User:BobTheTacocat/Penumbra Phantasm from memory

Penumbra Phantasm is an unreleased song created by musician Toby "Radiation" Fox. Originally most famous for being a teased and then never released Homestuck song, it has recently developed a second wind by being theorized (and later deconfirmed) to be used in DELTARUNE.

As a part of Homestuck

A transcription of the opening riff of Penumbra Phantasm, an edited and interpolated version of the intro to Doctor.

A transcription of the flute melody of Penumbra Phantasm, later used in songs like Savior of the Waking World and Umbral Ultimatum.

Penumbra Phantasm is itself a spinoff of Doctor, a song created by Buzinkai for Homestuck. While the intro riff is a direct variation of Doctor, the rest of Penumbra Phantasm (or at least what is usually quoted from Penumbra Phantasm) is unique to the song.

Penumbra Phantasm was a song being worked on as soon as 2010, when it was first referenced in Descend. This song would later get referenced in several other Homestuck songs created by Toby Fox, most notably Savior of the Waking World. This action of referencing the song while never releasing it created an air of mystique around the full song, which over time became a joke in the Homestuck community. Penumbra Phantasm would later be referenced by other Homestuck musicians, none of which I can actually name examples of.

In 2012, Toby Fox played part of Penumbra Phantasm on piano while on stream, which was archived and later uploaded to YouTube.

Penumbra Phantasm was teased with "null" a song briefly on Homestuck Volume 9 before being deleted.

Penumbra Phantasm could have been released as part of Homestuck Volume 10 in 2016, but Toby Fox was busy with Undertale at the time Volume 10 was being assembled in late 2015, so this never manifested.

In 2017, Toby Fox's files that he uploaded privately to the Starman Forums were leaked due to a data breach. This included "AwakeningCrap2.mid", a MIDI export of the Penumbra Phantasm project file. Since this MIDI export was of the project file, all of the individual channel titles, MIDI events, so on were kept, and so people have reverse engineered what AwakeningCrap2 is supposed to sound like. It is the most current and complete version of Penumbra Phantasm.

As not a part of Toby Fox's other works

“	AT SHADOW'S EDGE, SHATTER THE TWILIGHT REVERIE	”
	— Toby Fox on X (formerly Twitter)

Between the releases of DELTARUNE Chapters 2 and 3+4, a theory arose claiming that Penumbra Phantasm would appear in DELTARUNE in some way. This theory was substantiated by a series of facts:

• DELTARUNE explores the concept of penumbra, partial shadow (in other words, the meeting of light and dark)
• Toby Fox had reused unused music for Undertale and Deltarune before, and had even reused a spinoff of Doctor in Undertale before, turning the unused song Patient into Another Medium and CORE
• Toby Fox had made leading social media posts talking about shadows and light in 2011

And a series of claimed, incorrect facts:

• THE HOLY was claimed to quote Penumbra Phantasm (not really)
• Hopes and Dreams was claimed to quote Penumbra Phantasm (Toby Fox confirmed on the Undertale 10th Anniversary stream that it is supposed to be a quote of Doctor specifically)

While this theory was dubious and coincidental at best (Penumbra Phantasm was being conceptualized before Toby Fox had the fever dream in 2011 that inspired DELTARUNE), it was deconfirmed in a 2025 Nintendo Life interview where Toby Fox is quoted saying that no music from or made for Homestuck would appear in DELTARUNE. The theory was further deconfirmed by the Undertale 10th Anniversary livestream, where Toby Fox said that he would not include Doctor in any of his future works, as he can no longer ask for permission from Buzinkai to use it due to their passing.

Is there any hope?

Bizarrely, in 2024, a Pesterquest cutscene had multiple songs playing on top of each other as the main character remembered the events of Homestuck. In that soup of audio, a version of Penumbra Phantasm can be heard that is different than all pre-existing clips of Penumbra Phantasm, bringing the idea of a real Penumbra Phantasm release back onto the table.

There are currently several avenues where Penumbra Phantasm could finally be released, whether in Homestuck: Beyond Canon, the Nomestuck Animated Series, or secret third thing. Only time will tell.