Personal Blog 3 - DELTARUNE Theory

Copy pasted from a comment I made

Call me crazy but I'm still in the Ralsei is a Lightner camp (well, not necessarily a Lightner, but certainly not a Darkner). While there's some things i could point out as evidence in game, I don't really care about proving it that way. From how i see the direction of the story, Ralsei CANNOT be a Darkner or the messages and themes of the game will conflict with each other too much. As much as people don't want to think about it, DELTARUNE will have to end, and it will have to have a resolution. From how it's been going so far, the dark worlds are an allegory for escapism and the ways in which we interact with fiction. 1. Darkners are not just personifications of their objects, they ARE the objects they represent, and this was clarified a bit with Tenna, in how he is aware of how he entertained the two families for so long and they stopped watching him, as well other characters like King (Lancer's Dad), Spamton, and Jevil being aware of how they were discarded and not used anymore (Jevil being a special case, as he was never used since he is a joker card), and all the times they were played with were before they existed in dark worlds. We find out that Tenna is overjoyed with being appreciated by someone else, as long as he isn't discarded. All the Darkners do seem interested in making the Lightners happy except for the discarded ones, just like their real life objects are originally intended for. All the Darkners are also caricatures of their objects, Lancer is a Jack of spades so he's a goofball, Rouxls is the rules card and always wants to be in a position of control, Spamton spouts nonsense as spam emails do, Queen is the random chaos of the internet, Gerson in chapter 4 is a caricature of the Gerson that once lived. What could Ralsei even be a caricature of? A deeply traumatized plushie? A dead kid? 2. The message of UNDERTALE is that it's okay to move on from fiction you were once attached to, because the character's are just that, characters. 3. DELTARUNE is described in it's own trailer as a, "heartfelt journey of humor and friendship," and it so far seems to be exploring what friendship really means and what real friends are like with Kris, Susie, and Ralsei. 4. DELTARUNE keeps giving us moments where Ralsei denies himself as a real person and denies himself from living a life for himself and we are meant to feel bad about this. He asks Kris and Susie to "move on" when they get tired of him. When Asriel says almost word for word the same thing in UNDERTALE, it is meant to be heartwarming, because it is telling the player that it's okay to move on and forget about Asriel because he is a character and he will be the same whether we stay or not. This is also one of the biggest reasons for me now of why RALSEI IS NOT ASRIEL. in any way, shape or form. His name is an anagram for Asriel because he is the NARRATIVE ANTITHESIS of what Asriel represented. 5. It doesn't really matter if Ralsei declared himself a Darkner in chapter 3, he's already been shown to be heavily misguided. Now I am going to explain why this all means Ralsei can't be a Darkner (IN MY OPINION). IF we are meant to agree with Susie and Kris and believe that Ralsei can be his own person, and the game wants us to treat him as a genuine friend and all that jazz, yet the dark worlds represent escapism, and UNDERTALE has already established the perspective Toby Fox has on how we should interact with fiction, then if Ralsei truly is a Darkner, this tonal dissonance is created. Kris and Susie would inevitably move on from Ralsei and he wouldn't have a purpose past inspiring emotions in Susie and Kris. The game's narrative wants us to be in support of Ralsei learning to be himself and live for himself, if he is a Darkner, then he is an escape and an adventure for Susie and Kris, which as a conclusion to the story wouldn't feel like a, "heartfelt journey of humor and friendship." Ralsei would be to Susie and Kris what Susie and Kris are to us playing the game. So what about the alternative? Why did i say Ralsei is the narrative antithesis of Asriel? If Ralsei is a real person then it reinforces every message that the game has. The message that the characters in the fiction you interact with are not your friends is not muddied. The themes of friendship are more powerful, because if RALSEI IS NOT A DARKNER, then it means that RALSEI IS NOT AN OBJECT. A PERSON IS NOT AN OBJECT. PEOPLE ARE NOT TOYS. YOUR FRIENDS DO NOT EXIST TO ENTERTAIN YOU. I am of the firm belief that this is where Ralsei's story is going. While Asriel is meant to show you that characters and games and objects aren't and can never truly be your friends, Ralsei is meant to show that friends are not games, characters, or objects meant to be played with. I think that DELTARUNE will lead to revealing that Ralsei was never an object, and that he was always a real person with his own life in the context of the game. This would be a heartwarming message about friendship directed at people pleasers who think of themselves as objects and at narcissists who don't quite understand that other people don't exist to help them. Saying that YOU ARE NOT AN OBJECT, and saying that YOUR FRIENDS ARE NOT OBECTS. It would fit in with the other messages that this game is telling, with Susie learning to let people into her life, that friends build each other up and help each other grow; and the messages about moving on, with Kris seemingly stuck in the past and wanting to go back, and Susie wanting her escapist adventure to never end. If Susie and Kris are meant to eventually move on and Ralsei were truly a Darkner, what would that say about his character development? Would it be for naught? If he is a Darkner that somehow becomes a real person, then what does that say about how we should interact with fiction? Should we form unhealthy bonds with fictional characters who aren't real? No. It is my opinion that in the context of the game's story, Ralsei IS real, Ralsei CANNOT be a Darkner, and Ralsei CANNOT be any form of Asriel. However you want to explain it, some gaster intervention, he's a lightner, whatever you want, but i truly think that for his character development to mean something, he can't be a Darkner. And if I'm wrong I'll eat my hat.