Deltarune theory skip if you don't care
I got the idea in my head recently that goners are less of a single category of thing and more of a stage in the evolution of things. Like, think about how Toby Fox talks about making Undertale and Deltarune in the anniversary live streams. He's always going on about how he's just ripping off ideas from some other work and making them his own, right? He sort of… copies concepts, but makes them unique through the care he puts into them. Especially in the 10th anniversary live stream when he applies this to fan media, other people going on to "copy" Undertale, making it their own through their unique creative spins on the story and characters. I think these ideas, that we know Toby thinks about a lot, are being explored in the characters and stories of Deltarune.
Basically, I think goners are characters (or maybe even places in the case of dark worlds) that have not been instilled with meaning through the interpretation of their creator and those that care about them. They have yet to be colored in, or they have no one left to color them in.
The cliffs and couch cliffs are early dark worlds before being shaped by the creator's will and the eyes that interpret them (something something darkness as water given shape by the vessel that it's poured into, the vessel being interpretation). The 7 flying aces were monochrome copies of ace cards, but were given meaning by Kris's care and being used as playing cards. Instances of NPCs being foreverally gonerified are almost always out of the way characters that no one really cares about, that no one really interprets or "colors in with their care." Maybe someone who's a little bit brainrotted could argue that because Ralsei is a darkner who had not been a part of any of Kris and Co.'s imaginary games that he was a goner when we first met him and was only colored in when Susie (and presumably Kris and the Player) started caring about him near the end of chapter one.
Suddenly it doesn't matter that we don't know what the vessel is a copy of because it doesn't have to be a copy. But also, copies that haven't been given their own meaning are still goners, they just aren't the only kind.
I'm not a huge truck freak, so even though I haven't seen anyone else say something like this I'm sure other people have made these same connections. Either that or I'm missing something really obvious that completely disproves everything I've said.
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