THE QUESTION IS THE ANSWER, part III
There are three Asriels and all of them are fake
Why Flowery is the most genuine becase he's the biggest cheater
The question is the answer, but I never said the answer's right. Some questions are the wrong answer to ask.
Much like freedom, choice, and agency are not always the same, original, real, true, and authentic are not always the same also.
Just What the Hell is a Copy, Anyway?
To have color, means to belong, have purpose, a role to play, place in the world.
Darkners turn to statues when they have no more role to play in this dark world, and statues is exactly how they're termed. 2nd sanctuary's gallery even frames them as works of art. A petrified darkner becomes their own depiction - a facismile. They're no longer themself. The original can become a fake.
In contrast, the flying aces are copies, and start out colorless, but they were colored in with care - given purpose. Fakes can become originals of their own.
Clearly there's something more important than being the original. Gerson tells us as much - he finds the original story distracting, he'd rather rewrite it himself, and have his story rewritten by later generations. There is value in imperfect copies.
Not valuing "copies" is made fun of, such as with Catty and Bratty's mutual hatred, which we know from Undertale is getting in the way of a great friendship:
It's no coincidence Gerson sees Susie, who struggles to spell correctly, as the right person to rewrite the story this time. And that she does - Susie writes both the sheet music and Gerson's letter wrong, and it turns out to be a happy mistake:
And when she finishes the story, you better hope she spells it wrong, cause I got some bad news for you about Susie's motivation! (coming soon™)
Gerson himself is not the original - just a ghost put together from memories, "fake" but no faker than the rest of the dark world.
As Shuttah shows us, memories are grey by default. There's a strong link between faded darkners and memories. All the photos we take in Legend of Tenna are monochrome - except for the few special ones, the ones that mean something.
If Gerson is a ghost made of memories, who else is one?
Isn't that exactly what Asriel and Dess are? Gone from the town, but still there in its memory? Like a ghost?
Carol, Noelle, Kris and Asgore are all held captive in the past by Dess's ghost. Rudy and Toriel have moved on, concerned mostly with their loved ones right now, and they're brighter, warmer, likely happier for it.
Whoever the "unused" voice is, they spell it out for us:
CH4
I'm starting to lose track of the time.
Has it been days? Hours?
If someone told me it's been years, I might believe them...
[...]
In this place, I don't eat or drink anymore.
I can't tell if I'm awake or dreaming.
I can't even tell if I'm dead or alive.
[...]
CH5
I do have one thing, though.
And that's memories.
Memories of my life...
Maybe that's all I am at this point.
A collection of memory...
...
Then all I can do is... not forget, right?
"Don't forget."
I just have to keep telling myself that...
Suspended in some kind void, no sight, no sound, no time, no hunger or thirst, no life. They no longer exist - they're an imprint of themself in their own mind.
Asriel escaped the narrative, found a future out of town. Good for him.
But he haunts Kris nonetheless.
He may not be literally dead, but thematically he went to heaven. His room remains untouched as much as Dess's. Asriel's memory is inescapable in Hometown, beloved and missed by all. It looms over Kris, always better than them. Kris is not comfortable thinking of Asriel. They refuse to look into his room in Queen's mansion, reread his letters, pray for him in church.
What does it mean to cheat in Deltarune, a game inside a game?
Cheating, it turns out, means winning when you're not supposed to, doesn't matter fair or not. We're accused of cheating a number of times by various characters. If someone expected you to lose, and yet you won, they'll call you a cheater.
Gambling is letting fate decide for you. Cheating is deciding yourself. This puts it squarely in the same realm as determination.
The flying aces' purpose is cheating at cards.
They are counterfeit, not supposed to exist, and yet they do. They're not supposed to have color, and yet they do. There's no place for them, so they live nowhere, same place Kris can go by admitting to be a cheater and using tickets. As an organikk reveals in the 2nd sanctuary, the tickets are fakes too, and we get hints to get them from Pippinses.
Pippinses are also cheaters.
They sell illicit things they're not supposed to, try to scam you, give you hints, sign Tenna's contracts with fake names, and finally they steal from Tenna.
Is it any wonder they keep their colors when the studio freezes over?
It is cheating - help from the hacker and Spamton's keygen that give us access to Spamton's boss fight. The entirety of weird route is one huge glitch speedrun. The knockoff controller is used to play Mantle. Pink is faking her way into becoming the eighth flower, who all in turn fake their way into being human. Susie even uses deception to clip Gerson's hair and finally win.
But the king of cheaters, the fake of all fakes, has gotta be
Asriel of Krismas Present
Flowery seems like an exception - a positive nostalgia-driven character - but he's nothing of the kind. It's Asgore and Kris that are haunted. A flower intended to live one day, but preserved by Asgore, who can't let go of his wedding bouquet. Flowery is aware of his fleeting existence and firmly focused on the present, much like Rudy. He just uses Asgore's nostalgia to try and make him happy.
Flowery is made to feel fake.
Fake stats, fake powers, fake items, fake party member with no underlying code. So perfect, the cookie-cutter anime twink, with his suspicious chivalric courtesy, catchy but inhuman way of speaking, we can't help but assume it's a front - just like Undertale Flowey's skin-deep cutesy exterior. He must secretly be a sinister manipulator, and probably sexist too!
He gives away infinite free money. The money's fake, but so is all money. Even gold is only precious because people believe it is.
His powers work. He can do all of it. He seems to know everything, too. His motivation is completely genuine - he just wants to make your dad happy. He's not even sexist, he's right there to support Susie's sapphic efforts and push Ralsei to explore gender. His form may be ripped off from anime, but much like Pink, it's an expression of who he is. Flowery is perfect, because he wants to inspire.
He beats us in the end, and with the same sort of "power of friendship" that only we could wield until now. Even better - he spares us, the way Undertale taught us we should. The winning smile really is his best weapon. And once spared, oh terror - turns out he has moral high ground. He's perfectly right - why would our fountain be more important than his? Are only we allowed to dream?
Flowery is the most genuine character in Deltarune.
He broke the first rule of the game - chose who he is in this world, he (figuratively) got out of the survey wearing a vessel of his own making.
It turns out, when challenged, fate will enforce itself with brute force. You shall not make choices, OR ELSE.
The cheater could only be beaten by an even bigger cheater.
The Knight beats Flowery's 999-damage attacks with its own glitched attack, slicing tails off the 9's, a bullshit move if I've ever seen one. If Flowery uses exploits in-game, the Knight changes code to all 000000.
We don't know the Knight's real motives yet, but if they are an agent of the roaring/angel/fate, it's no wonder they can cheat the hardest. After all, they're supposed to win - it's not cheating when they do it.
Flowery is powerful because he knows the rules are fake and made up. Every knower character thus far has had some of this power - Jevil, Spamton, Gerson, Seam and Ralsei, all have great power even if they refuse to use it.
What makes Flowery's powers fake, is that he's not supposed to use them. What he's supposed to be like is...
The fakest character in the game, who only keeps their colors through slavish devotion to the angel and prophecy. Has all of Flowery's tricks and secrets, but refuses to ever use them. Ralsei is fair, but not genuine by any means.
Ralsei is just an offbrand Asriel - a ghost, every bit as much as Gerson is. Asriel was a "prince" too, even their personalities seem almost identical.
Kris doesn't like thinking about Asriel. They start off cold to Ralsei, healed a below-average amount by Ralsei tea. And they're willing to remain cold. No wonder every dialogue choice with Ralsei looks like this:
Which one Kris chooses is up to their will and compassion, ie. you, the soul.
Ralsei is and believes themself a non-person, which is funny, cause at least they're a character in the game, unlike Asriel.
But this is not the real Ralsei. When we first meet them, they don't even look like Asriel.
What did Ralsei look like before they took off the cloak and hat?
The prophecy doesn't even show a goat-like prince - it shows a hooded figure - with fire magic that Ralsei refuses to use. The hood was inevitable, what's underneath can be interpreted.
What did Flowery mean when he put Ralsei in their hat again? Is it just to tease them? Or is it to point out they're still wearing a disguise? Why put them in a closet? Coming out jokes aside, a closet is exactly where we find Ralsei - that's where Castle Town is.
Asgore - and he would know an Asriel when he sees one, he's his dad - notices this right away:
By trying to be an authentic prince, or an authentic Asriel, Ralsei fails to be themself - becomes a knockoff, a ghost.
But there's already ghosts in the light world, and they're not even dead.
Pink describes her body-less existence as having faded colors, and once she splits again, we can indeed see she's mostly though not completely colorless. Almost like a ghost is barely even themself until they find a body - "what defines you is your body".
Pink (Maddie) has already merged with her body when we meet her, but Undertale shows us something different. Maddie starts out incorporeal:
* Us ghosts spend our whole lives looking for a proper vessel.
* Slowly, slowly, we grow closer to our new bodies...
* Until one day, we too may become corporeal beings.
* Beings able to laugh, love, and dance like any other...
In genocide route their rage towards you is so intense, that a funny thing happens:
* Human.
* That moment of unbridled emotion.
* It allowed me to finally fuse with my body!
* I'm fully corporeal now!
* My lifelong dream, realized!
Ghosts are immaterial - not really there - just like statues, memories, goners and copies. They only become their real selves once they find a "proper vessel" and fuse with it.
...wait a hot fuckin' second,
Indeed the term vessel is already used in Undertale!
Maddie uses it to mean a ghost's body. This would make Pink's Mew Mew doll a vessel even before it became a darkner. Alphys also speaks of a vessel, and what she means is Flowey:
* We'll need a vessel to wield the monster SOULs when the time comes.
* After all, a monster cannot absorb the SOULs of other monsters.
* Just as a human cannot absorb a human SOUL...
* So then...
* What about something that's neither human nor monster?
* I sent the SOULS back to ASGORE, returned the vessel to his garden....
* experiments on the vessel are a failure.
* it doesn't seem to be any different from the control cases.
A dummy and an ordinary flower (from our, surface world!) can both be vessels. A vessel is, plainly, anything that can contain a soul. Kris's body is the same kind of thing as the vessel from goner maker, because every human body is.
It's not the goner maker that makes you a goner - it's that you're gone, shouldn't be here. You may be present, but you're not (or no longer) a real person.
* Undyne... you saved me...?
* Yo, I thought I was a goner, haha...
* Everyone that had fallen down...
* ... has woken up.
* They're all walking around and talking like nothing is wrong.
* I thought they were goners...?
The wrong and the right question. Deltarune does not care about "realness" - it's a game, it's all fake. Real people become fake - their own statues or memories, when they are gone or lose purpose. Facsimiles can become real when they find a role or place they belong to. Stories can be retold, and in a retelling another person can take up the same mantle.
Is Kris a real human being, or a fake vessel? Is there a difference? Is any human being real? I, for one, feel pretty fake.
Is Kris a real Dreemurr? Are adoptive children real? Does it make you an asshole to ask?
Is the dark world real? Is the light world real? Is the real world real? You have no other choice than assume it is.
As the man teaches us, true doesn't matter as much as meaningful. Well - real also doesn't matter as much as genuine. You can be a knockoff, a cheater, an illusion, hell you can even be dead - doesn't matter.
And the dark world matters. So, how real is it?
