in your face in Deltarune where it's more subtle in Omori. Something something 4 Loves, and Omocat's writing is a lot more intentionally shipping-bait-y than anything in Deltarune, but Omori's plot revolves around loving Sunny loving Basil far more than any other character in the game. That may fit into one's description of 'romantic', or it may not; I don't think it matters.

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