i've never actually played undertale! but i've been in the fandom for a very long time -- watching let's plays, seeing cool fan content, lurking in various discussion spaces. and of course, playing through deltarune (and undertale yellow). it's probably the most impactful game of my life, and i bet that's even more true for many others in this community.

the newsletter itself has some interesting stuff. in particular toby wearing an asgore shirt in a picture related to chapter 5, and a mike scene with some implications for theory crafting, maybe.

there's probably a lot of cool stuff that people have made for the 10th anniversary. unfortunately i didn't have the skills and time to make anything myself (other than this lemmy post). i've already read through three 10th anniversary fanfics on ao3, all of which were pretty nice. two other fics that i've been following have also been updated, so i'm excited to read those as well.

hoping to see others share their undertale stories as well! or post some cool fan creations, whether from yourself or from someone else! i'll start with 10 years of Frisk by Kittany_the_Fox.

Despite everything, it's still you.
happy birthday!!!

nice time signature too! actually is it the first instance of 7/4 (or 7/8 depending on how you interpret it) in undertale/deltarune? can't think of anything else off the top of my head, all other weird time signatures i can think of are either 5/4 due to alphys or the second/third sanctuaries

raise up your bat is naturally the highlight of the chapter 3 soundtrack for me. the melody is great, both sets of lyrics are great, the lost girl leitmotif is incorporated beautifully as the chorus of the entire thing, oh and for some reason there's quite a few parts that sound like megalovania and justice from undertale yellow. one of the rare lyrical pieces in deltarune so far, and toby knocked it out of the park (though was anyone expecting otherwise?)

chapter 4 has an even stronger soundtrack in my opinion, with several top-tier songs, but i'd like to highlight the third sanctuary and its ridiculous yet fluid time signatures. the song as a whole has a really driving energy to it, and that 23/8 part. truly the peak of the song. there's like at least three different ways to feel the rhythm in that section and i can switch between all three of them on the fly. the part at 1:47 is also quite fun to follow along with. i like to count it as 12/8, 11/8, 10/8, 12/8, 11/8, 11/8, 11/8, 12/8. has a really nice push and pull feel to it.

to highlight some less popular songs: paradise, paradise has a nice melody, especially at 1:22. as does old wooden rafters, which is seriously low on views considering how good it is. and ever higher is just cheerful and fun, especially the section starting at 1:05.

can we also talk about how masterfully guardian uses leitmotifs from from now on? the main dark sanctuary leitmotif appears in a bunch of different forms. first the narrower, darker-sounding version associated with the titans, extended in a 3-3-3-3-2-2 rhythm. then the original, wider version in its original 3-3-2 rhythm, bringing in a big burst of hope for the "chorus" of the song. (also the guitar that introduces that section is so cool!) then at the end of the song, we pair up the wider intervals with the extended rhythm for a determined feel that's not fully hope, but also not fully despair. absolutely insane how the same leitmotif can be manipulated into taking on three very different tones in one cohesive song.

but that's not even the leitmotif that i find the coolest here. a motif more unique to from now on is transformed into something much different-sounding in guardian. these are the only two tracks i could identify this motif in, and it's kind of hard to even realize they're the same motif at first because the rhythm is quite different, and the two just don't sound anything alike in the context of their respective songs. truly an amazing final boss theme to end off the gameplay of the new chapters.

...man that's a lot of stuff i wrote. can you tell i like the new songs a lot? say what you will about toby TAKING TOO LONG, the final result is worth it!

oh, that's wonderful! thanks for the translation!

my initial thought was that it actually didn't use that many leitmotifs: just spamton's two motifs, the world revolving + power of neo, and dummy!. but that's actually more leitmotifs (5) than hopes and dreams (4: once upon a time A and C, your best friend, and snowdin town), chaos king (3: card castle, lancer, legend), and attack of the killer queen (3 or 4: queen, maybe another queen motif somewhere?, berdly's 2 motifs), assuming i have everything correct! (i'm counting each distinct section of a source song as a unique leitmotif.)

watched the linked video for the first time, though i'm sure i've seen it plenty of times in my recommendations. i didn't consider melody A'' to be a variation of melody A, but i suppose it kinda makes sense. i assume this was one of the more influential analyses of big shot's leitmotifs?