After a literal year and a half since The Greatest Living Show + Art Book Review on Halloween 2023...it would seem...that DELTARUNE is the one thing that can make me come out of my cave and actually make a new damn review. Y'know. The thing that's my channel's tagline - "Reviews, of many shapes and sizes." Yarr... Well, anyway, the new chapters really did exceed my expectations; I honestly didn't expect to come away with so much to talk about, nor reminisce on...
Elephant in the room. So, both of my grandparents on my mother's side died this summer, a month apart. So I have one left - my grandma on my father's side. My grandmother ed away slowly until she couldn't fight old-age-related health decline anymore on May 30th, Memorial Day. I was at a damn hot dog place eating cheese fries when it happened that noon. I was sat to the right of my dad at a bar stool, man. Deltarune came out a few days later, June 4th. While I played through it, I didn't really get emotional like a lot of people did, and I have video proof of this, even - that I held it together pretty much flawlessly the whole time. I mean, I'm pretty tough, but I'm not completely cold. I listened to Epic: The Musical a couple weeks back, and that made me tear up a few times. It didn't truly hit me until later, while pondering The Old Man, for obvious reasons. I suppose it just needed to...sink in. Her funeral was on June 20th. I being kind of...stunned...after the memorial was over. I couldn't get The Old Man out of my head. Kept thinking about the comment I left on the OST of Gingerbread House about my grandmother, and the reply someone left saying they were going through the same thing, and other stories of loss I reading in the OST comment section. Truth is, this video started with that part where all of the comments overlap and share their stories, and the rest was built around it, just to get to that Point B. For, what turned out to be many reasons, I decided, I NEEDED to make this video, even though I was on the fence for those three weeks since the game launched. That's artists fer ye: "I'm here to express myself, man. I need to turn my sorrow into beauty, dude." So, work on the script began on the 21st, most of which being written in my grandparent(s)' basement, on that same couch that I fought The Light Being on while playing Everhood four years back. We returned home to our house and I finished the script, but my brother was still home, so I opted to start on this thumbnail before moving on to voice-over, given the sensitive material I'd be lending my voice to.
Ah... I suppose I should talk about it. I gained quite a heap of confidence from the last deviation, so I wasn't so worried about this thumbnail. The Old Man was tricky because the in-game sprite is slightly chibi and needed to be reproportioned with a smaller head and taller body. Other fanart can be rather useful reference for finding design details you might not notice while squinting at the small pixelated in-game sprite. During my playthrough of the game, I had no idea The Old Man was wearing a scarf this whole time. Only in HD, right? His eyebrow was also very confusing to get right, just going off of the sprite. There's five and a half Mizzles hanging around just cuz its the enemy from the latest chapters that I like the most. They're the Virovirokun of this thumbnail, (but they could never replace the true [#1 Rated Enemy Darkner]). "Water you reading?" "Water YOU doing here!?" "Water the chances, right?" This thumbnail is proof that I actually have improved as an artist if you compare it to the Knight video's thumbnail, which is darned basic by contrast. Though, simple might be better for a thumbnail... Bah.
My grandfather ed away suddenly from a stroke on July 3rd, his 93rd birthday. I was in the freakinge bathroom when it happened what the hell. I had mostly finished the script and the thumbnail, as well as some miscellaneous work on the Patreon videos. What stunned me about his death was the context that, well, I had just seen him a week prior. Y'know... It's that rare sort of sorrow, like, "I was there, I was WITH The Old Man, talking to him. I said goodbye, and I left, and now I find out...he's just gone...and I can't...go back...?" I was proud that he at least made it to 93 before he croaked. ... Uh, the both of them really loved frogs, by the way. The basement bathroom was dedicated to frogs. So, uh, anyway, the video was conceived after my grandmother's funeral, and my grandfather ed away during production. Aye, 'The Summer of Deltarune' has been a bit heart-rending. By July 6th, my brother had returned to the military base to continue fighting The Great War or whatever he does. Okay, dropping the gag, I think his actual job is to just stand around bases like a glorified security guard while opening Pokémon cards. Anyway, my dad flew back to my grandparents' house to meet my mom and figure out what the heck to do with their home and belongings now while butting heads with my two remaining aunts. I was left in charge of the house and the dog for five and a half days, and used the opportunity to record all of the voice-over. July 11th, I began editing the video, and tried to make it the best damn thing I'd ever made, since the Knight video, in retrospect, was a little poor (the gain was too high on my mic since it was the first video I recorded in the studio...). "The little extra effort is always worth it in the end," that was my approach. Let me remind you that I am still using iMovie on iOS, and many of these effects hypothetically shouldn't even be possible. By the way, all of the Jackenstein stuff? Not in the script. I came up with it the day before I edited that part, and after I finished it the following day, I felt like a god-damned genius; it fit in so well. I only it this here because if I don't, I will forget. I had a bit of a eureka moment some weeks prior when I realized I could emulate text moving across the frame by putting it on a green screen. I'm like the leading scientist of 1900 living in the year 2000 with how I've mastered iMovie over here.
I really didn't really expect The Old Man to supplant Ralsei as my favorite character in the game, but man, everything about this character just came out perfect, and it's mind-blowing. He did remind me of my grandfather, in truth. He, ah, kind of looks like him, honestly. My grandfather didn't age "gracefully," well, who does when they're in their 90s? He was bald, barely any white hair, and his skin was flaked in liver spots and discolored skin, like The Old Man. There's even some secret dialogue where Susie calls him, "old frog dude." Frogs, huh? The Old Man's sense of humor also reminded me of him. He was the type to say, "Don't tell your brother, but you're my favorite grandchild," to every one of his grandchildren. I'm trying to a joke he made when I was little. I think it was during the vacation to the OBX (Outer Banks), around when Pokémon Conquest was new. I was sat in a chair against the wall in the big sunny room on the second floor (that gave me sunburn as I slept), He leaned forward and asked a ten-year-old me what the best alcohol was, and I said "scotch." I imagine him saying something like, "wooOOOAAAHHhhh! Scotch!" He's my hero =) Being the oldest man in the entire family commands a certain respect, y'see. He walks into a room, the chant goes, "Dickie's here! Dickie's here! Hip hip, hooray!" Aye, I thought he was kind of a badass, and pretty tough; he served in the military like my brother. He was too stubborn to die before 93, that's what I believe. Apparently, the day before it happened, he played the best damn game of golf of his life. Unrelated, but at the post-funeral get-together on the 20th, there was this old, military man acquaintance of his that attended. From his face, I thought he looked like he had been left out in the sun a bit too long. I then looked down. This man was missing his right middle finger. Apparently, this guy, like, was a real-ass soldier who killed people, I think some important people, even. The frickin' Army Knife of Justice over here. My brother, he attended the funeral in his military uniform, and had to unfortunately strike smalltalk with him because of that. He itted to me, he was low-key kind of scared of the 4-fingered man. How did my grandfather know this individual? It's a puzzler.
My grandmother aged rather well and basically looked the same my whole life, not to mention still had all of her hair. Her hands were scrawny and boney like my own. I genuinely struggle to imagine a version of her that isn't smiling sweetly. An angry version of her simply doesn't exist. That's just who she was - the nicest, sweetest, frail old lady you would ever meet. Happy. She kinda looked like The Joker from the Arkham games specifically. I don't know what that implies, given her nickname. I the car ride home from my grandparents' house, I was listening to my Music playlist from start to finish, and I had arrived four years in the past - around when I played Everhood for the first time. The same time...that Helicalpuma died, and James Bucket released that video of Jazzy, himself and the other Don't Starve Youtubers singing Here's a Health to the Company to honor him. I started to something. I had the full version of that song saved to my phone didn't I? I pulled it up and played it, thinking, "(No... No way...)" Sure enough, second verse: "There's no man in this wide world...' '...as happy as me~" Aw, man, I practically burst into tears, there in my left-hand car enger seat. In the moment, I was a little relieved my dad couldn't see me from the driver's seat. I had sort of been...saving this song for the occasion that I would need it, ever since 2021. It was a little surreal that its time had finally come. For four years, it sat at the back of the Watch Later. So the end credits sequence with the Mizzles was another part I had planned in advance. It kinda stinks that iMovie made their colors gradually bleed due to the nature of how it needed to be edited, so now they look kinda ehhh withered? Ah, oh well. The Old Man taught us the dangers of doubt, so I should be confident that it'll all be just fine. The things I discovered in this video, they truly did teach me lot.