Someone linked me to this video and I had to
(They didn't actually say this to him! Although from his perspective they might as well have)
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what ARE your addison thoughts? i know you said spamton isn't one, but do you have any other opinions on them?
what does it mean when noelle kills the pink addison?
after all, they're not a huge character. sure, the music cuts out after you kill them, and it is framed as a horrific thing, but you can still back out of the snowgrave route at any time afterwards. their and the other darkners' deaths are able to be smoothed over quite easily -- too easily. the game merely treats it as though you didn't recruit them. berdly is the only one that snaps noelle out of her trance -- and as well, he is marked as the point of no return, the divergence point of snowgrave. but why?
in the world of deltarune, to be "real" is a metric of power. the more "real" one is within the system of deltarune, the more power one has. we stand at the top as players -- existing on the highest plane of "reality", our reality. the lightners are a level below that -- lines of code and dialogue in the game of deltarune that we play. the darkners exist on the lowest level -- as the lightners are video game characters to us (both literally and figuratively, as mirrors of undertale's cast), the darkners are mere objects to the lightners. it's a system that reflects all the way down. we "determine" the fates of the lightners, and the lightners "determine" the fates of the darkners.
of course, each level of reality is still a reality. the darkners are no less of people than the lightners, and the lightners are no less of people than us. but that doesn't mean this power metric exists merely in the characters' own heads, nor is it something simply realizing one's own worth can overcome. it is a real system baked into the world of deltarune, one that exists to oppress and govern the people within it. this "layered reality" and the power dynamics that divide it are tangible, constricting, and horrifying.
in snowgrave, we see this come into play when we kill the darkners. noelle becomes conditioned to see them as "enemies". the snowgrave run is also faster, quicker -- you can "clear" the dark world and get to the coveted, "more real" light world faster that way. even gaster doesn't treat the darkners as important -- ralsei does not get to be "very, very special" like the others. and you can back out of the snowgrave route at any time, so long as you don't kill berdly -- a lightner. someone "more real".
i tend to stay away from connecting undertale to deltarune too much via "plot facts" and the such. taking the darkners to the light world, for example, is not the solution to deltarune's conflict, as it is not a one to one mirror of undertale's. but there are a number of symbolic and thematic ideas that come up in both games. the darkners in deltarune are framed much like the monsters were in undertale -- the "enemy" character type.
but what measure is an "enemy", anyway? don't these "enemies" deserve to be treated like people, too?
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