A Library of Oddities

Quick disclaimer, this is a headcanon for fun and I wanted to get it out of my head before I forgot anything. If I missed, forgot, or misinterpreted anything, feel free to let me know!

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1. Darkners and Dateables are one and the same.

We (officially) find out from Ralsei in chapter 3 of Deltarune that Darkners may appear as sentient beings while Kris and Susie are in their relative Dark Worlds, but in the Light World, they simply appear as everyday objects; Lancer and Roulx are different playing cards, Queen is a laptop, Tenna is a CRT television, etc.

Likewise, all the dateables are objects that are manifested into personified versions of themselves. Parker is the board games, Mac is the desktop, Telly is the flat screen TV, etc.

We also see the manifestations of concepts in each universe: Spamton is a spam e-mail, something intangible (in that it cannot be held or physically interacted with outside of a computer), but still manifested as a unique being. Wilhemina Work, your Workspace app, follows a similar concept; a work app only exists as a digital item within the phone, but still has the ability to manifest as a unique being.

Furthermore, both games are shown to have characters that have passed away be given new life due to the world's function (more on this later). Zoey Bennett is the ghost in the attic- with your help, she gains the ability to interact with the other objects as though she manifested like them. Similarly, when the Church's dark world is made, Gerson appears within and interacts with the world as though he'd been there the entire time; only later do we find out that this was possible due to there being a snow snowglobe with his dust (kept like an urn) located within the office of his son, Father Alvin.

2. The means in which they manifest

Also explained by Ralsei in chapter 3, Darkners can only be seen as sentient beings when you fully remove the light from an area, then take a step further by eliminating any suggestions of light- going from zero light to negative light. This is done by creating the dark fountains, and as a result, the entire space relative to where the fountain was created becomes its Dark World version: the empty classroom became the Card Kingdom, the computer lab became Cyber City, Kris' own house became TV World, and the Church became the Sanctuaries.

A similar concept is at play for Date Everything: as Skylar explains, the Dateviator sunglasses work mainly through light manipulation. Each object has an essence attached to it, one which lives a life like a regular being would, but you'd never see it without the technology inherent to the Dateviators. This manipulation of the light allows you to see not only visual representations of an object's essence, but bits and pieces of their world. What looks like a breaker box without the glasses on appears to be an entire nightclub with them on. The underside of your couch transforms into an archeological dig site. Your living room, dining area, and kitchen all have fully functioning restaurants.

It's also important to note that while both worlds have fantastical manifestation elements, what might be considered an illusion can affect things outside of that realm.

In the "Snowgrave" route for chapter 2 of Deltarune, while in Cyber City, Noelle hits Berdly with the attack that gives this alternate route its name: once the dark fountain was sealed, the computer lab went back to normal, but Berdly was noticeably knocked out and cold to the touch. Similarly, Tenna's fate in the Light World depends on whether or not you recruit all the allies, especially since it's fated for him to be near fatally wounded by the Roaring Knight. If you recruited all the allies, the CRT in the Light World will have a bandage on it, but will otherwise still be functional (Susie will say that the allies helped her put him back together once they finally found him). If you didn't, the CRT appears broken and unusable (Susie will day she tried, but she was unable to locate where his body fell after getting attacked by the knight).

In Date Everything, interacting with Prissy, Artt, and Lady Memoria give you the opportunity to have decorations get placed around the house; while you and Artt place up paintings together, everything else happens on its own. Should Arma be lead to start a fire in the house, Wallace will be affected, and the wall near the bedroom door will appear with a large burn on it from then on.

3. How can the two worlds coexist?

After all, one is mainly centered around monsters while the other has mainly human/humanoid characters. The answer lies within the main characters of each game.

Kris themselves is a human, but they've lived around monsters their whole life. They're the one that makes the major dark world fountains in the game, and dark world creation mainly deals with the one who initiated made the fountain. Since the objects are manifesting as beings and Kris has never interacted with another human, it makes sense that all the worlds appear with monster forms instead of more human ones.

The MC of Date Everything is human, and given they hadn't experienced anything out of the ordinary in their world (as beyond the Dateviators, everything is fairly normal), The objects manifest as humans, or in the case of some characters, manifest as human as they could possibly be. Skylar herself explains that the glasses are attuned to the user; the example she gives is that if a dog were to use the Dateviators, the objects would manifest as dogs.

Ideally, I'd think that if Deltarune objects were to appear in the house, the MC would see them as human through the Dateviators, and if the household objects appear in Deltarune locations, they'd appear as monsters within the respective Dark Worlds, however, since characters like Freddy Yeti and Nightmare exist, they could easily manifest as their usual selves too.

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- Black Albino Milk Tribe? Black Albino Milk Tribe.

- I sometimes call this ship Sword and Shield (from Dark Choco's sword and Milk's shield), but now that Dark Choco's given up his sword, maybe Royal Promise (Prince Dark Choco, Snowy Promise reference, so on)

- As Human Dark Choco's name is Derek (from that one April Fool's event), I decided Human Milk's name could be Michael (or Mikey for short).

- Age gap is about 5 years, given Milk was a youth in the village and Dark Choco was the young prince. Likely 10 and 15 when they first met, but only developed romantic feelings once they were adults (around 25 - 30).

- Despite Dark Choco being taller, Milk has way more muscle and overall physical strength (this is the same guy that can lift up an extremely heavy grimoire with ease and can also lift Purple Yam with one hand like he's a feather). This could also be due to the fact that milk based cookies are naturally gifted in strength already.

- When they'd first reunited, Milk talked Dark Choco's ears off about his journeys, how long they'd been looking for him, etc- it was a bit overwhelming, but comforting to know that despite everything, there were cookies out there who believed in him as a hero.

- Due to the Milk Tribe's past with wolves, and since Milk and Purple Yam tended to go on side quests to help out others, both have gotten their fair share of scars, though Milk's were usually covered by his outfit. Seeing them for the first time was a shock to Dark Choco cause he'd never expected the healer to have so many.

(Milk reassured him that he's fine!)

- Their relationship developed to where it was over time, starting out as a friendship once Dark Cacao was found and then gradually growing to something more. Milk fell first, but Dark Choco fell harder.