#these are all objects that mean a lot to each of the lightners and mostly the kids. these are objects that are full of love and light | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mymarifae · 2 years

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I think it’s more like how light world time flows to the dark world. As in the supply closet definitely existed before the abandoned classroom was a thing so that’s why it might be considered the first. The other two fountains were built later in the town’s history, but are still pretty old. That’s my theory anyway.

oh so like. a dark world has existed as long as the light world's corresponding location has existed? so likeeee: cyber world came into existence once the computer lab was built, and queen's reign began when her light world counterpart was taken out of the old classroom after alvin retired/passed away and was moved to the computer lab. (because that is totally what happened. i know it.)

that's a really interesting idea and it makes a lot of sense and i really like it!!!! files it away in my brain forever. but honestly, taking it into consideration, i'd be more inclined to say that the abandoned classroom has existed as long as the school has, because it was part of the original building plans, thus making it older - while the supply closet could have been built in literally any time. 🤔 or, Brought In. it's kind of hard to tell, but the supply closet doesn't look like a built in part of the school. it looks like a portable closet

[ID: the hallway supply closet followed by an image of the closet in the abandoned classroom. end ID.]

see how the top kinda looks like, 3d almost? implying that it's not actually two double doors built into the wall, but a portable closet that someone shoved there. in that. hole in the wall. (????????)

anyway. either way as far as the "which fountain thing came first" debate goes, i like this thought a lot!! it definitely works. thank you for sharing! :)

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inbarfink · 3 years

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You know, it’s interesting to compare the Darkners in Deltarune to how Monsters worked back in Undertale. Because, like, as part of the Toby Fox Multiverse’s fondness for making up lore explantions for gameplay elements, they’re both kinda ‘Video Game Enemies and NPCs’ on an in-universe level. But the emphasis is on kinda different points.

You know, like, the Lore of Undertale explains how Monsters have Flashier Magical Powers compared to Humans but Humans are still powerful enough that just one of them can best a whole hoard of monsters - just like a Player Character usually can beat a huge amount of enemies with cool powers. They don’t have acess to the same amount of Determination as Humans do (as in, the ability to reload after a Game Over). They turn into Dust as a play on bodies fading away or disintegrating when defeated. They have a cultural obsession with Puzzles that developed as a safety measure from Human attacks. Their Royal Family are even called “Boss Monsters”.

But the one aspect of being a Video Game NPCs\Enemy they DON’T have is like... a lack of Narrative Importance. The Monsters of Undertale absolutely do not see themselves as background characters in some Human’s story - and the Narrative support their outlook even though the main character IS a Human. The Monsters see themselves as heroes of their own stories, their lives are important, their feelings are important, their inner world is important.

And Darkners.... share a lot of Traits with how Monsters were in Undertale, but they don’t really dwell a lot about the details of WHY they are all outclassed by 1-3 teenagers with no combat training, or WHY they are so obsessed with puzzles that making them is an Actual Job. The role of Darkners in Deltarune as a statement about NPCs in Video Games IS instead a lot more focused on this whole idea of Narrative Importance.

Because for Darkners, Lightners are SUPPOSED to be a lot more important than they are. To qoute Seam, they are:

Darkners exist for a ‘purpose’ and that ‘purpose’ is, according to Ralsei is “being friends with the Lightners and making them happy”. So Darkners are supposed to care a whole lot for Lightners and about their well-being... but they’re not expected to put that amount of care to the well-being and feelings of their fellow Darkners. Or, it seems, Lightners aren’t necessarily expected to put that sort of care to the Darkners well-being. Like, this seems to be the whole reason why Queen kept forgetting about Ralsei. He’s not a Lightner, she’s not taking over the world to make HIM happy - so she just straight-up keep forgetting that he’s there.

And if the theory, about Dark Worlds being partially generated from the minds and feelings of the Lightners around the Fountain and kinda designed to teach them a Very Valuable Lesson, is true. It means that many Darkners’ whole existence and personality and reason to being is just to be a bit of set-dressing so that a Lightner could have their little moment of epiphany and stand up to a parental figure or learn how to make friends or something. This pretty much entierly ‘casts’ Lightners as Main Characters, and Darkners as.... NPCs.

But... even though Darkners are mostly inanimate objects brought to life by the Magic of Dreams or something like that, they also seem to be fully sapient beings who DO have their own inner lives and struggles and thoughts. Even though many of them COULD be heroes of their own stories. Is the relationship between Lancer and Susie really just Lancer 'assisting’ Susie so she can Very Important Lesson about friendship? No, it’s a mutual friendship where they both get a lot of happiness and joy from being around each other and helping each other!

And you can see Susie herself is pretty uncomfortable with the whole idea, as she should:

And... I’m wondering how it’s gonna go from here. Because with Monsters, the only thing really needed for them to not be classified as “Video Game NPCs” was just... to be free from the barrier and be accepted by the upside world. But Ralsei present this relationship between Lightners and Darkners are some Basic Physical Rule of the Universe. Even though at the same time the game expects us to see Darkners (espacially Ralsei himself, who learns some Very Important Lessons from his friendship with a LIGHTNER! How’s that for a “Purpose”?) as People, but their lives are kinda Existentially Terrifying as long as this “Rule” exist???

Is it just a matter of this “Purpose” not actually being as set-in-stone as Ralsei is saying here and he’s either lying or working on incomplete information? Are we gonna have to rewrite the whole Rules of the Universe to make it work? I guess we’ll have to see.

#deltarune #deltarune spoilers #deltarune meta #susie #susie deltarune #ralsei #ralsei deltarune #Lancer #lancer deltarune #man I hope all of this is intentional and I didn't just make this aspect of game really fucked up when it's not supposed to #but I feel like it HAS to be right??#Susie is uncomfy with it #and it's the sort-of-sequel to the game that's all about Video Game Enemies are People Too

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inbarfink · 3 years

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This is a topic I KINDA talked about before in a different post but it was more focused on speculations regarding the Angel’s Heaven, so I wanted to put in a separate post about my understanding of how the Light vs. Dark balance is related to the themes of free will vs. control.

When the first Chapter came out, I assumed the Light will be on the side of order, and Dark will be on the side of chaos. Mostly because this is usually how it goes in stories where Light isn’t necessarily good and Darkness isn’t necessarily evil. But also because Light seems to be associated with Hope, while Dark is associated with Dreams. Hopes are a lot more structured, but Dreams are wild and literally anything can happen in them.

Chapter 2 really made me rethink this idea, mostly because of Spamton NEO’s dialogue. Which directly contrasts the “Dark” with freedom.

And after I thought of it, I decided that it did actually make a lot of sense to assume that Light is the Element of Choices (but it include the choice to do bad things as well), while Dark is basically the Element of Railroading (but that includes safe and pleasant railroading.) After all....

All the times we’ve seen Kris free themselves from the SOUL was in the Light World and honestly I kinda suspect that in the Dark World the SOUL is empowered so they wouldn’t be able to tear it out like they do in the Light World Endings.

Out of the main party, Susie is a Lightner and more likely to unknowingly rebel against the rails of the plot, while Ralsei is a Darkner and seems to be intentionally trying to keep everyone ‘on the rails’ as much as possible.

Darkners in general are created with a ‘purpose’ (it seems like it’s either “make the Lightners happy” in general - or maybe they each have a purpose based on the object they were created from, and all the Darkners we’ve seen so far were based mostly on items made to make people happy). Meanwhile, Lightners don’t seem to have any sort of pre-made designation like that.

In general, the fact that Darkners parallel objects in the Light World and the fact that their pasts are basically retconned into existence once they are created has some strange implications for their agency.

For example, it seems that Spamton lives in dumpsters because his Light World counterpart are a pile of useless spam emails in the recycling bin. So, did Spamton had any chance of ever becoming a [[Big Shot]] to begin with? Was his downfall his own fault, or the fault of his unknown benefactor Probably Gaster? Or was it just bound to happen sooner or later because the Light World Spamton IS in the garbage, with the sapient Dark World Spamton having no ability to change that fate?

The “Angel” seems to be associated with Light, since in the first chapter Father Alvin says “may the Angel's power light your way”. If at least some of the symbolism from Undertale still applies, then the Angel is a being that set people ‘free’.... at least from a certain point of view.

The character with the most ‘angelic’ motifs in the story is Noelle - who is the only character capable of truly killing people in the Dark World. And notably, she (and Kris, and maybe the player) is directly called “Angel” during the Weird Route - which right now is the most meaningful ‘choice’ we’ve had in the Dark World.

The gameplay is considerably more ‘free’ in the Light World Epilogue of each chapter compared to the main bulk of the game in the Dark World. You can go almost everywhere you want in town, or go to just one place or straight home.

It even seems that some of the choices you make ‘matters’, maybe??? If you don’t visit Onion in Chapter 1, they won’t show up to tell you a secret in Chapter 2. I think it’s possible the other choices you make (delivering Undyne’s chocolates to Alphys, for example. Or taking Asriel’s five dollars) would also lead to slight branching of the Hometown story later on.

Most important of all, there’s no SAVE Points in Hometown, and that kinda means you need to have more commitment to your decisions because it’s much harder to save-scum through different dialogue options. So that means the things you choose are more meaningful that way.

SAVE Points are kinda interesting in that way because on one hand they seem to be made of Light (”At times, you see it flickering. The light only you can see.”) and that would make sense, since being able to Literally Manipulate Time and Space obviously gives one more freedom, right? Especially with multiple save files.

And on some level this is true, but also... if Manipulating Time and Space becomes too easy, then what MEANING do these choices have? Does it matter that you’ve been the most pacifistic hero and nicest friend if you can always pop in for the timeline where you’re a remorseless killer who manipulates their closest friend into also becoming a killer?

I guess there’s two points I’m trying to get here. The first is that there’s a bit of like... Extreme Darkness can lead to Light, Extreme Light can lead to Darkness. The more you constrain people on a set path, the more they yearn to get out, even if it means doing the darkest and most fucked-up shit imaginable just for the chance to go ‘off-script’ (Weird Route) and also it makes the choices they DO have matter to them even more.

Meanwhile, if one has the freedom to do anything, the freedom to do anything they want, than do any of their choices really matter?

To bring this a bit out of the metaphor and into video game terms; the universe of Deltarune needs a balance between Light and Dark just like the game Deltarune needs a balance between Choices and Story. A world without Choice is constraining and kinda existentially terrifying from an in-universe perspective. But a world that is All the Choices, where the Player can do anything and everything with very little barriers stopping them or consequence afterwards... is soon going to lose all of it’s meaning.

I’m thinking a bit of Jevil in this regard - who kinda reached the same conclusion from the opposite way: because this world is just a game, than none of his choices matter, so that means he can do anything.

Like, the whole thing with the Bonus Bosses is that they have a ‘Paradoxical Freedom’. Jevil is imprisoned, Spamton NEO is on puppet-strings. Despite being themed after ‘Freedom’, they are visibly not free. And I think that connect with that idea.

And then there’s stuff like how Susie basically ignores the Player’s dialogue choices when she’s ‘controlled’. On a literal level this is railroading, it’s just the game going along a fixed script. But it’s ALSO Susie asserting her freedom over the Player’s will.

Or on the opposite side of the spectrum, the Weird Route is literally the player shaking off the rails of the Dark World... by totally overriding the will and desires of both Kris and Noelle. The Player cuts off their own puppet-strings by making someone their puppet.

It’s just... Dark and Light, Story and Choices, Safety and Freedom... they are technically opposites but they are also two sides in the same coin.

The second point I wanted to make, and that is very related to this first point, is that there’s a distinction between “you don’t have a choice” and “your choice don’t matter”. After all, technically... Deltarune has offered you many choices since the beginning. It’s just that they were seemingly inconsequential, overwritten or totally discarded. So the choices ARE there, it’s just that they usually amount to nothing more than a slight change in the cutscene. So they don’t MATTER.

And this is why I think Dark being the element of “Dreams” is related to Dark being the element of Choices That Don’t Matter. Yes, Dreams are wild, Dreams are uncontrollable, in Dreams anything can happen. But nothing that happens in a Dream MATTERS. No choice you make in a Dream truly matters.

This is kinda what happened at the end of Chapter 2 with Berdly and Noelle. Since Kris and Susie allowed them to believe their adventure in the Dark World was just a Dream... they kinda made it ‘not matter’. Like you can see Susie straggling with the idea, that all the tender moments she had with Noelle and Bredly actually learning some damn humility don’t matter anymore because they think it was just a Dream. (Meanwhile, Weird Noelle tries as hard as she can to convince herself this was all a Dream, because she just want it all to Not Matter).

(Of course I doubt Noelle and Berdly were TOTALLY unaffected by their adventure in the Dark World on a Normal Route. After all, Noelle still tried to check if Susie has a tail and Berdly seems more open to Somewhat Respecting Kris and Susie. It’s just that the main instinct pushing AWAY from these positive changes is “but it was just a Dream, right?”)

Dreams are wonderful things that can offer us wonders and magic and escape from the rougher parts of the world - but Hope is the thing that has the more chance to effect the real world. Hope is a thing that NEEDS Choices That Matter in order for it to come true (again, I can bring up Spamton again, who’s Hopes can not come true because of the very nature of how the Dark World mirrors the Light World), and that is why I think Hope is connected to Light and contrast Dark and Dreams.

Damn I wrote way more than I was expecting too I’m sorry I don’t have a punchier closing conclusion to all of this.

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