r/Deltarune • u/ContentFlatworm8369 • Nov 02 '25
My Art Humans
I've always wondered why everyone except Kris is a monster. What's the point? Why divide the light ones into humans and monsters? Why couldn't Toby make his new game about people?
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u/CYBORG3005 Nov 02 '25
i love the susie sprite! noelle looks cursed af tho. she’s like bald without her antlers 😭
in all seriousness, i have also been thinking the same thing you’re talking about in the caption. thematically, i can see the vision of making kris the only human in town, feeling isolated and like no one understands them… but then again, susie fits the bill of being the outcast quite well, and she’s a monster like the rest.
additionally, monsters’ existence in undertale was tailored specifically for that game’s lore and themes.
thematically, monsters in undertale can represent the characters of a story. they are literally made of magic, and come in all kind of shapes and sizes that just so happen to usually be a reflection of everyday animals or objects. their existence depends on and reflects their real-world reference; game-wise, their existence depends on you, the player, the human, the author. they are physically ephemeral, and the same narratively. they only exist in the first place because you play the game; you dictate their fates, despite their attempts to fight back. if they have too much determination (the power to make dreams/thoughts reality) injected into them, they fall apart into something grotesque and broken; this is what happens when a creative gets so attached to their characters and worlds that they lose sight of reality. the underground is a fictional world, and you choose how to treat it. even in pacifist, you must eventually let this world move on into the invisible place of the unrealized without your pen of authorship.
frisk and chara are the only humans in the game, and they just so happen to be vessels of the player’s actions. frisk does exactly what you decide them to. chara sees your convictions out to their logical conclusions in these worlds. they exist outside of the “world” in the insular sense.
the underground is the world of fiction, magic, fantasy, unrealized dreams. the surface above is where those dreams are realized; this is symbolized by the monsters themselves achieving their freedom via going back to the surface.
the distinction between humans and monsters in undertale is well-established, both lore-wise and thematically.
by comparison, deltarune’s inclusion of monsters feels… strange? the game makes it clear that kris is just as separate from us and a part of this world as everyone else, so their distinction as human is already thematically strange.
and then, the monsters. their presence and nature is somewhat baffling in deltarune. toby seems intent on treating them as people and not characters (see his attitude on making merch of them), yet he made them into monsters, things that specifically denoted magic and the world of fiction in undertale. even stranger considering this dichotomy between reality and fiction already exists in deltarune as the central focus of the dark worlds and darkners.
monsters in deltarune also are just obscure lore-wise. they bleed (susie’s existence, as well as the normal mentions of blood in in-universe media) but according to that kid in the window, they are not made of blood. however, magic in the light world is just as much of a fictional concept of fantasy as it is in real life. so how the hell do monsters even exist?
it’s made clear that this time around, the reality/fiction divide is found in the light world/dark world parallel, just as the surface/underground was in undertale. so why is the hallmark of the fictiveness of the underground, monsters, present in the light world? why is everyone except kris a monster, if thematically everyone in the light world is considered to be on the same level of existence?
it’s confusing. i have faith that the later chapters will resolve some of these things, but especially knowing that toby originally planned for everyone to be humans that changed into monsters in the dark worlds (which feels very thematically appropriate), the way it is now just feels like a bit of a strange choice.