u/Chained_Icarus

Hi everyone. I'm asking this in good faith because I'm trying to better understand where I fit in relation to the trans community, especially from the perspective of my transfem sisters.

I'm 38, was assigned male at birth, identify as male, and genuinely enjoy being a man. I've spent a lot of time questioning this over the years: including trying a different name and different pronouns for a while to see how they felt. Instead of feeling affirming, it made me feel less like myself. It was a useful experience for me: it confirmed to me that I'm not a woman and don't want to transition socially or medically.... at the same time, I've always been an extremely feminine person. I love feminine clothing, aesthetics, and presentation, and I actively want to be seen as feminine. If society had no expectations around gender expression, I'd still happily call myself a man... I would just be a very feminine one.

The closest label I've found to this is "femboy," but at 38 years old now... it feels a little odd... there doesn't seem to be a widely used adult equivalent, and the phrase is heavily loaded with a sexual energy that isn't always welcome.

The reason I'm posting here is because I often feel like I have a lot in common with transfem individuals. We both tend to push against the same gender norms, often appreciate similar styles and forms of expression, and sometimes deal with similar misunderstandings from other people. I find myself feeling a sense of camaraderie with the transfem community specifically, but I also don't want to overstep or imply that our experiences are identical.

I also sometimes hesitate to participate in (open) trans spaces because I worry that people will assume I'm an "egg" who just hasn't realized it yet. I understand why that assumption exists, but after years of self-reflection and experimentation, I'm genuinely comfortable identifying as a man and the assumption makes me feel small, reduced and invisible... that my years of my own experiences are still somehow wrong and I just need to "keep going" despite the genuine discomfort. The best I can describe it is like sandpaper on a sunburn. I'm not looking for someone to convince me that I'm trans; I'm more interested in understanding how people in the community view someone like me and ways I can both connect over the similarities while also celebrating the differences and be a good ally.

If this is the wrong place for this conversation, or I worded something poorly, I deeply apologize in advance. I don't really know where else to seek this discussion in good faith, so if there is a better place I could be pointed towards, I would appreciate it.

I appreciate your time and if I worded anything stupid or insensitively somehow, I'm deeply sorry. I've read and re-read and re-edited this post like 40 times now to the point it almost looks like a corpo press release and I'm dying a little inside now X_x

Hey! Played the game a lil bit years ago but I'm back and basically fully new. Would love to make some friends :3 Playing on Ogrest/solo character server as an Enripsa because I like being support and letting other players shine (plus I think they're cute <3 )

A lot of the guides I've found seem to be pretty outdated and I'll admit I'm struggling a bit in fights. Any advice, guidance, etc. I'd appreciate.

Hey all! Trying to play the steam version, but it seems to be stuck on startup. It isn't frozen, the graphic to confirm is pulsing, but not reading my controller or any m+kb inputs. Nothing I do seems to work. Saw a few other people on Steam Discussions mention the problem as well but no solutions, thought I'd ask here?

Controller is being read by other games, M+KB working fine everywhere else, even tried a second controller. Reboot and reinstall seem to not be working.

I posted this in the r/deltarune subreddit a few days ago but, I think it would be appropriate to put here. I think it is the Ralsei-vibes thing to do, and I think it might be something a lot of people could benefit from right now, so...

This is less about the game of Deltarune specifically and more about the community, but bear with me, I'm going somewhere with it.

I have seen a lot of heated and passionate discussion about a lot of things with the latest chapter drop - some good, some bad. But that prompted me to kind of sit with the themes of the game, the characters a bit and inspired me to just kinda let this one rip and hope it lands.

You, the person reading this right now, matter. You matter so goddamn much. And whether you liked the latest chapter or had your theory imploded or hated a boss fight or loved a musical theme... you, me and everyone in this sub get to exist, right here, right now, together and bond over this experience (and Ralsei <3)

Isn't that kind of absolutely badass? In all the periods of human history we could have been born into, of all the lives and situations we could have found ourselves in, we're here, going on this journey together, making friends, diving into our own dark worlds and coming out the other side learning more about ourselves and each other.

There's some stuff I don't like, sure. There's some things said by people that bother me. That make me feel bad. That make me question myself and my understanding of the game and the like. There are parts of the new chapter I love. Parts of the new chapter I don't love so much. But you know what I do love? You.

I envy Ralsei, in a way, because if I were him I could build a magnificent castle with a room for each and every one of you. Because it doesn't matter to me if we never meet, never talk, and never directly interact because you still make all this possible. You contribute to this community by simply being here. You contribute to this wonderful tale and these characters and this world and I'm so very glad you could make it.

So please, keep on critiquing what you don't like. Keep celebrating what you do like. Draw Kris as a Metapod and Susie as handsome Squidward and write epic poems about why Berdley is misunderstood or post your latest crack theory about why Papyrus is actually wearing Toriel as a skinsuit. Keep engaging. Keep loving. Keep laughing.

But do so in a way that lifts each other up. That shines the light of your soul on others. We bolster each other in times that are pretty scary for some people in our community. Be their shelter (no, no, not THAT one), not their torture. Extend grace and love (also not THAT one) to each other.

ACT with kindness. Consider MERCY before you hit post. And above all else...

Be what they call "You." <3

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I can't promise I'll be able to respond to everyone, but if you want to just talk about something with an open mind, gush about something you love about the game (or Ralsei, my fluffy boy ahhh), or just show off something cool, I'd love to talk about it, hear about it and see it. <3

Almost every major beat of this chapter is about Susie or Ralsei being more independent, acting on their own, or intentionally ignoring Kris. The Fights with the Flowers almost always end up, if you try to FIGHT, with Ralsei and Susie healing the enemy instead and refusing to fight, even if you had been all along. Flowery is pressuring Ralsei to stop worrying about what Kris wants and to think for himself. We see Ralsei start to openly question Kris's actions (like opening the dark fountains) though he's still choosing to side with Kris for now.

Susie actively overrides Kris and Ralsei multiple times. She keeps getting help from Flowery, speaking for Kris if Kris wants to hang out with Berdley, refusing to let Kris leave the Dark World early, making sure Ralsei gets the drink he wants.

Then there's the room where Susie and and Ralsei begin to act entirely on their own to solve the platforming, something that they had never really tried before. More than any other chapter, Susie and Ralsei are acting without Kris's input and for many of the input choices, Susie or Ralsei ignores that choice.

"Your choices don't matter."

This culminates with Susie unilaterally deciding to add Noelle to the Fun Gang and to go with Ralsei to set her up a room... without Kris.

Susie has been living in the Dark World. Susie has been living with Ralsei. (this also explains how they've been getting so close seeming off screen).

Kris has been the odd person out. Kris has been unaware of this.

Chapter 5's point was to drive home a very important, narrative point: Kris is out of the loop, and the fun gang is starting to work without them.

Or, to put it another way....

• SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL?

TL;DR - the party used a fiend and an artifact to "Noah's Ark" humanity out of extinction and are turning said fiend into a supernatural caretaker through a focused, yet unintentional, propaganda campaign.

The setting is a homebrew of our world, semi-near future. Humans have been missing for hundreds of years and the other mortal races arrived after the humans went missing. There's some time hopping shenanigans and the party at large is attempting to solve what happened to the humans and find a way to potentially bring them back.

Through some of their time meddling and investigation they've found out the humans aren't as gone as they thought - the warforged of this setting are all actually human souls in artificial bodies, having avoided the tragedy that normally would have wiped them all out, but they're currently trying to figure out how this all happened.

Back in the past, the part ran into a relatively low threat succubus whom had aligning goals with their current task and so they partnered up with him to accomplish their tasks. They learned that the succubus was bound to a specific, powerful human spellcaster and that he was desperate to find and protect her since her contract/summoning of him was all that was keeping him on this plane. Y'know, the selfish, fiend angle.

They party has not been careful to keep the timeline intact at all, openly saying they were from the future, talking about how humans all disappear, etc. The succubus starts to internally panic, realizing a world without humans would absolutely suck for him, since they're his favorite race to charm and feed off of. So he starts trying to figure out a way to stop the humans from disappearing.

The party gets in over their heads in a fight but they've found an artifact that can bolster a fiend's abilities, and they decide to give it to the succubus, knowing he'll get more powerful, but feeling like it is their only shot to win the fight in a way they found acceptable. They do win the fight with the little extra help but the succubus bails on the party right after, keeping the artifact. The artifact essentially allows the succubus to gather a vast amount of souls into it to gain power, so as soon as the party heads back to their time the Succubus uses the artifact to absorb the soul of every human he can reach and charm...

Then the calamity that wipes humans out happens...

...and he, with the help of another fiend known as The Smith, puts all the human souls into the warforged bodies to make sure they don't get fully absorbed or decayed until he can find a way to get them their actual bodies back. He's working pretty pragmatically at this point: preserve the flock to ensure food in the future. But the humans all see this as a great act of altruism, seeing this succubus as a savior who helped them avoid extinction. And it turns out? He really kinda digs all this praise and open admiration thing.

The party meets back up with him in the present and through shenanigans he's now trapped in an ethereal plane that they control... but the party really likes him, and they've found out he saved some of the humans, so they have decided to keep trying to help him finish his plan since he's stuck unable to escape this plane. They all pretty openly invoke his name, work as his messengers, etc, and have just made him even more popular with the humans overall and several of the other races who want to see humans return. There have been shrines built in his honor, and people are just really kinda into it.

Meanwhile he's slowly losing that pragmatism, becoming attached to the people he protected and that look up to him. It's making him more powerful, which he also very much likes, but he's feeling protective towards them for reasons beyond just power. He's feeling outright paternal towards humanity specifically but towards most of the mortal races in general.

So the question has started to become "if a fiend's pragmatism and self-preservation can go so far as to wrap back around and become genuine care and concern, are they still a fiend, or becoming something more?"

RAW, no, they just wouldn't be a fiend anymore (there's examples of Celestials turning Fiend, like Zariel, but I dunno of any real examples of a fiend going celestial?), but for our story, I've decided he's shifting more towards something unique. Divine Sense last session no longer works on him - he isn't detecting as a fiend. And the party is HYPED about this.

One player stated "Guys, I think we're turning our boy into a genuine good god" and they all seemed super thrilled and accomplished so...

I'm excited to see how it all turns out. Yeah, sure, I'm the DM but I've been playing things pretty reactive to the party, just keeping the core mysteries and plots moving but letting them explore and develop their own threads and NPC lines and, well...

It looks like they're creating their own "Big Good" out of a one-off fiendish NPC who was mostly there to do a little exposition dump and point them towards another, important NPC... whom they still haven't bothered to find. I'm sure that'll work out.

(Note: yes, I've used "he" for the Succubus on purpose, they're male. For the setting's sake, Succubi and Incubi aren't gender-locked and they fulfill different functions, which aren't really relevant to the story)